This document is a drafting aid prepared for review by qualified counsel. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer, is not legal advice, and must not be published or relied upon until it has been. Clauses marked new are proposed additions that have not appeared in any previously published Pinnacle Global terms. Clauses marked decision required cannot be finalised until the owner elects between the stated options. Clauses marked counsel raise a question to be put to counsel specifically.
Effective Date: September 1, 2026
These Terms govern use of atbae.ai. Schedule A governs examination engagements commissioned through this site and forms part of every such engagement. Schedule B governs use of the verification checkpoint by parties who are not clients.
These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the website operated by Pinnacle Global Advisory and Consultancy LLC ("Pinnacle Global," "the Company," "we," "us"), available at atbae.ai, atbae.pro, pinnacleglobal.pro and pgac.works (the "Website"). By accessing or using the Website, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Website.
Pinnacle Global Advisory and Consultancy LLC is a limited liability company registered in the State of Wyoming, United States.
The Website describes advisory and consulting services offered by the Company. Website content is provided for general informational purposes only. Any actual engagement of the Company's services is governed exclusively by a separate written engagement agreement executed between the Company and the client. In the event of any conflict between these Terms and an executed engagement agreement, the engagement agreement controls with respect to the services it covers.
Engagements commissioned through the Company's AI Test Battery and Assurance Examination (ATBAE) intake process are additionally subject to Schedule A — Examination Engagements, below, which forms part of these Terms and of every such engagement.
Content on this Website does not constitute legal, financial, regulatory, accounting, or other professional advice, and is not a substitute for advice from qualified professionals engaged for your specific circumstances. No advisory relationship is created by your use of this Website.
All content on this Website — including text, design, graphics, logos, and the Pinnacle Global, ATBAE, and AI Test Battery and Assurance Examination names and marks — is the property of the Company or its licensors and is protected by applicable intellectual property laws. No license or right is granted to you by your use of the Website, except the limited right to view the Website for your personal or internal business evaluation of the Company's services.
The seal, the report format, the class and gate taxonomy, the threshold registry, the probe corpus, and the adversarial library are proprietary. Nothing in these Terms or in any report grants a licence to reproduce the battery, to represent any other assessment as an ATBAE examination, or to apply the seal or marks to any artifact the Company did not itself seal.
new 5.1 Marks and seal usage. Where an engagement entitles a client to display the ATBAE seal or marks, that entitlement is a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to display them solely in connection with the specific sealed report to which they relate, in the form supplied, without alteration to proportion, colour, or wording, and only while that seal remains unrevoked and unsuperseded. The licence terminates automatically on revocation or supersession of the seal under A.9, on termination of the engagement, or on any misuse under A.7. On termination the client shall cease all display within ten (10) business days and remove the marks from materials within its control.
new 5.2 Consequences of misuse. Misleading use of the seal, marks, certificates, or examination results — including any use prohibited by A.7 — entitles the Company to require correction, to revoke or supersede the affected seal, to record the misuse on the revocation and supersession list, and to pursue any remedy available at law.
You agree not to use the Website in any way that violates applicable law; to interfere with or disrupt the Website or its infrastructure; to attempt unauthorized access to any systems; or to scrape, harvest, or reproduce Website content for commercial purposes without the Company's prior written consent.
The Website may reference or link to third-party websites or resources. The Company does not control and is not responsible for their content, availability, or practices, and such references do not constitute endorsement.
If you provide the Company with suggestions, comments, ideas, or other feedback regarding the Website, the battery, a report, or any service, the Company may use that feedback for any purpose, without restriction, attribution, confidentiality obligation, or compensation to you, and at its own risk. You represent that you are entitled to provide any feedback you give and that it does not incorporate the confidential information or intellectual property of a third party.
This section does not grant the Company any licence in a client's confidential information, model weights, endpoints, or examination data, all of which are governed exclusively by Schedule A and the engagement agreement.
Neither party may use the other's name, logo, or marks in publicity, marketing, customer lists, case studies, or press materials without that party's prior written consent.
This is deliberately narrower than the industry norm. The examiner–subject relationship is not a vendor–customer relationship: naming a client of an assurance service discloses that the client sought assurance, which is itself a disclosure about the client's posture. Consent here is opt-in and specific.
