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Terms of Service

Version 1 · Last updated June 20, 2026

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your access to and use of Hermit (the “Service”), operated by Biomatica (“Biomatica”, “we”, “us”, or “our”). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Acceptable Use Policy below. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. These Terms include a binding arbitration agreement and a class action waiver (see “Binding arbitration & class action waiver”) that affect how disputes are resolved.

1. Acceptance & eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old (or the age of majority where you live) and able to form a binding contract to use the Service. If you use the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent that you are authorized to accept these Terms for that organization.

You also represent that you are not located in, under the control of, or a national or resident of any country or region subject to a U.S. government embargo or sanctions, and that you are not on any U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties. You agree to comply with all applicable export-control and sanctions laws in your use of the Service.

2. The service

Hermit helps designers evaluate their product designs against the Biomimicry Life’s Principles framework. You provide a design brief and related materials, and the Service produces evaluations, recommendations, and related outputs. The Service is provided on an ongoing basis and may change over time.

3. Accounts

You are responsible for the accuracy of your account information and for keeping your login credentials secure. You are responsible for all activity under your account. New accounts may require manual activation by an administrator before access is granted. Notify us promptly at support@biomatica.life if you suspect unauthorized use.

4. Fees, billing & renewals

The Service is currently offered free of charge. If we introduce paid plans, subscriptions, or enterprise accounts, the following apply to those paid features:

  • fees, billing cycles, and any applicable taxes will be disclosed to you at the point of purchase;
  • paid subscriptions may renew automatically for successive periods unless you cancel before the renewal date, and you authorize us (or our payment processor) to charge your payment method for each renewal;
  • except where required by law, all fees are non-refundable; and
  • we may change pricing prospectively and will give reasonable advance notice of changes that affect your subscription, with changes taking effect at your next renewal.

5. Your content & license

You retain full ownership of the content you upload or create in the Service — your design briefs, text, images, and other files (“Your Content”). We do not claim ownership of Your Content.

Outputs. The evaluations, recommendations, summaries, and reports the Service generates for you from Your Content (“Outputs”) are yours to use for your design and business purposes. As between you and Biomatica, you own the Outputs you generate, and to the extent any rights in them would otherwise belong to us, we grant you an exclusive, worldwide, perpetual license to use them. You are responsible for how you use Outputs. Because other users may submit similar inputs, the Service may generate the same or similar Outputs for others, and these Terms give you no rights in the Service’s underlying models, templates, or methodology (see “Our intellectual property”).

To run the Service for you, you grant Biomatica a limited, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to host, store, reproduce, modify (for example, to resize an image into a thumbnail), display, and process Your Content solely to operate and provide the Service to you. This license exists only so we can deliver the Service and ends when Your Content is deleted from the Service, except for residual copies retained for a limited period in routine backups.

We do not use Your Content to train artificial intelligence or machine-learning models. To generate evaluations, summaries, and similar features, Your Content is processed by trusted third-party AI service providers acting on our behalf. Their use is limited by contract to delivering these features for you — not to training their models — and any sublicense we grant them is limited to that purpose.

Confidentiality. We treat Your Content as confidential. Our staff access Your Content only as needed to operate, support, or secure the Service, or where required by law. We do not sell Your Content, and we do not share it except to provide the Service (including with the service providers described above) or as required by law. For more detail on how we handle your information, see our Privacy Policy.

6. Our intellectual property

The Service — including its software, underlying models and algorithms, the proprietary methodology we use to evaluate designs against the Life’s Principles framework, our evaluation rubrics and knowledge base, templates, user interface and design, and the “Hermit” and “Biomatica” names, logos, and branding — is owned by Biomatica or its licensors and is protected by intellectual property laws. Except for the rights expressly granted to you in these Terms, we reserve all right, title, and interest in and to the Service. You may not use our names, logos, or branding without our prior written permission.

7. AI outputs

The Service uses artificial intelligence to generate evaluations, recommendations, and other Outputs. AI systems are probabilistic: their Outputs may be inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, or biased, and may occasionally state things that sound plausible but are wrong. Outputs are provided for informational purposes only and are not professional, legal, engineering, or safety advice. You are solely responsible for reviewing, independently verifying, and applying your own professional judgment to any Output before relying on it or using it in real-world designs, products, or decisions.

