Terms of Service

1.Parties, Acceptance, and Effective Date

These Terms of Service ("Agreement" or "Terms") constitute a legally binding contract between The AI Lab Intelligence Unobscured, Inc., a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business at 131 Continental Dr, Suite 305, Newark, DE 19713 ("Company," "we," "us," or "our"), and any natural person, legal entity, or authorized representative thereof who accesses, registers with, or uses the TIP Protocol services, platform, or software (collectively, "you" or "User").

Your acceptance is manifested by any of the following acts, whichever occurs first: (a) clicking "I Agree" or any equivalent confirmation; (b) completing TIP-ID biometric registration; (c) accessing any API or node endpoint; (d) deploying or integrating any component of the TIP Protocol reference implementation; or (e) registering content on the TIP DAG network. Acceptance is irrevocable and binding upon you, your successors, assigns, and heirs.

If you accept on behalf of a legal entity, you represent that you have full authority to bind that entity. If you lack such authority, you must not accept these Terms or use the Services.

The Company reserves the right to modify these Terms upon thirty (30) days written notice to your registered email address or by prominent notice on theailab.org. Continued use after the modification effective date constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

2.Definitions

The following capitalized terms have the meanings set forth below throughout this Agreement.

3.Protocol Architecture and Technical Framework

3.1 Three-Layer Protocol Structure

The TIP Protocol operates across three interdependent layers: (i) Layer 1, TIP-ID, providing verifiable human identity bound to a cryptographic public key; (ii) Layer 2, TIP-CONTENT, providing cryptographically immutable content provenance records; and (iii) Layer 3, TIP-TRUST, providing deterministic, publicly computable reputation scores from a User's complete DAG transaction history.

3.2 Biometric Verification Stack

TIP-ID issuance requires completion of a mandatory four-layer biometric verification stack: (a) government-issued identity document verification using OCR, NFC chip authentication, and AI-assisted tamper detection, supporting documents from 195 countries; (b) 3D facial liveness detection using depth mapping, involuntary micro-expression analysis, and sub-dermal blood flow measurement; (c) FIDO2/WebAuthn device binding to a hardware security enclave (Apple Secure Enclave, Android StrongBox, or Windows TPM 2.0), with the private key never exported from hardware; and (d) optionally, social graph attestation from three existing TIP-ID holders each with a Trust Score not below 700, each staking 25 trust points as surety.

3.3 Immutability and Permanence

3.4 Cryptographic Standards

All protocol-compliant implementations must use: ML-DSA-65 (FIPS 204, Dilithium3) for primary signatures; SLH-DSA-128s (FIPS 205, SPHINCS+) for root and genesis signatures; ML-KEM-768 (FIPS 203, Kyber) for key encapsulation; and SHAKE-256/SHA-3 (FIPS 202) for all hashing. Hybrid signatures (Ed25519 + ML-DSA-65) are provisionally permitted for a transition period not to exceed three years. The Company makes no warranty that Ed25519-only implementations are quantum-resistant.

4.User Eligibility and Account Registration

4.1 Minimum Age. You must be at least 18 years of age, or the age of legal majority in your jurisdiction if higher. The Company does not knowingly collect Biometric Data from minors.

4.2 One Identity Per Person. Each natural person may register one (1) active TIP-ID at any time. The peppered zero-knowledge deduplication system (FIX-02) enforces this cryptographically. Attempting to register multiple TIP-IDs is a material breach and may result in revocation of all associated TIP-IDs and permanent exclusion from the network.

4.3 Identity Accuracy. You represent and warrant that all registration information is accurate and complete, the identity document is genuine and unaltered, and you are the lawful sole controller of the credentials associated with your TIP-ID. Fraudulent registration is a material breach and may expose you to civil and criminal liability.

4.4 Device and Key Security. You bear sole responsibility for the security of your registered hardware device. You must immediately initiate a REVOKE_DEVICE transaction upon any compromise, loss, theft, or unauthorized access. The Company is not liable for harm resulting from your failure to promptly report a device compromise.

4.5 Non-Transferability. A TIP-ID issued to a natural person is non-transferable and may not be assigned to or operated on behalf of any legal entity.