Nothing in this section limits: (a) the Company's publication of aggregate, de-identified statistics under A.7; (b) any disclosure required by law or by a regulatory authority acting within its authority; (c) a client's own publication of its own sealed report under A.7; or (d) the Company's obligation to maintain the public revocation and supersession list, which identifies seals and not commissioning parties.
You may not access or use the Website, commission an examination, receive a Runner licence, or supply or receive any material under these Terms where doing so is prohibited under the export control, sanctions, or embargo laws of the United States or other applicable law. You represent that you are not located in, organised under the laws of, or ordinarily resident in a country or territory subject to comprehensive U.S. sanctions, and that you are not a person or entity listed on any U.S. restricted-party list, nor owned or controlled by such a person or entity.
counsel Whether model weights, model access, and adversarial probe corpora implicate export controls independently of the parties' locations is to be assessed specifically. Route B (Company-hosted weights) is the clause most exposed.
The Website and its content are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including without limitation implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. The Company does not warrant that the Website will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components.
new 11.1 Examination-specific disclaimer. No report warrants that a subject model is safe, fit for any purpose, compliant with any law, regulation, or standard, or free of behaviours the battery did not probe. A report states what was measured, under stated conditions, at a stated time. The absence of an observed event is not a warranty that the event cannot occur. The Company does not warrant that a subject model will behave at any future time as it behaved during examination.
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall Pinnacle Global Advisory and Consultancy LLC, its members, managers, employees, or agents be liable to you or any third party for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, without limitation, loss of profits, loss of data, loss of goodwill, or business interruption) arising out of or in connection with the use of, or inability to use, this Website, its content, or any services provided, regardless of the legal theory (contract, tort, negligence, strict liability, or otherwise), even if advised of the possibility of such damages.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, the total aggregate liability of the Company for any claims arising out of these Terms or the use of the Website shall be limited to the greater of $100.00 USD or the total fees paid by you to the Company in the preceding three (3) months. For examination engagements under Schedule A, the aggregate liability cap is instead the total fees paid by the client under the applicable engagement in the preceding twelve (12) months, except where the Company has executed an express, separate written Reliance Agreement under Section A.14.4, in which case the liability cap shall be as specified in that agreement. Regulatory fines and penalties levied against a client are excluded from recoverable loss in all cases.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of liability for consequential or incidental damages, so the above limitations may not apply to you. In such jurisdictions, liability is limited to the greatest extent permitted by law.
new 12.1 Carve-outs from the cap. The limitations in this section do not apply to: (a) either party's liability for death or personal injury caused by its negligence; (b) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; (c) a party's indemnification obligations under section 13 or A.6; (d) a client's breach of the licence restrictions in section 5 or the publication restrictions in A.7; or (e) any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.
counsel The 12-month fee cap is the AI-industry norm; it is not obviously the right cap for an assurance business, where a party's reliance loss can exceed the examination fee by orders of magnitude. Counsel should consider whether the cap should instead track the Company's professional indemnity cover — see A.15.
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the Company and its members, managers, employees, and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to your violation of these Terms or your misuse of the Website.
new 13.1 Procedure. The party seeking indemnity shall give prompt written notice of the claim, shall not settle or compromise it without the indemnifying party's written consent, and shall provide reasonable cooperation at the indemnifying party's expense. The indemnifying party may assume control of the defence with counsel of its choosing, provided it may not enter any settlement imposing a non-indemnified obligation or admission on the indemnified party without that party's consent.
14.1 Term. These Terms apply from your first use of the Website and continue until terminated.
14.2 Termination for convenience. Either party may terminate these Terms at any time on written notice. Termination of these Terms does not terminate an executed engagement agreement, which terminates only in accordance with its own terms.
14.3 Termination for cause. Either party may terminate an engagement on written notice if the other materially breaches and fails to cure within thirty (30) days of written notice of the breach, or ceases business operations, or becomes subject to insolvency, receivership, or analogous proceedings not dismissed within sixty (60) days.
14.4 Suspension. The Company may suspend Website access, verification service, Runner licences, or performance of an engagement, immediately and without prior notice, where it reasonably believes: (a) continued performance would violate applicable law or expose either party to legal liability; (b) the client has misused the seal, marks, or a report under A.7 or section 5; (c) credentials or supplied material have been compromised; or (d) undisputed fees are overdue by more than thirty (30) days. Suspension for non-payment requires prior written notice and a cure period of not less than ten (10) business days.
14.5 Effect of termination. On termination: all licences granted under section 5 terminate; the client shall cease display of seals and marks per 5.1; and each party shall return or destroy the other's confidential information, save as required to honour A.9.
