Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a binding agreement between you and TransNova ("TransNova", "we", "us", "our") and govern your access to and use of the TransNova platform, including its websites, applications, APIs and related services (collectively, the "Service"). By creating an account, signing in, or otherwise using the Service, you confirm that you have read, understood and agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference. If you don't agree, don't use the Service.

1. Eligibility, accounts and authority

1.1 Age and capacity

You may use the Service only if you are at least 18 years old (or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, whichever is higher) and able to form a legally binding contract. If you are accepting on behalf of a company, agency, firm or other entity, you represent that you have authority to bind that entity, and "you" in these Terms refers to that entity.

1.2 Account registration

You must provide accurate, current and complete information when creating an account, and keep it up to date. You are responsible for all activity that happens under your account, including activity by anyone you authorise (such as administrators, team members, editors or reviewers operating under your organisation).

1.3 Account security

You are responsible for safeguarding your credentials. We may require you to use multi-factor authentication or a passwordless sign-in method, and we may suspend or terminate access on suspicion of compromise. Notify us immediately at security@transnova.io if you suspect unauthorised access. We are not liable for losses arising from your failure to keep credentials secret.

1.4 Role types and permissions

The Service supports several distinct user roles (owners, administrators, clients, editors, reviewers, and operational staff). Each role carries different permissions and obligations. The role assigned to you determines what you can see and do; attempting to access features or data outside your role is a breach of these Terms.

1.5 One person, one account

Each individual must use a unique account. Sharing credentials, letting multiple people sign in to one account, or creating accounts under false identities is prohibited.

2. The service

TransNova is a transcription-management platform. Depending on the role you hold, the Service may allow you to upload audio or video recordings, commission transcripts, manage a network of editors and reviewers, enforce client-specific style guides, track delivery and billing, communicate within your team, and use AI assistance for editing, lookup and analytics.

2.1 Description, not commitment

We are continually improving the Service. Features may be added, modified or removed without notice. Beta or preview features carry a stronger disclaimer and may be discontinued at any time. We do not commit to any specific feature, integration or uptime level unless we explicitly say so in a signed written agreement.

2.2 Quality and verification

Output produced by the Service — automatic transcripts, AI-assisted summaries, AI chat answers, formatting suggestions — is best-effort and may contain errors, missing passages or mischaracterisations. You are responsible for reviewing and verifying all output before relying on it for legal, financial, medical, or any other consequential purpose. Where the Service produces a transcript intended for legal use, a qualified human reviewer should sign off on accuracy. We do not warrant the completeness or accuracy of any output.

2.3 Third-party content and integrations

The Service may interoperate with third-party services (for example, sign-in identity providers, cloud storage, payment processors or AI processing providers). Those services are governed by their own terms; we are not responsible for them. When you connect a third-party service, you authorise us to exchange the information necessary to operate the integration.

3. Your content

3.1 Ownership stays with you

You retain all right, title and interest in and to the audio, video, transcripts, glossaries, style guides, sample documents, comments and other material you upload, create or generate through the Service ("Your Content"). Output produced collaboratively (e.g. AI-assisted transcripts you then edit) follows the same rule: it's yours.

3.2 Licence to operate the service

So that we can actually run the Service for you, you grant TransNova a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable and sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, modify (only as necessary for processing, e.g. transcoding audio formats), distribute and display Your Content, solely for the purpose of providing, securing and improving the Service to you and your authorised users. This licence ends when you delete Your Content from the Service or when your account is closed, except as needed for the technical operations described in Section 11 (backups).

3.3 Feedback

If you give us feedback, suggestions, ideas or other input about the Service, we may use it without restriction or compensation, and you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide licence to do so. We are not obligated to act on or credit your feedback.

3.4 Confidentiality

We treat Your Content as confidential. Access within TransNova is limited to personnel and contractors who need it to operate the Service and who are bound by written confidentiality obligations. We will not disclose Your Content except as permitted in these Terms or the Privacy Policy, or as required by law (see Section 10.4).