8. Acceptable Use Policy

You agree not to upload, store, share, or otherwise submit any content that:

  • constitutes hate speech, harassment, bullying, or threats of violence;
  • is pornographic, obscene, or sexually explicit;
  • contains the personally identifiable information of others without authorization (including “doxxing”);
  • contains malware, viruses, or other harmful code, or constitutes spam;
  • infringes any third party’s intellectual property rights, including copyrights, trademarks, patents, or trade secrets; or
  • is otherwise unlawful, or violates these Terms or any applicable law.

You also agree not to:

  • reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to discover or extract the source code, models, or underlying algorithms of the Service, except to the extent this restriction is prohibited by applicable law;
  • use any robot, spider, crawler, scraper, or other automated means to access, harvest, or collect data or content from the Service;
  • use the Service or its outputs to develop, train, or improve any competing product, model, or machine-learning service;
  • use the Service in any manner that violates the terms or usage policies of the third-party AI providers that help power the Service, or that could jeopardize our access to them — including prompt injection, attempts to bypass their safety systems, or attempts to generate content those providers prohibit; or
  • attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service or its related systems, interfere with or disrupt its operation, or circumvent usage limits or security measures.

If you violate this Acceptable Use Policy, we may remove the offending content and suspend or terminate your account immediately, with or without notice.

9. Our role

Biomatica is a provider of an interactive computer service and is not the author or publisher of content provided by users. Users are solely responsible for the content they submit. We reserve the right, but assume no obligation, to monitor, review, moderate, or remove any content at our sole discretion. Consistent with Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act and similar laws, we are not liable for content created by users.

10. Copyright & DMCA notices

We respect intellectual property rights and respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a written notice to our designated agent:

Copyright / DMCA Agent — Biomatica
Email: support@biomatica.life

Your notice must include:

  • your physical or electronic signature;
  • identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed;
  • identification of the material claimed to be infringing and where it is located;
  • your contact information (address, telephone number, and email);
  • a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
  • a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner’s behalf.

We will remove or disable access to infringing material promptly upon receipt of a valid notice. If your material was removed and you believe this was a mistake, you may submit a counter-notification to the same address. We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers where appropriate.

11. Reporting content & notice-and-action

If you encounter content on the Service that you believe is illegal, infringing, or violates these Terms, please report it to support@biomatica.life. We review valid reports and take appropriate action, which may include removing content or suspending accounts. If we remove your content or restrict your account and you believe we did so in error, you may contact us at the same address to ask us to reconsider, and we will review your request.

12. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Biomatica and its affiliates, officers, employees, and agents from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees and costs) arising out of or related to: (a) Your Content; (b) your use or misuse of the Service; (c) your violation of these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy; or (d) your violation of any law or the rights of any third party, including intellectual property rights (for example, uploading material you do not have the right to use). We may assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter subject to indemnification by you, and you agree to cooperate with our defense of those claims.

13. Disclaimers & limitation of liability

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, to the fullest extent permitted by law. Evaluations and recommendations are informational and do not constitute professional, legal, or engineering advice. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Biomatica will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, arising out of or relating to your use of the Service.

14. Governing law & forum

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, without regard to its conflict-of-law principles. Subject to the arbitration provision below, you agree that any dispute not subject to arbitration will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Alachua County, Florida, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

15. Binding arbitration & class action waiver

Please read this section carefully — it affects your legal rights. Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service that cannot be resolved informally will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration, rather than in court, except that either party may bring a qualifying claim in small-claims court.

Class action waiver. You and Biomatica agree that each may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person’s claims. If this class action waiver is found unenforceable, then the entirety of this arbitration section will be null and void, but the rest of these Terms will remain in effect.

Opt-out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement within 30 days of first accepting these Terms by emailing support@biomatica.life with your name and a statement that you wish to opt out. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms.

16. Termination

You may stop using the Service at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access if you violate these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, or to protect the Service or other users. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including ownership, intellectual property, confidentiality, indemnification, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and dispute resolution) will survive.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the version and date above and may require you to re-accept the Terms before continuing to use the Service. Your continued use after an update means you accept the updated Terms.

18. Miscellaneous

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and Biomatica regarding the Service and supersede any prior or contemporaneous agreements, communications, or understandings, whether written or oral.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, that provision will be limited or eliminated to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.

Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent; we may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

Waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.

19. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Contact us at support@biomatica.life.