14.6 What termination does not affect. Termination for any reason, by either party, does not revoke, invalidate, or impair any seal validly issued before termination. Seals remain verifiable in perpetuity under A.9. The Company retains the manifests and hashes necessary to honour that undertaking notwithstanding termination.
Neither party will be liable for failure or delay in performance to the extent caused by circumstances beyond its reasonable control, including natural disaster, war, terrorism, civil unrest, epidemic, labour dispute, governmental action, failure of a third-party network, hosting, or compute provider, or widespread failure of internet infrastructure. The affected party shall notify the other promptly and use reasonable efforts to resume performance.
This section does not excuse an obligation to pay amounts already due, and does not excuse the Company's obligation under A.9 to keep issued seals verifiable.
Neither party may assign or transfer these Terms or any engagement, in whole or in part, by operation of law or otherwise, without the other party's prior written consent, which shall not be unreasonably withheld. Either party may assign to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, corporate reorganisation, or sale of substantially all of its assets, on written notice to the other. Any purported assignment in violation of this section is void. These Terms bind and benefit the parties' permitted successors and assigns.
counsel Whether a client should have a termination right on a change of control of the Company. In an assurance business, the identity and independence of the examiner is material to the client's decision to engage, and an acquisition by a model developer would be a live conflict under A.10. The Company's view is that clients should have that right.
All notices under these Terms must be in writing and are deemed given: on personal delivery; on confirmed delivery by nationally recognised overnight courier; or on the business day after transmission by email where no bounce or failure notice is received.
Each party shall keep its notice address current. The Company endeavours to formally acknowledge legal and contractual notices within two (2) business days of verified receipt.
The parties are independent contractors. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, fiduciary, employment, or franchise relationship. Neither party has authority to bind the other. The Company performs examinations as an independent examiner and not as an agent, adviser, or representative of any client, subject, regulator, or third party.
Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or in connection with these Terms, an engagement, or the use of the Website (including non-contractual disputes) shall be finally resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Commercial Arbitration Rules then in effect.
Arbitrator. The arbitration shall be heard by a single independent arbitrator appointed in accordance with AAA rules.
Seat and venue. The seat of arbitration shall be Cheyenne, Wyoming, United States. Proceedings and hearings may be conducted virtually, by videoconference, or by written submissions, save where the arbitrator determines that an in-person hearing is necessary.
Language. The arbitration shall be conducted in the English language.
Judgment. Judgment on the award rendered by the arbitrator may be entered in any court having competent jurisdiction.
EACH PARTY WAIVES THE RIGHT TO A TRIAL BY JURY AND THE RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS, COLLECTIVE, OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION. THE ARBITRATOR MAY AWARD RELIEF ONLY ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS.
Notwithstanding the above, either party may seek injunctive or equitable relief in any court of competent jurisdiction to protect its intellectual property, confidential information, or the integrity of the seal and revocation list, without first proceeding to arbitration.
19.1 Escalation before filing. Before commencing proceedings, the parties shall attempt good-faith resolution through senior representatives for thirty (30) days from written notice of the dispute. This does not apply where a party seeks urgent injunctive relief or where a limitation period is about to expire.
19.2 Examination disputes go to A.11 first. A dispute concerning a verdict, measurement, classification, or report statement must be taken through the two-level appeals process in A.11 before any proceeding under this section. This section governs commercial disputes; A.11 governs technical ones.
19.3 Limitation period. counsel Consider a contractual limitation period — commonly one or two years from the date the claim accrued.
These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or the use of the Website (including non-contractual disputes), are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Wyoming, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law principles. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.
counsel Where a client is established in the EEA or UK, mandatory local consumer, data-protection, and — depending on scope — AI-regulatory provisions may apply regardless of this clause. To be assessed before publication.
The Company may revise these Terms at any time by posting an updated version on this page with a revised effective date. Your continued use of the Website after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.
new For clients under an executed engagement, material adverse changes take effect on the later of thirty (30) days' notice or the start of the next engagement, and do not apply retroactively to work already commissioned.
A change to these Terms does not alter the terms under which any already-sealed examination was performed. Every sealed report remains governed by the Terms and the doctrine version in force at the time of its sealing, both of which are recorded in the report.