4. Recordings, consent and lawful use

Transcription often involves recordings of conversations, interviews, depositions, hearings, meetings and other interactions. You make the following representations every time you upload content:

• Lawful capture. The recording was made in compliance with all applicable laws, including any one-party or all-party consent statutes, wiretap acts, professional rules, court orders and workplace policies.
• Authority to share. You have the right to share the recording with us and to instruct us to process it (including via human editors and AI providers).
• No prohibited material. The recording does not contain child sexual abuse material, content that incites violence, malware, or other material whose mere possession would be unlawful where the Service operates.
• Special-category data. If the recording contains sensitive personal data (e.g. health information, biometric identifiers, criminal records, attorney-client privileged content, information about minors), you have obtained any consents and observed any safeguards required for sharing that data.

You are solely responsible for your compliance with these obligations. We may, but are not obligated to, refuse to process or remove content that we reasonably believe violates this Section.

5. AI-assisted features

The Service uses artificial intelligence to perform tasks such as automatic transcription, summary generation, glossary suggestions, chat-style assistance and style-guide enforcement. AI features are subject to additional terms:

• Best-effort. AI output may be inaccurate, incomplete, biased or otherwise unsuitable. Always review before relying on it. Do not use AI output as a sole basis for material, legal, medical or financial decisions.
• Processing. Generating AI output requires sending your input to one or more AI processing providers. We select providers based on their contractual commitments to confidentiality and security, and we do not authorise any provider to use Your Content to train its models.
• No regulated advice. The AI assistant is not a lawyer, accountant, doctor, court reporter or financial adviser. Use it for productivity, not for professional advice.
• Scope. The AI assistant is scoped to topics relevant to your task in the Service. It is instructed to decline off-topic, unsafe or out-of-scope requests. Refusals are normal and intended.
• Generated content. Output the AI returns is treated as Your Content for ownership purposes, subject to the limits described above and to any third-party intellectual-property rights in the underlying inputs.

6. Acceptable use

You agree that you will not, and will not allow anyone to:

• use the Service to violate any law, regulation, court order or third-party right (including intellectual-property, privacy, publicity, contract and confidentiality rights);
• upload, generate, transmit or store material that is unlawful, defamatory, fraudulent, deceptive, harassing, threatening, hateful, or that exploits minors;
• upload material containing viruses, ransomware, worms, time-bombs, trojans, or other harmful code;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service, other accounts, systems, networks or data, including by scraping, scanning, fuzzing, credential stuffing or evading rate limits;
• reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code or underlying algorithms, except to the extent this restriction is prohibited by applicable law;
• use the Service to build a competing product or to train any machine-learning model;
• sell, resell, license, sublicense, distribute, lease or commercially exploit the Service or any part of it without our prior written consent;
• send unsolicited marketing communications, spam, or chain messages through the Service;
• interfere with or disrupt the Service or the servers or networks that operate it, or with any user's enjoyment of it;
• misrepresent your identity or your affiliation with any person or organisation;
• circumvent role-based access controls, billing limits, audit logs, content filters, or any other technical or administrative safeguard;
• use the AI features to produce content that violates these Terms, including content designed to mislead third parties, defame individuals, generate phishing or social-engineering material, or facilitate any other prohibited activity;
• transcribe or upload recordings of children for any purpose other than a lawful, consented one (e.g. parental upload of an educational interview).

A breach of this Section is a material breach of these Terms. We may take action including warning, throttling, suspending, terminating or referring matters to law enforcement.

7. Workers, contractors and reviewers

If you participate in the Service as an editor, reviewer or other operational worker — whether engaged by us or by another client of the Service — the following additional terms apply:

• Independent contractor. Unless we have a separate signed employment contract, you are an independent contractor, not an employee, agent or partner. You are responsible for your own taxes, benefits and insurances.
• Confidentiality. Every recording, transcript, style guide, glossary, sample and communication you access through the Service is confidential. You may not disclose it to anyone outside the workflow, retain copies after the work is complete, or use it for any purpose other than the commissioned work.
• Quality standards. You will follow the applicable client's style guide and produce work that satisfies the documented quality bar. Repeated rework, late delivery, or breach of confidentiality may end your access.
• Anonymity. Where the Service exposes anonymous identifiers to cross-role counterparts (e.g. an editor sees a reviewer by an anonymous handle), you will not attempt to deanonymise the other party.
• Compensation. Your pay is calculated using the rates and rules visible in your dashboard. We may adjust future rates with notice; we will not retroactively change the pay for work already completed.