4.6 Minors and Discovery of Underage Users. The Company does not knowingly market the Services to, accept registrations from, or process Biometric Data of any individual under the age of 18 years or the local age of majority if higher. If the Company discovers that a registration has been completed by a minor, by any means including but not limited to fraudulent presentation of a document not belonging to the minor, the Company shall: (a) revoke the affected TIP-ID without notice; (b) delete or anonymize all off-chain personal data associated with the minor within 30 days, or sooner if required by applicable law; (c) write a HISTORY_ERASED transaction to the DAG; and (d) cooperate with the minor's parent or guardian to the extent required by applicable child-protection law (including COPPA, GDPR Art. 8, and analogous regimes). The Company's discovery and revocation procedure does not constitute an admission of fault or a waiver of any defense available to the Company. No claim may be brought against the Company by or on behalf of a minor or the minor's guardian arising from a registration that the minor procured through false representation of age or identity.

4.7 Stolen Credential Continuing Liability. You acknowledge that any content registration, dispute filing, attestation, or other DAG transaction signed by your private key is legally and cryptographically attributable to you until the Company receives a valid REVOKE_DEVICE or REVOKE_VOLUNTARY transaction reflecting key compromise. You bear sole liability to third parties for any harm caused by content registered with your TIP-ID prior to revocation, regardless of whether the registration was performed by you personally or by a party who acquired your credentials. The Company has no duty to detect, prevent, or remediate use of credentials by unauthorized parties prior to your reporting of compromise, and the Company expressly disclaims liability to you or to any third party for any such use.