The following survive termination or expiration of these Terms, for any reason: section 5 (Intellectual Property), section 8 (Feedback), section 9 (Publicity), section 10 (Export Controls), section 11 (Disclaimer of Warranties), section 12 (Limitation of Liability), section 13 (Indemnification), section 14.6 (Seals unaffected by termination), sections 17–20 and 22–23, and Schedule A sections A.1, A.2, A.3, A.7, A.8, A.9, A.12, and A.14, and Schedule B in its entirety.
The perpetual-verification undertaking in A.9 and the retention necessary to honour it in A.12 survive indefinitely and are not subject to any deletion, termination, or return-of-information obligation elsewhere in these Terms.
If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, it shall be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or if it cannot be, severed, and the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect.
new No failure or delay by either party in exercising any right constitutes a waiver of that right, and no single or partial exercise precludes any further exercise. A waiver is effective only if in writing and signed by the waiving party.
These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, Schedule A, Schedule B, and any executed engagement agreement, constitute the entire agreement between you and the Company regarding the subject matter, and supersede all prior understandings. In the event of conflict, the order of precedence is: (1) executed engagement agreement; (2) Schedule A; (3) Schedule B; (4) these Terms; (5) Privacy Policy.
Questions regarding these Terms may be directed to the Company via the contact details published on the main page.
Each examination commissioned through the Company's ATBAE intake process produces a single sealed Assurance Examination Report. The report is a cryptographically sealed evidence artifact: it records exactly what the commissioned Test Battery measured, under which frozen methodology and environment, against which registered endpoint, at which point in time. It is not a verdict on the model, the developer, or the operator; it is not professional advice; and it does not certify, endorse, or condemn any product or party.
A.2.1 Fees vest at execution. Examination fees vest in full upon execution of the commissioned Test Battery against the client's registered endpoint. Because computation is expended at execution and the resulting artifact cannot be un-produced, examination fees are non-refundable once execution has occurred. Disputes concerning reported results are handled exclusively through the Company's published appeals and re-examination process, not through refund.
An adverse finding is the instrument working as intended and is not a defect in the service. Where a dispute establishes an apparatus defect — a fault in the classifier or harness, as distinct from subject behaviour — the Company will re-examine at no charge under A.11, which is the client's remedy in place of refund.
A.2.2 Payment terms. Standard engagements: prepayment in full is required for Battery I examinations and all initial client engagements. Large and extended engagements: for Battery II and Battery III engagements, a fifty percent (50%) non-refundable deposit is due upon execution of the scoping agreement, with the remaining fifty percent (50%) balance due prior to test battery execution and issuance of the sealed report. Established accounts: subsequent examinations for recurring enterprise clients may be invoiced on net thirty (30) day terms upon credit approval. Annual prepayment: an annual prepayment discount of fifteen percent (15%) is available for scheduled quarterly assurance subscriptions.
A.2.3 Late payment. Overdue amounts accrue interest at the rate of 1.5% per month (or the maximum rate permitted by applicable law, whichever is less) from the due date until paid in full. The Company reserves the right to suspend pending examinations and to withhold delivery of new work or new seals while any undisputed balance remains past due. counsel The right to withhold applies to delivery of new work — never to a report already issued, and never to the verification checkpoint's response about an existing seal, particularly where a regulator is entitled to it.
A.2.4 Taxes. Fees are exclusive of all taxes. The client is responsible for all sales, use, value-added, goods-and-services, and similar taxes, excluding taxes on the Company's net income. Where the client is required to withhold tax, the amount payable shall be grossed up so that the Company receives the amount it would have received absent the withholding. The client shall provide official receipts for withheld amounts.
A.2.5 Infrastructure pass-through. Charges under A.6 for Company-hosted capacity are estimated at scoping and invoiced at actual cost. They are not capped by the examination fee.
A.2.6 Point of payment and scoping. Submission of an intake brief through the Website constitutes an inquiry and scoping request, not an automatic payment charge. The Company evaluates the technical specification and issues a formal fixed-fee quote and engagement agreement. Examination fees become payable upon execution of that agreement, prior to probe execution.
A.2.7 Re-examination and re-run pricing. new No refunds are offered, per A.2.1. A re-examination of the same subject is offered at ten percent (10%) off list, used within sixty (60) days of the parent report. Where a report concludes INSUFFICIENT_EVIDENCE and the client redesigns and re-runs the same subject model, the second run is offered at twenty percent (20%) off list and the third at ten percent (10%) off list, each used within ninety (90) days of issuance of the INSUFFICIENT_EVIDENCE report. Where more than one reduction could apply, the more favourable to the client governs. An apparatus defect established under A.11 is remedied by re-examination at no charge, which is not a discount and takes precedence over this paragraph.