8. Fees, billing and taxes

8.1 Pricing

Pricing is set per client based on volume, complexity and delivery commitments, and is shown in your account or in a separate order form. Where pricing is not displayed publicly, you will receive a quote before being charged.

8.2 Payment

You authorise us (or our payment processor) to charge the payment method on file for amounts due, including recurring subscription fees and per-page transcription fees, plus applicable taxes. If a charge fails, we may retry and may suspend the Service until payment is resolved.

8.3 Late payment

Past-due invoices accrue interest at the lower of 1.5% per month or the maximum rate permitted by law. We may suspend new work until your account is current.

8.4 Taxes

Fees are exclusive of taxes (VAT, sales tax, withholding, import duties, etc.). You are responsible for those, except taxes based on our net income.

8.5 Refunds

Fees for completed work are non-refundable except where required by law or expressly stated in an order form. If we credit your account, the credit applies to future invoices and is not redeemable for cash.

8.6 Worker payouts

Payouts to editors, reviewers and other contractor workers are scheduled per the cycle in your account. Payouts settle only for approved work and may be withheld where there is a credible dispute, suspected fraud, or compliance hold.

9. Suspension and termination

9.1 Your right to close your account

You may close your account at any time by following the instructions in your dashboard or by emailing support@transnova.io. Closing your account does not relieve you of any unpaid fees.

9.2 Our right to suspend or terminate

We may suspend or terminate your access (in whole or in part) at any time, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe:

• you breached these Terms or the Acceptable Use Section;
• your use threatens the security, integrity or availability of the Service or another user's account;
• we are required to do so by law, regulator, court order or valid governmental request;
• continuing to provide the Service to you would expose us to material legal, regulatory or commercial risk; or
• you have remained inactive for an extended period (we will give reasonable notice before any inactivity-based closure).

9.3 Effect of termination

On termination, your right to access the Service ends immediately. We will provide a reasonable export window of at least thirty (30) days from termination during which you can retrieve Your Content, unless we are legally prohibited from doing so. After the export window, we may delete or anonymise Your Content, subject to retention required for legal, accounting and security purposes.

10. Intellectual property

10.1 Our IP

The Service, including all software, designs, user interfaces, documentation, trademarks, logos and trade dress, is owned by us or our licensors and protected by intellectual-property laws. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to access and use the Service in accordance with these Terms. No other rights are granted.

10.2 Trademarks

"TransNova", the TransNova logo and any other names, slogans and identifiers we use in connection with the Service are our trademarks. You may not use them without our prior written permission, except for nominative fair use to refer to the Service.

10.3 Copyright complaints

If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice with the information required by the applicable copyright law (in the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to copyright@transnova.io. Repeat infringers' accounts may be terminated. You may submit a counter-notice if you believe your content was removed in error.

10.4 Government, legal and law-enforcement requests

We may access, preserve and disclose Your Content if required by law, court order, valid subpoena or other lawful process, or if necessary to enforce these Terms, protect the rights, property or safety of TransNova, our users, or the public. Where permitted, we will notify you in advance and give you a reasonable opportunity to object.

11. Backups, data retention and exports

We maintain backups of Your Content for service continuity and disaster recovery. Backups are rotated and overwritten over time; deleted content may persist in backups for a limited period (typically up to ninety (90) days) before being purged. You can export Your Content at any time using the tools in your dashboard, and we will not unreasonably withhold export assistance.

12. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied. We expressly disclaim all warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, completeness, system integration, quiet enjoyment, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, that any output will be accurate, that defects will be corrected, or that the Service or the systems that operate it are free of viruses or other harmful components. Some jurisdictions do not allow the disclaimer of implied warranties; in those jurisdictions some of the above disclaimers may not apply to you.

13. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, in no event will TransNova, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, contractors, agents, suppliers or licensors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, including damages for lost profits, lost revenue, lost business opportunity, lost goodwill, work stoppage, loss of data, loss of use, or cost of substitute services, arising out of or related to the Service or these Terms, whether based in contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability or any other legal theory, and whether or not we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Our total cumulative liability arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts paid by you to us in the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to liability, or (b) one hundred United States dollars (US$100). The limits in this Section apply even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages; in those jurisdictions some of the above limitations may not apply to you.

14. Indemnification

You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless TransNova, its affiliates and their respective officers, directors, employees, contractors and agents from and against any third- party claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to: (a) Your Content; (b) your breach of these Terms or any representation you make in them; (c) your violation of any law or third-party right; or (d) your use of the Service in combination with any service, product or content not provided by us. We may, at our option, assume control of the defence and settlement of any claim subject to indemnification; you will cooperate as reasonably requested.

15. Force majeure

We are not liable for failures or delays caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, pandemics, war, terrorism, civil unrest, labour disputes, government action, regulatory changes, internet or power outages, denial-of-service attacks, or failures of third-party services on which the Service depends.

16. Dispute resolution

16.1 Informal resolution first

Before bringing a formal proceeding, you and we agree to try to resolve any dispute informally for at least sixty (60) days. Send a written notice describing the dispute to legal@transnova.io and we will respond.

16.2 Governing law

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or related to them or the Service are governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which TransNova is incorporated, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles, except where mandatory consumer- protection laws of your country of residence apply and override.

16.3 Venue

Unless you and we agree otherwise in writing, any dispute that is not resolved informally will be brought exclusively in the competent courts of the jurisdiction in which TransNova is incorporated, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

16.4 Class action waiver

To the maximum extent permitted by law, you and we each agree that disputes will be resolved on an individual basis and not as a class, consolidated or representative action. If this waiver is found unenforceable, the entirety of this Section 16 is null and disputes will proceed in court without the waiver.

16.5 Time limit

Any claim arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service must be filed within one (1) year after the claim accrued; otherwise it is permanently barred.

17. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If a change is material, we will notify you in-app and by email to the address on your account at least fourteen (14) days before it takes effect, where reasonably possible. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree to the updated Terms, stop using the Service and close your account before they take effect.

18. General

18.1 Entire agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any order form or written agreement we have signed with you, constitute the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service and supersede all prior agreements, understandings and communications.

18.2 Assignment

You may not assign or transfer these Terms or any rights or obligations under them without our prior written consent. We may assign or transfer these Terms, in whole or in part, without notice or consent, including in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, corporate restructuring or sale of all or substantially all of our assets.

18.3 Severability

If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect, and the unenforceable provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable while preserving its original intent.

18.4 No waiver

Our failure to enforce any right or provision will not be considered a waiver of that right or provision. Waivers must be in writing.

18.5 No third-party beneficiaries

Except as expressly stated, these Terms do not create any third-party beneficiary rights.

18.6 Notices

We may give notice to you by email to the address associated with your account, by in-app message, or by posting on our public site; you consent to receiving such notices electronically. You give notice to us by emailing legal@transnova.io.

18.7 Survival

Sections that by their nature should survive termination will survive — including ownership and licensing of Your Content (3), recordings and consent (4), AI disclaimers (5), intellectual property (10), backups and retention (11), disclaimers (12), limitation of liability (13), indemnification (14), dispute resolution (16), and this Section 18.

19. Region-specific notices

If you reside in a jurisdiction with mandatory consumer- protection statutes (for example, the European Union, United Kingdom, California, or any jurisdiction with similar laws), you retain all rights granted to you by those laws, and these Terms apply only to the extent they do not conflict with those rights. Nothing in these Terms is intended to limit your statutory rights as a consumer.

Questions about these Terms? Email legal@transnova.io or visit our contact page.