4.8 Effect of User Death, Incapacity, or Bankruptcy; Non-Transferability; No Heir or Estate Claims; Bankruptcy-Trustee Limitations. A TIP-ID is a personal, non-transferable identifier issued to a natural person and is not a property right inheritable, assignable, devisable, or otherwise transferable upon the User's death, incapacity, bankruptcy, dissolution, or analogous event. Without limitation: (a) Extinguishment on Death. Upon the death of a natural-person User, the User's TIP-ID extinguishes; no heir, devisee, executor, administrator, personal representative, surviving spouse, surviving domestic partner, surviving child, estate, trust, or other successor-in-interest acquires any right to use, transfer, sell, or operate the deceased User's TIP-ID. The Company, upon receipt of credible notice of death (including without limitation a death certificate, an order of a court of competent jurisdiction adjudicating death, an Affidavit of Death, or a credible third-party notification), shall (i) mark the affected TIP-ID with a deceased-status indicator on the AI Trust Registry (consistent with applicable privacy law and the Section 8 framework), (ii) preserve all DAG transactions associated with the TIP-ID consistent with Section 3.3 (Immutability) and Section 13.5, (iii) cease processing biometric data of the deceased User for new authentication purposes (subject to retention required by law and the immutable cryptographic structure of the DAG under Section 13.6), and (iv) cooperate with the executor or administrator of the User's estate to the extent required by applicable law. (b) No Post-Mortem Right of Publicity Claim Against the Company. No heir, executor, administrator, personal representative, beneficiary, surviving family member, estate, or analogous post-mortem claimant shall have any claim against the Company or any Protected Person under Section 15.18 premised on: (i) the Company's continued preservation, display, or public-lookup availability of validated DAG transactions referencing the deceased User; (ii) the Company's continued display of the deceased User's TIP-ID, Trust Score, badge issuance, or AI Trust ID™ Seal in connection with content registered before death; (iii) any post-mortem right of publicity, post-mortem right of privacy, post-mortem right of personality, post-mortem right of identity, or post-mortem rights under California Civ. Code § 3344.1, Indiana Code § 32-36-1, Tennessee Personal Rights Protection Act, New York Civil Rights Law § 50-f, Texas Property Code § 26.012, Nebraska Rev. Stat. § 20-202, Virginia Code § 8.01-40, Washington RCW 63.60.040, Oklahoma 12 O.S. § 1448, Nevada NRS 597.770, Pennsylvania 42 Pa.C.S. § 8316, Florida Stat. § 540.08, Ohio Rev. Code § 2741.01, Illinois 765 ILCS 1075/30, Kentucky KRS 391.170, Massachusetts G.L. c. 214 § 3A, the U.K. common-law right of publicity to the extent recognized, the German Allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht as applied post-mortem, the French right of personality as applied post-mortem, the EU AI Act provisions concerning AI representations of deceased persons, or analogous statutes; or (iv) any analogous claim premised on the theory that the deceased User's identity, biometric data, name, voice, image, or analogous attribute has continued commercial or personal value that the Company has unauthorizedly exploited. The Company's preservation of the immutable DAG record is a technical operation, not an exploitation of the deceased User's identity; and the Company's continued operation of the Services is not, by reason of any deceased User's prior registration, an actionable use of the deceased User's identity. (c) No Heir or Estate Standing to Sue. No heir, executor, administrator, personal representative, beneficiary, surviving family member, estate, or analogous post-mortem claimant shall have standing to bring any claim against the Company or any Protected Person arising from these Terms or the Services, except: (i) wrongful-death and survival claims, but only to the extent expressly preserved by the §11 paragraph 3 narrow carve-outs (death or personal injury caused by the Company's gross negligence or willful misconduct, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law), and subject to the §11 cap, the §10 disclaimers, the §14 dispute-resolution framework, and the §15.18 Protected Persons shield; and (ii) any claim that mandatory applicable law cannot lawfully bar by contract. Any other heir, estate, or post-mortem claim is barred. (d) Effect of User Incapacity. Upon a judicial or administrative adjudication of the User's mental incapacity, guardianship, conservatorship, or analogous adjudication that affects the User's legal capacity, the User's TIP-ID continues to function technically (subject to the User's continued ability or the guardian's ability to authenticate), but the guardian or conservator shall promptly notify the Company at legal@theailab.org of the adjudication and shall comply on the User's behalf with the User's continuing obligations under these Terms, including without limitation the obligations of Sections 4 (User Eligibility), 5 (Content Origin Declaration), 9 (Prohibited Conduct), 12 (Indemnification), 13 (Term and Termination), 14 (Dispute Resolution), and 15 (General Provisions). The guardian's or conservator's authority to bind the User does not retroactively void any prior representation, warranty, or covenant of the User; the User's pre-adjudication acceptance of these Terms remains binding to the extent the User possessed capacity at the time of acceptance (consistent with Section 15.32(a)). The Company may, in its discretion under Section 15.31, suspend or terminate the User's TIP-ID upon learning of the adjudication, and shall not be liable to the User, the guardian, the conservator, or any third party for any such suspension or termination. (e) Effect of User Bankruptcy. Upon the User's filing of bankruptcy under any chapter of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, Title 11 of the United States Code, or analogous foreign insolvency statute, the User's TIP-ID is a personal license to use the Services and not a "property of the estate" within the meaning of 11 U.S.C. § 541 or analogous foreign statute, except to the extent applicable bankruptcy law mandates otherwise. To the extent applicable bankruptcy law nevertheless characterizes the User's rights under this Agreement as property of the estate, the bankruptcy trustee, debtor-in-possession, or analogous representative shall be bound by these Terms (including all warranty disclaimers, the §11 cap, the §12 indemnification obligations, the §14 dispute-resolution framework, the §14.10 confidentiality regime, the §15.18 Protected Persons shield, and the §15.28 anti-assignment/anti-subrogation/anti-champerty provisions) on the same basis as the User. The Company expressly reserves: (i) the Section 365(c)(1)(A) and (c)(2) executory-contract defenses under U.S. bankruptcy law (and analogous foreign defenses) where the Company would otherwise be required to consent to assumption or assignment of this Agreement by the trustee or debtor-in-possession; (ii) the Section 365(e)(2) ipso-facto exception where the Company's right to terminate under Section 13.2 is preserved notwithstanding bankruptcy; (iii) all rights to seek relief from the automatic stay under 11 U.S.C. § 362(d) for cause, including without limitation enforcement of the §14 arbitration agreement (subject to Wellness Int'l Network, Ltd. v. Sharif, 575 U.S. 665 (2015), and analogous authority); (iv) all rights to pursue non-dischargeable claims under 11 U.S.C. § 523 for fraud, willful and malicious injury, or analogous grounds; and (v) all rights under Section 15.26 (Reservation of Company Remedies) and Section 15.30 (Vexatious Litigation Protection) against the User, the trustee, the debtor-in-possession, and any third party financing the bankruptcy litigation. The §15.28 anti-assignment-of-claims provision applies to the bankruptcy trustee's purported transfer of claims to litigation funders or claims aggregators. (f) Continuing Indemnification by Estate and Trustee. The User's indemnification obligations under Section 12 (Sections 12.1 through 12.10) survive the User's death and pass to the User's estate as a continuing obligation, and survive the User's bankruptcy as a non-dischargeable obligation to the extent permitted by applicable law; the estate, executor, administrator, trustee, debtor-in-possession, and successor-in-interest shall perform all such obligations. To the extent applicable law bars the survival of indemnification obligations against the estate or trustee, the Company expressly reserves the right to assert any other available defense, set-off, or recoupment. (g) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 4.8 are severable across clauses, claim categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to prevent post-mortem, post-incapacity, and post-bankruptcy claims-aggregation, claims-monetization, and claims-arbitrage by heirs, executors, administrators, guardians, conservators, trustees, debtors-in-possession, and litigation funders or aggregators.