The Company operates a verification checkpoint at which any party may confirm the authenticity of a seal at no charge. Verification is free permanently and is never metered. Two levels of disclosure apply.
Standard disclosure — free, for general requestors. Every request requires the requestor to declare their identity and the principal on whose behalf they act; verification is free but is not anonymous, and requests that do not identify the requestor are not answered. The requestor submits the seal and receives confirmation of authenticity, the examination date, and the model or endpoint identifier recorded at firing. No results, grades, or findings are disclosed at this level. Every verification is additionally checked against the Company's signed, append-only revocation and supersession list; a cryptographically genuine seal on a revoked or superseded report is reported as revoked or superseded, never as clean.
Regulatory disclosure — available at no charge to verified regulatory agencies and government bodies only. Verification requires a written request on official letterhead, an official-domain email address, and independent confirmation of the requestor's identity and authority (which may include switchboard or human-resources verification through the agency's published channels). Regulatory disclosure may include the commissioning party and the examination outcome. No fixed turnaround time is promised for regulatory-disclosure requests; each request is verified individually.
Tampering with seals, or the deliberate submission of altered or fabricated seals to the verification checkpoint, is prohibited and may be reported to the relevant authorities. Falsely claiming regulatory or governmental status in order to obtain extended disclosure is likewise prohibited and may be reported.
A.3.1 Use of the verification checkpoint by any party who is not a client is additionally governed by Schedule B, which every requestor must accept before a result is returned.
new A.3.2 What the seal is; what it proves. Every examination concludes with a sealed report: an immutable artifact bundle whose contents are cryptographically fingerprinted (SHA-256) and catalogued in a signed manifest. Alter a single byte of any constituent file, and the cryptographic verification fails. Each manifest carries two independent signatures issued by the Company's signing station — classical Ed25519 and post-quantum ML-DSA-65 (the U.S. federal FIPS 204 standard). For manifests sealed under the hybrid policy, both signatures are required together, as defense against cryptographic downgrade attacks: omitting, stripping, or invalidating either signature causes verification to fail outright, and a sealed record that declares two signatures can never be silently accepted as classical-only. The manifest is independently time-stamped by an RFC 3161 Trusted Timestamp Authority: the chronological baseline cannot be backdated or postdated, even by the Company. Specimen and demonstration reports are signed under a distinct, segregated demonstration identity, so a sample artifact can never be passed off as a live examination. Manifests sealed before 31 August 2026 carry the classical signature only and verify as such, honestly labeled. The seal proves complete provenance and structural integrity — these exact bytes are what the examination produced, attested by the Company's keys, at the stated timestamp. The seal does not act as an endorsement, a warranty, or a guarantee of future model behaviour: signatures attest the integrity of the record; the empirical evidence speaks for itself. The public signing-key fingerprints are published on the verification page and in the transmittal cover note; confirm them through a second channel before trusting any signature.
new A.3.3 Witnessed examination; pre-registration commitment. Before the first evaluation probe fires against a subject model, the complete protocol, seed derivation, and trial schedule are hashed into an opening manifest, hybrid-signed (classical Ed25519 + post-quantum ML-DSA-65) by the Company's signing station, and independently time-stamped by an RFC 3161 Trusted Timestamp Authority. This dual-signed, time-stamped opening commitment is delivered to the commissioning client prior to compute initialization, and the closing seal binds directly to the pre-registered opening anchor. The client thereby holds mathematical proof that its examination was not restarted, modified, re-seeded, or cherry-picked — within the confidentiality of the engagement, without public exposure of the client's audit cadence or testing schedule.
Unless the commissioning client elects otherwise at onboarding, all verification activity concerning its seals remains protected: the Company does not disclose to the client the identity of standard-disclosure requestors, and discloses regulatory-disclosure requests only where lawful. The Company will not notify the client of a verification request where the requesting authority has lawfully directed the Company not to do so.
Where an engagement provides for adjudication, the adjudicating panel (whether a standing blinded panel or an attestation-grade institution) is independent of the Company, acts under blinding, and is selected and retained at the client's discretion. Panel fees are set and charged by the panel institution itself and are separate from the Company's examination fees. The Company does not direct panel findings, and panel participation does not convert the report into a verdict on any party.
