Verinode Vendor Portal Terms

Summary

• ·The portal is free, and nothing in it can be bought. No vendor pays for a listing, a placement, a score or a faster review. A vendor with a paid relationship with Verinode is listed as Not scored.
• ·What you submit must be true and current. You stand behind every answer, document and image, and you correct it when it changes.
• ·A statement is not a score. Your answers show on your profile as statements. They count toward a score only once the evidence our method asks for backs them.
• ·You license us to publish what you submit, including your logo, screenshots and videos, for as long as it is on your profile and in any result published while it was.
• ·You can reply to a published result. Your reply is published next to it.
• ·You never see a member’s data. You see what any visitor to your public profile sees, plus your own account.

1. Who These Terms Are For

These terms are between Verinode Inc. and the company a vendor account speaks for (the vendor, “you”). Each person who signs in for the vendor (a contact) accepts them, and the Terms of Use, for the vendor, and confirms they have the authority to do so.

2. Your Account

1. 1.One profile per vendor. A contact signs in with an email at the vendor’s own website domain, and uses two-step sign-in.
2. 2.The first verified contact is the vendor’s admin. The admin invites colleagues, sets who may edit, and removes anyone who leaves. You keep the list of contacts current.
3. 3.A disputed claim (two people claiming the same vendor, or a contact who has left) is settled by Verinode, and we may ask for proof that a person speaks for the vendor.
4. 4.Everything done in your account is logged, and you can see that log.

3. What You Submit

You may submit answers to the questions for your category, evidence that backs them, facts about your company and products, your logo, product screenshots, links to your videos, and replies to published results. Section 6 of the Terms of Use applies to all of it. In addition, for everything you submit, you confirm that:

1. 1.it is true, current and not misleading, and evidence is genuine and unaltered;
2. 2.you have the right to submit it, and publishing it will not infringe anyone’s rights or breach a confidentiality duty;
3. 3.it contains no one’s personal information except your own contacts’ names and titles where you choose to show them; and
4. 4.you will correct it when it stops being true, and you will not let evidence stand past its expiry.

4. What You Let Us Do With It

You give Verinode a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, copy, display, format and publish what you submit, on Verinode’s sites, in its products and in its research. That includes your name, logo and trademarks, used to identify you. The license lasts while the material is on your profile, and for good for any result already published while it was.

What you submit is never relicensed under the open license Verinode Research uses for its own publications. Others may quote a published result under that license, but your logo, screenshots, videos and documents stay under this license only.

We may decline, remove or edit for format anything submitted, and we are not obliged to publish it.

5. How a Submission Counts

• ·The published method decides. Each question names the evidence it needs. A statement without that evidence is shown as “Vendor states” and does not move a score.
• ·We check evidence. We may confirm a document with the body that issued it, and ask you for more.
• ·Evidence expires on the date its kind of evidence allows. The fact then goes back to a statement, and we tell you before it does.
• ·A score is a structured assessment under a published method, not a recommendation to buy.

6. Independence

1. 1.No payment, ever. Verinode takes no money from a vendor for anything in the portal, and nothing you do or offer changes a result except evidence under the method.
2. 2.A paid relationship means Not scored. If you, or anyone acting for you, has a current or recent employment, ownership or paid commercial relationship with Verinode or a member of its team, the vendor is listed as Not scored. The same applies while you are a partner of Verinode under a signed partner agreement. You tell us of any such relationship before your first submission, and of any change.
3. 3.No gifts or favors. You do not offer anything of value to anyone at Verinode or on its Vendor Assessment Panel. An offer is a breach of these terms.

7. Replies to a Published Result

• ·The published correction process applies. Factual errors, replies, peer-rating concerns, errors in AI-drafted text and method disputes are handled under the vendor correction process on our methodology site, with its clock, its second review and its public log. The portal is where you raise them and follow them.
• ·Before publication, you receive your entry when it is published for the first time or moves by more than the margin that process sets. That window is for factual errors.
• ·What changes a result: only new evidence under the method. A reply is published verbatim, up to the length that process sets, and does not move the score.
• ·What never changes a result: payment, advertising, membership, sponsorship, a threat of litigation, or a request to be left out.
• ·Before publication, your entry is confidential. You do not share it until we publish it.

8. What You Do Not Do

Section 5 of the Terms of Use applies. In addition, you do not:

• ·submit false, forged or altered evidence, or claim to speak for a vendor you do not;
• ·use the portal to market to members, collect their information, or try to identify them;
• ·access another vendor’s account; or
• ·use the Verinode name or mark in marketing except as the correction process’s reuse rules allow: with the reading’s date and a link to your profile, no altered graphics, and no claim of “#1”, “best”, “winner” or “endorsed by Verinode”.

9. When These Terms Are Broken

Verinode may hide submissions, mark a profile “Under review”, suspend or close the account, and publish that a submission was withdrawn for failing verification. Submitting forged evidence ends access to the portal.

10. Leaving

The admin can close the vendor’s account at any time, by writing to [email protected]. Your profile then shows only facts from public sources and members, and your logo and media are removed within 30 days. Published results, and replies published with them, stay part of the record. Closing an account does not remove a vendor from our ratings. Inclusion follows the published criteria, and a company cannot opt out of being rated.

11. Liability and Indemnity

The portal is free and provided as is. Section 13 of the Terms of Use limits Verinode’s liability under these terms. You indemnify Verinode against claims that arise from what you submit, including claims that it is false or infringes someone’s rights, as Section 14 of the Terms of Use sets out.

12. Personal Information

The Privacy Notice, in its section on vendor contacts, says what Verinode collects about the people who sign in for a vendor, why, for how long, and their rights.

13. Changes and Contact

We may publish a new version of these terms, as Section 16 of the Terms of Use describes. A contact accepts the new version before the vendor’s next submission. Questions about results: [email protected]. Questions about these terms: [email protected].