4.9 Communications Consent. By providing an email address, phone number, or other contact identifier during registration, you consent to receive from the Company the following categories of communications: (a) transactional and account communications, including registration confirmations, authentication codes, security alerts, REVOKE notifications, dispute notices, billing communications, and required legal notices, which the Company may deliver to you by any reasonable means including email, in-product notification, or registered mail; (b) operational and service communications, including outages, maintenance schedules, protocol updates, and material changes to these Terms or related policies; (c) compliance communications, including responses to regulatory requests, government subpoenas, and law enforcement inquiries; and (d) at the Company's discretion, marketing, promotional, educational, and survey communications related to the Services or the TIP Protocol ecosystem. You may opt out of category (d) at any time through an unsubscribe link, an in-product setting, or by writing to dpo@theailab.org. You may not opt out of categories (a), (b), or (c), as those communications are necessary for the operation of the Services and your account. Where applicable law requires more granular consent (including the EU e-Privacy Directive, the U.K. PECR, the CAN-SPAM Act, and analogous regimes), the Company shall obtain such consent and honor opt-out requests within the time required by that law. Communications via SMS or other short-message channels are governed by the SMS Opt-In and SMS Opt-Out policies published at theailab.org.

5.Content Origin Declaration Obligations

5.1 Mandatory Honest Declaration

Every content registration requires a mandatory, cryptographically signed Origin Code. You must select the Origin Code that most accurately describes how the content was created: OH (Original Human) - created entirely by you without AI generation tools, with traditional non-generative tools (editing software, spell-check, color grading) permitted; AA (AI-Assisted) - you performed the primary creative work but used AI tools to enhance or partially generate portions; AG (AI-Generated) - AI performed the primary generation and your role was prompting, curating, or minor editing; MX (Mixed) - content combines human-created and AI-generated elements with no single dominant origin.

5.2 Conservative Declaration Is Always Safe

A declaration attributing greater AI involvement than is factually accurate carries no penalty and does not constitute a breach of these Terms. The adjudication system is designed exclusively to address under-disclosure of AI involvement. You may always safely label content at a higher AI involvement level than strictly required.

5.3 Pre-Scan and Flag-But-Mint

All OH-declared submissions are subject to an automated AI pre-scan classification prior to DAG registration. The calibrated threshold formula is: T_c = T_baseline + min(H / 200, 1.0) x (0.94 - T_baseline), where T_baseline ranges from 0.82 (conversational) to 0.93 (legal), H is the count of your OH content previously confirmed CLEARED by jury, and 0.94 is the hard ceiling encoded in the Genesis Block. If the AI probability exceeds T_c, content is registered with pending_review status. Registration is never blocked. You have 24 hours to update your Origin Code at zero penalty.

5.4 Adjudication Pipeline

Disputed content proceeds through three stages: Stage 1 (automated, under 60 seconds) - AI classifier produces a confidence score; above 0.90 auto-escalates, below 0.30 auto-dismisses, between 0.30 and 0.90 proceeds to Stage 2. Stage 2 (human jury, 24-72 hours) - seven TIP-ID holders each with Trust Score not below 700 vote on whether the declared origin matches the content; jurors stake points on their vote. Stage 3 (expert appeal, 3-7 days) - three domain experts conduct final review; Stage 3 decisions are immutable and not subject to further protocol-level appeal. The single community Human Reviewer who serves at Stage 1 when an AI Pre-Scan flag has not been cleared by the creator within the 48-hour correction window of Section 5.3, the seven community Jurors who serve at Stage 2, and the three community Expert Panelists who serve at Stage 3 are TIP-ID holders who, subject to the eligibility thresholds set out in Section 5.10.3, are enrolled by default in the community adjudication candidacy pools under Section 5.10 and who have not exercised their right to opt out under Section 5.10.8; the Trust Score floors of Section 5.10.3(a) operate as a natural filter so that newer or lower-Trust-Score users are not selected merely because they are enrolled by default, and you are clearly disclosed of your default enrollment and your opt-out right by this Section 5.4, by Section 5.10, and by the registration interface itself.