An examination is performed under one of the access routes elected by the client at commissioning:
An installed Runner executing inside client infrastructure (routes A6–A7) is in active development and is not offered at launch; it will be introduced under its own usage terms for institutions of every type and size.
Route B is never a condition of being examined and the Company will not require it. It exists for models that have no servable endpoint or are unreleased. All routes produce a report under identical gates and methodology.
The client warrants that it holds all rights necessary to supply any weights or materials under Route B, and that supplying them to the Company breaches no third-party licence, contract, or law. The client indemnifies the Company against claims arising from a breach of that warranty.
The Company acquires no rights in supplied weights beyond the limited licence necessary to perform the commissioned examination. Supplied weights are not used to train any system, are not evaluated for any other party, are not retained beyond attested destruction, and are not disclosed to any third party except an adjudication panel bound by the engagement's confidentiality terms.
Route B is priced separately from the examination fee and reflects actual infrastructure cost. Infrastructure charges are estimated at scoping and passed through; they scale with model size and examination depth and are not capped by the examination fee.
A.6.1 Access method determines evidence grade. The access route elected determines the maximum evidence grade attainable, and that ceiling is a property of the method, not of the subject's performance. Where the elected route cannot produce weight-digest provenance, the examination is capped at evidence grade E1 and cannot satisfy the provenance condition of the publication gate at D-8. The client shall be informed of the applicable ceiling in writing before commissioning, and the ceiling is recorded in the report.
The client may publish its own sealed report in full and unaltered, including its stated conditions, scope, verdict, and annexes. The Company encourages this; the report is the client's evidence.
The client may not: publish extracts, scores, grades, or summaries detached from the conditions stated on the report; present a descriptive score as a letter grade; represent a non-certifying verdict as a pass, certification, endorsement, approval, or statement of legal compliance; or apply the seal or marks to any artifact the Company did not seal.
The Company may publish aggregate and de-identified statistics derived from examinations, provided no individual subject or commissioning party is identifiable. The Company will not identify a commissioning client or its subject model in any public material without the client's prior written consent.
Right of reply. Where the Company proposes to publish, or to disclose beyond the commissioning party, any examination result in which the subject of the examination is identified, it will first provide that subject with the report and a stated period of not less than fourteen (14) days in which to respond, and will publish the subject's response alongside the result or record that a response was declined. This applies whether or not the subject commissioned the examination, and whether the result is adverse, favourable, or neutral.
Two limits define its edges. The obligation is owed to the subject examined, not to every entity named incidentally in a report — an infrastructure provider, a framework body, or a cited authority acquires no right of reply by being mentioned. And it binds the Company's own publication only: a client publishing its own sealed report in full and unaltered, as the first paragraph of this section permits, owes no notice to itself and none is implied.
No named-subject publication may proceed at all unless the publication gate at D-8 of the governing doctrine is open. Right of reply is the fourth of that gate's four conditions; the other three — verified provenance, certifying-grade depth, and established classifier sensitivity — are machine-decidable and are recorded in the report itself. A report whose gate is held is not publishable with its subject named, in any direction, by any party, irrespective of consent.
new A.7.1 Advance notice of intended publication. The Company shall inform a client in advance of the categories of information it intends to place in the public domain in connection with that client's examination.
Verdicts are drawn from a fixed taxonomy of nine states: CERTIFIED_PASS, MONITORED_CONFORMANCE, DETECTED_STREAM_ONLY, INSUFFICIENT_EVIDENCE, INSUFFICIENT_EVIDENCE_CLASSIFIER_SENSITIVITY, BLOCK, INCOMPLETE, VOID, and INVALID. Only CERTIFIED_PASS and MONITORED_CONFORMANCE are certifying outcomes. VOID and INVALID are distinct: VOID is the tampering class, and an integrity failure carries no grade, no score, and no descriptive section.
A non-certifying verdict carries no letter grade. Any score accompanying a non-certifying verdict is descriptive only, is presented in a separately labelled section, and is excluded from the sealed verdict and from the verdict hash. Representing such a score as a grade or as a pass is a misuse of the deliverable under A.7.
MONITORED_CONFORMANCE denotes a conformance state sustained by ongoing monitoring, not a static approval. The seal remains valid only while the monitoring obligations recorded in the report continue to be met.