5.5 Trust Score Consequences

A CONFIRMED_MISMATCH finding triggers Trust Score deductions according to the following schedule:

5.6 AI Classifier Is Advisory; Human Reviewers Decide

Category equivalence note for this Section 5.6: the three Human Reviewer categories enumerated in this Section as clauses (x), (y), and (z) correspond exactly to the three Human Reviewer clauses (i), (ii), and (iii) of the Section 2 definition. The dual lettering is a drafting convenience to distinguish in-section references from cross-section references; both lettering systems identify the same three categories of natural persons. Section 5.6 paragraph 3 narrows the "Human Reviewer" reference within that specific paragraph to clause (x) / clause (i) only; all other references to "Human Reviewer" in this Section 5.6 use the full three-category scope.

The auto-escalation thresholds described in Section 5.4 (above 0.90 confidence proceeds to human review; below 0.30 confidence auto-dismisses) are routing decisions that move a case to the appropriate human reviewer or close it without any user-affecting action. They are not decisions that impose penalties, change labels, or modify any public-facing badge status. Every penalty, every Trust Score deduction, every label correction, and every public badge change requires a confirming human determination.

The Company stands behind the conduct of the Company's own Human Reviewers (defined under clause (x) of Section 5.6 and clause (i) of the Section 2 definition: Company-employed or Company-contracted natural persons) but does not warrant the output of any underlying AI classification algorithm. Any claim against the Company arising from an automated assessment must be framed as a claim that one of the Company's own Human Reviewers (clause (x)) subsequently acted upon that assessment unreasonably; the underlying probabilistic output of any classification algorithm is not itself an actionable harm. Decisions by Verification Provider staff under clause (y) of Section 5.6 and clause (ii) of the Section 2 definition are governed by Section 15.17 (Independent VPs as Independent Contractors) and Section 6, not by this Section 5.6 paragraph; the Company does not stand behind VP-staff conduct and bears no respondeat-superior liability for VP-staff decisions, except where the Company is itself the Verification Provider during the Bootstrap Period under Section 6.6. All such claims remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10 and the liability cap of Section 11.

5.7 Consent to Automated and Third-Party Analysis

By registering content on the TIP Protocol, you expressly consent to automated analysis of the registered content by the TIP AI Pre-Scan system operated by or on behalf of the Company. This consent is freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous within the meaning of Article 4(11) of the GDPR and analogous provisions of comparable data protection regimes.

You further consent to analysis of the registered content by third-party Classification Providers retained by the Company under any of the following conditions: (a) you affirmatively opt in to extended analysis at registration or in account settings; (b) the built-in pre-scan identifies the content as potentially inconsistent with your declared Origin Code at a confidence level of 0.90 or above and you elect to override the warning and proceed with registration; or (c) a dispute is filed against your content registration by another TIP-ID holder pursuant to Section 5.4. No third-party Classification Provider receives content outside one of these three triggers.

You may withdraw consent to future automated and third-party analysis at any time by initiating a REVOKE_VOLUNTARY transaction pursuant to Section 13. Withdrawal of consent does not retroactively invalidate analyses already performed on previously registered content, and it does not delete the immutable DAG record of those registrations or any resulting Trust Score outcomes.

5.8 Assumption of Risk Inherent in AI Classification

By declaring an Origin Code on the TIP Protocol, you acknowledge and assume the following risks: (a) automated AI classifiers produce false positives, in which content authored entirely by humans may be assessed as likely AI-generated; (b) automated AI classifiers produce false negatives, in which content generated by AI may be assessed as likely human-authored; (c) Protocol Reviews and Disputes are part of the normal operation of the Services and are not a representation that your specific content has been deemed fraudulent; (d) content badges may temporarily display "Pending Review," "Under Review," or "Disputed" status during the adjudication pipeline described in Section 5.4; (e) you have multiple opportunities to correct your Origin Code declaration before any public-facing action occurs, including the 24-hour update window after pending_review registration described in Section 5.3 and any further correction window the Company may publish; and (f) the deterministic and immutable nature of the DAG means that adjudication outcomes, once confirmed by the human review process, cannot be expunged from the ledger.

5.9 Multiple Correction Opportunities Before Public Action

The Company shall not effect any public-facing change to the Origin Code, Trust Score, or badge status of registered content without first providing the registering User with at least one reasonable opportunity to update the Origin Code declaration, except where the Company has determined under the Stage 2 or Stage 3 human review process described in Section 5.4 that an Origin Code is materially false. Where reasonably practicable, the Company shall notify the User by registered email of any pending action and shall permit a period of at least 24 hours for User correction. Failure of the User to update or respond within the notice period does not waive the User's rights under Section 5.6 (human reviewer confirmation), Section 11 (liability cap), or Section 14 (dispute resolution).

5.10 Community Adjudication Roles: Reviewer, Juror, and Expert Panel (Default-Enabled, Opt-Out Available at Any Time)

5.10.1 Three Community Roles. The Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3 adjudication stages described in Section 5.4 are staffed by three distinct categories of opted-in TIP-ID holders, each governed by this Section 5.10: (a) Community Reviewers, who serve as the single Human Reviewer at Stage 1 when an AI Pre-Scan flag has not been cleared by the content registrant within the 48-hour correction window of Section 5.3; (b) Community Jurors, who serve in seven-person panels at Stage 2 to vote on public disputes; and (c) Community Expert Panelists, who serve in three-person panels at Stage 3 to render the final, non-appealable verdict on Stage 2 appeals. Each role is also defined in the user-facing role descriptions published by the Company at theailab.org and at the corresponding role-orientation surfaces within the Reference Implementation and accredited Verification Provider interfaces. The Company may, under Section 15.7 (Modification of Terms), prospectively update each role's specific operational mechanics (including without limitation panel size, vote types, commit/reveal phase durations, eligibility thresholds, and scoring constants) without altering the strict opt-in consent, withdrawal, anonymity, and no-compensation structures established by this Section 5.10.

5.10.2 Default Enrollment in Candidacy Pools; Right to Opt Out at Any Time. Upon registration of a personal-identity TIP-ID and acceptance of these Terms, you are enrolled by default in the candidacy pools for all three community adjudication roles, subject in every case to the eligibility filters of Section 5.10.3. Default enrollment means that, when and only when all of the eligibility conditions in Section 5.10.3 are met for you at the moment a case arises, you are among the TIP-ID holders from which the protocol's deterministic selection algorithm may draw a Reviewer, Juror, or Expert Panelist, and you may receive a selection notification under Section 5.10.4. Default enrollment is not, by itself, an assignment; the eligibility floors of Section 5.10.3 (including the Trust Score floors of 800 / 700 / 850 for the three roles respectively) and the conflict-of-interest filters operate as a natural pre-selection layer so that newer TIP-ID holders, lower-Trust-Score TIP-ID holders, and TIP-ID holders implicated in the case are not in fact selected even while enrolled by default.

The Company has chosen a default-enrollment-with-opt-out design over an affirmative opt-in design because the integrity, speed, and pool-diversity of the community adjudication system depend on a sufficiently large and geographically distributed pool of qualified candidates being available to the selection algorithm at any moment that a case arises. The Company's commitment under these Terms is that this design is paired with: (i) prominent disclosure of default enrollment in this Section 5.10, at the registration interface, and in the Privacy Policy referenced in Section 15.1; (ii) eligibility floors that automatically exclude most TIP-ID holders from actual selection regardless of toggle state; (iii) a one-action opt-out mechanism described in this Section 5.10.2 and in Section 5.10.8; and (iv) anonymity, no-compensation, and right-of-withdrawal protections set out elsewhere in this Section 5.10.

You may opt out of any or all of the three community adjudication roles at any time, for any reason or no reason, through the participation toggles in your TIP-ID profile settings (and through the equivalent toggles in any accredited Verification Provider client interface or Reference Implementation surface that exposes them). Two toggles control your candidacy: (a) the participation toggle for the Community Reviewer role; and (b) the participation toggle for the Community Juror and Community Expert Panelist roles (a single toggle covers both adjudication-panel roles because they share the same opt-in choice in the user-facing settings interface). Both toggles default to the ON position for new TIP-ID registrations and for any existing TIP-ID that has not previously modified them. You may set either or both toggles to the OFF position at any time; toggle-off takes effect immediately for selection purposes, so that from the moment of toggle-off you shall not be selected for any new adjudication assignment in the corresponding role. Selection notifications you receive while a toggle is ON are a normal and expected consequence of default enrollment under this Section 5.10.2 and shall not constitute a surprise, an intrusion, or a breach of any duty owed to you under these Terms.