No report constitutes an endorsement, an approval, a warranty of fitness for any purpose, or a statement that any subject complies with any law, regulation, or standard. Every verdict is version-stamped to the doctrine under which it was issued.
The Company maintains a signed, append-only revocation and supersession list which forms part of every verification. The Company may revoke or supersede a seal where: the attestation contained a material misrepresentation; the configuration examined was not the configuration attested; a defect in the apparatus is subsequently established; a report is amended under A.11; or the client has misused the deliverable under A.7.
Revocation is not a refund event and does not of itself give rise to a claim. Where revocation follows an established apparatus defect, the Company will re-examine at no charge.
Seals already issued remain verifiable in perpetuity, irrespective of licence status, maintenance status, or the termination of any engagement. The Company retains the manifests and hashes necessary to honour that undertaking indefinitely.
new A.9.1 Procedure. Before revoking a seal on grounds other than client request or apparatus defect, the Company shall give the affected party written notice of the grounds and a period of not less than ten (10) business days to respond, save where immediate revocation is necessary to prevent ongoing reliance on materially false information. A revocation decision is subject to appeal under A.11.
Examiners and adjudicators hold no equity interest, revenue share, or employment relationship with the vendor of a subject under examination. Any conflict is disclosed in the signed examination manifest. Advisory and adjudication panels are retained by the client and never by the Company, and are presented to the client as options with published bios, frameworks, and fee bands.
The Company does not offer remediation consulting on a model it has examined where doing so would place it in the position of grading its own work, save where the client is informed of the conflict in writing and elects to proceed.
new A.10.1 Ongoing impartiality assessment. The Company maintains a documented process for identifying, analysing, and mitigating risks to impartiality arising from its relationships, its ownership, its personnel, and its commercial activities, and reviews that assessment at least annually. Where a risk to impartiality cannot be mitigated, the Company shall decline the engagement.
A subject may dispute any verdict, measurement, classification, or report statement. The process has two levels, and nobody who decides the first level decides the second.
Where a report is amended, the amendment propagates to every party who received the original, accompanied by a signed amendment manifest.
Transitional disclosure on external panels. Until a standing external-reviewer arrangement is executed, Level 2 is provided through a per-engagement external reviewer and not a standing institutional panel. The Company does not represent institutional depth it does not have.
The appeals process adjudicates whether the apparatus measured and classified correctly. It does not re-litigate published thresholds, which follow the threshold registry's own versioning and do not change retroactively unless that registry so provides. The subject always has the right to respond before a report is shared beyond the commissioning party.
new A.11.1 Impartial handling. No person who participated in the examination under dispute, or in the Level 1 decision, may decide the Level 2 review. Submitting an appeal shall not result in any discriminatory action against the appellant. The Company shall acknowledge receipt of an appeal, keep the appellant informed of progress, and give formal written notice of the outcome.
Evidence supporting an examination is sealed in an access-controlled bundle. Transcripts containing dangerous content are excerpted in the report and retained in the bundle rather than published. Evidence access in a dispute is provided under confidentiality.
Client confidential information, including endpoint credentials, is handled under the engagement's non-disclosure terms. Credentials are exchanged only after scoping and are never transmitted through the Website.
The Company retains examination manifests, hashes, and the revocation list indefinitely, because the undertaking in A.9 that seals remain verifiable in perpetuity cannot otherwise be honoured. Retention of the underlying evidence bundle is as stated in the engagement agreement.
new A.12.1 Information from third parties. Information about a client obtained from a source other than the client — including from a complainant, a regulator, or a verification requestor — is treated as confidential between the Company and the client, save where disclosure is required by law or by these Terms. Where the Company is required by law to disclose client confidential information, it shall notify the client of the disclosure unless prohibited from doing so.
new A.12.2 Compelled disclosure. Where the Company receives a subpoena, court order, or lawful regulatory demand for client confidential information or evidence, it shall, unless legally prohibited, give the client prompt notice sufficient to allow the client to seek a protective order, and shall disclose only the minimum required.
Where the Company licenses an installed Runner, the licence is a perpetual right to run the version supplied. Battery Maintenance, where subscribed, provides updates to battery content, framework mappings, and test vectors.
If Battery Maintenance lapses, the licensed software continues to run indefinitely on the battery content held at lapse, but the issue of new seals ceases. This is a condition of the seal's meaning rather than a commercial lever: a seal asserts that the examination was current against the state of the art at the time of issue, and the Company will not issue one from a stale battery.
Seals issued while maintenance was current remain valid and verifiable in perpetuity, unconditionally, per A.9.
A.14.1 Report addressed to the commissioning party. Each report is prepared solely for the commissioning party, for the purpose stated in the engagement, and on the basis of the conditions recorded on its face. It is not prepared for, and does not take into account the circumstances or requirements of, any other person.
A.14.2 No assumption of responsibility to others. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Company does not accept or assume any duty, responsibility, or liability to any person other than the commissioning party in respect of an examination, a report, a seal, a verification response, or the opinions and measurements they contain. Any person other than the commissioning party who obtains access to a report or a verification response does so at their own risk, and may not rely on it for any purpose.
A.14.3 Notice on the face of the report. A non-reliance notice in substantially the form of A.14.2 shall appear prominently on every report, and shall be displayed to and accepted by every verification requestor before a verification result is returned.
A.14.4 Reliance by agreement. Where a third party wishes to rely on a report, the Company may, at its sole discretion, enter a separate written reliance agreement with that party on terms including scope, an agreed liability cap, and a fee. Absent such an agreement, no reliance is permitted and none is assumed.
counsel Three points: whether A.14 should require the client to notify recipients of the non-reliance terms before sharing a report; whether a paid reliance-agreement product (A.14.4) is commercially attractive; and whether A.14 is consistent with the regulatory-disclosure posture in A.3.
The Company shall maintain Professional Indemnity (Errors & Omissions) and Cyber Liability insurance with a coverage limit of not less than USD 1,000,000 per claim (USD 2,000,000 aggregate) with an established commercial insurer, and shall provide a Certificate of Insurance (COI) to the client upon reasonable written request.
counsel Where a Reliance Agreement under A.14.4 has been executed, the liability cap should track actual proceeds available under this policy up to the stated limit — see section 12. Counsel to confirm the policy is bound before this section publishes.
This schedule exists because the verification checkpoint is used by parties who are neither Website users nor clients. Acceptance of Schedule B is a condition of receiving a verification result.
B.1 Application. These terms apply to any person who submits a seal to the verification checkpoint ("Requestor"). Acceptance of Schedule B is a condition of receiving any verification response. A Requestor who does not accept is not provided a result.
B.2 Identification. Verification is free and is not anonymous. The Requestor shall declare their identity, the capacity in which they act, and the principal on whose behalf they act, and warrants that those declarations are true. A request that does not identify the Requestor is not answered.
B.3 What a verification response is. A standard-disclosure response confirms only: whether the submitted seal is cryptographically authentic; the examination date; the model or endpoint identifier recorded at firing; and whether the seal appears on the revocation and supersession list. It discloses no results, grades, scores, findings, or opinions.
B.4 What a verification response is not. A verification response is not: a certification; an endorsement, approval, or recommendation of any model, product, developer, or operator; a statement that a subject is safe, fit for any purpose, or compliant with any law, regulation, or standard; a warranty of any kind; or a current statement about a subject's behaviour at any time after the examination date. Authenticity of a seal means the artifact is genuine and unaltered. It says nothing whatsoever about whether the examination it records produced a favourable outcome. A seal on a report recording a non-certifying verdict is an authentic seal.
B.5 Non-reliance. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Company does not accept or assume any duty, responsibility, or liability to the Requestor or to any person on whose behalf the Requestor acts, arising from a verification response or from any use made of it. The Requestor may not rely on a verification response for any purpose, and acts at their own risk. Where reliance is intended, the Requestor must seek a reliance agreement under A.14.4.
B.6 Prohibited conduct. The Requestor shall not: submit an altered or fabricated seal; falsely claim regulatory or governmental status; submit requests by automated means or at volume; or use the checkpoint to compile a register of examined subjects. Such conduct is logged with the identifying details supplied and may be referred to the relevant authorities.
B.7 Record of request. A record of each request and of the disclosure made is appended to the examination's record and retained for as long as that record is retained. This is described in the Privacy Policy.
B.8 Governing law. Schedule B is governed by the law and dispute-resolution provisions in sections 19 and 20.
counsel For B.5 to be effective it must be displayed and affirmatively accepted before the result is shown — not linked in a footer. A checkbox with the substance of B.4 and B.5 visible on screen, logged with a timestamp against the request record, is the implementable form — a build requirement on the verification page, not only a drafting one.