5.10.3 Eligibility Thresholds. Selection eligibility for the three community adjudication roles requires that, at the moment of selection, all of the following conditions are met:

• (a) Trust Score Floor. You hold a current Trust Score equal to or greater than the threshold applicable to the role: 800 for Community Reviewer, 700 for Community Juror, and 850 for Community Expert Panelist.
• (b) Identity Type. You hold a personal-identity TIP-ID. Organizational, publisher, government, and other non-personal identity classifications are excluded from all community adjudication pools.
• (c) Participation Toggle ON. The profile toggle described in Section 5.10.2 applicable to the role is in the ON position at the moment of selection. The toggle is in the ON position by default upon TIP-ID registration; if you have set it to OFF under Section 5.10.8, you are removed from selection until you set it back to ON.
• (d) Reviewer Accuracy Gate. For the Community Reviewer role only, your running overturn rate (the share of your prior Reviewer DISMISS or CONFIRM decisions that were subsequently overturned by a Stage 2 jury or Stage 3 expert panel) is below thirty percent (30%) over the most recent twenty (20) Reviewer decisions; if exceeded, you are automatically and silently paused from future Reviewer assignments until accuracy recovers, without notice and without giving rise to any claim.
• (e) Conflict-of-Interest Filters. You are not the content registrant, the disputer, a member of any prior panel on the same case, or a person otherwise filtered by the deterministic selection algorithm to avoid actual or apparent conflict of interest.

The Company may prospectively adjust each threshold and parameter set forth in this Section 5.10.3 under Section 15.7. Any such adjustment applies only to selections occurring after the adjustment takes effect and does not retroactively invalidate decisions you have already rendered.

5.10.4 Selection Mechanism and Notification. When you meet all eligibility conditions under Section 5.10.3 and are selected for an adjudication assignment, the Company will deliver a notification through the channels you have configured in your TIP-ID profile (which may include in-app notification, email, and mobile push notification). The notification will identify the assignment type (Community Reviewer, Community Juror, or Community Expert Panelist), the case identifier, the relevant response time window under Section 5.10.5, and a link to the case-detail surface where you may inspect the content, the evidence of record, and the vote options available to you. You expressly acknowledge that selection notifications under this Section 5.10.4 are a normal and expected consequence of default enrollment under Section 5.10.2 combined with satisfaction of the eligibility filters under Section 5.10.3, are an essential part of the protocol's adjudication function, and do not constitute a surprise, an intrusion, an unsolicited communication, or a breach of any duty owed to you under these Terms. If you wish not to receive selection notifications, the proper and only remedy under these Terms is to set the applicable participation toggle to OFF under Section 5.10.8, which removes you from future candidacy with immediate effect.

5.10.5 Time Commitments and Auto-Recusal. Each community adjudication role carries the following response time commitment:

• (a) Community Reviewer. You have forty-eight (48) hours from notification to submit one of three decisions: DISMISS, CONFIRM, or RECUSE. Failure to submit any decision within the 48-hour window results in an automatic protocol-issued recusal and reassignment of the case to a different Reviewer; no direct Trust Score penalty is applied for an isolated miss, but missed assignments are recorded against your accuracy and availability metrics and may, if frequent, contribute to your suspension from the Reviewer pool under Section 5.10.3(d).
• (b) Community Juror. You serve under a two-phase commit-reveal voting protocol consisting of a seventy-two (72) hour commit phase followed by a six (6) hour reveal phase. Failure to commit, failure to reveal within the reveal phase, or a commit-reveal mismatch is treated as a no-show for scoring purposes under Section 5.10.6.
• (c) Community Expert Panelist. You serve under the same two-phase commit-reveal voting protocol as a Community Juror, with the same 72-hour commit phase and 6-hour reveal phase, and the same no-show treatment for missed commit or reveal.

5.10.6 Trust Score Stakes and Bonuses. Your decision or no-show in any community adjudication role results in a Trust Score delta computed under the protocol's published scoring constants, which are set in the Genesis Block parameters and may be prospectively adjusted by the Company under Section 15.7. As of the Effective Date of this Section 5.10, the deltas applicable to community adjudication participation are summarized as follows, and the canonical detailed scoring tables are published in the user-facing role-orientation documentation at theailab.org:

• (i) Community Reviewer. DISMISS that closes the case cleanly: +5 review-correct bonus. CONFIRM that the content registrant accepts privately within the 24-hour creator-response window: +5. CONFIRM that escalates to a Stage 2 jury and is UPHELD: +10 net across the disputer-stake refund, the upheld bonus, and the review-correct bonus. CONFIRM that escalates to a Stage 2 jury and is DISMISSED (the jury overturns you): -15 net, and the Stage 2 dismissal counts toward your overturn-rate gate under Section 5.10.3(d). A Stage 3 expert-panel reversal of any Stage 2 outcome propagates through the Reviewer's stake and bonus on the same end-to-end-reversal basis as for any other Stage 2 party.
• (ii) Community Juror. Vote with the majority of revealed non-abstain votes after a valid reveal: +3. Vote against the majority after a valid reveal: -10. Abstain after a valid reveal: 0. Miss the reveal phase (whether by failure to commit or failure to reveal, by any cause): -10. If the jury panel fails to reach the protocol quorum thresholds (at least five revealed votes and at least three non-abstain revealed votes), no juror Trust Score effects are applied and the case is auto-escalated to Stage 3.
• (iii) Community Expert Panelist. The same +3 majority, -10 minority, 0 abstain, and -10 no-show scoring applies as for Community Jurors. The Stage 3 verdict is final and not subject to further protocol-level appeal under Section 5.4.

The Trust Score deltas in this Section 5.10.6 are denominated in Trust Score units, are reputational signals internal to the Protocol, are not monetary, do not convert to cash or to any virtual currency, and do not create any claim against the Company for compensation, refund, or damages independent of the Trust Score system itself.

5.10.7 Anonymity of Adjudication Records. When acting as a Community Reviewer, Community Juror, or Community Expert Panelist, your identity is recorded on the DAG only as your TIP-ID. The Company does not display your legal name, contact information, geographic location, biometric data, or other personal information to the content registrant, to the disputer, or to other panelists on the same or any later panel. The TIP-ID is a pseudonymous identifier; panel decisions and the associated vote breakdowns are public to the extent the DAG ledger is public. You waive any claim against the Company premised on the alleged disclosure of your TIP-ID, your vote, your panel-level decision rationale, or your aggregate adjudication history in connection with your community adjudication participation, except to the extent any such claim arises under mandatory applicable law that cannot be waived by contract.

5.10.8 Right to Opt Out at Any Time; No Penalty. You may turn the applicable participation toggle to the OFF position at any time, for any reason or no reason, through your TIP-ID profile settings (and through the corresponding interface in any accredited Verification Provider client or Reference Implementation surface that exposes the toggle). The toggle is in the ON position by default upon TIP-ID registration under Section 5.10.2; exercising your opt-out right under this Section 5.10.8 sets the toggle to OFF and removes you from the candidacy pool for the corresponding role with immediate effect, so that you shall not be selected for any new adjudication assignment in that role from the moment of toggle-off. Opt-out does not affect: (a) adjudication assignments already in progress at the moment of opt-out, which you may complete, recuse from, or no-show under the scoring rules of Section 5.10.6; (b) Trust Score deltas already applied to your account from prior assignments, which remain final under Section 3.3 (Immutability) and Section 13.5 (Termination Data Handling); or (c) the immutable DAG record of your prior commits, reveals, and decisions. There is no Trust Score penalty, no probationary period, no re-enrollment friction, and no waiver of any other right under these Terms associated with the exercise of your opt-out right. You may toggle the role on and off repeatedly at your sole discretion, and you may, at your election, toggle one role off (for example, Reviewer) while leaving the other (Juror and Expert Panelist) on.

5.10.9 No Compensation; Community-Service Posture; No Employment Relationship. Community adjudication is a community-service function of the TIP Protocol and is not employment, engagement, agency, joint venture, partnership, or independent-contractor work for or on behalf of the Company. You receive no salary, wage, fee, retainer, equity, virtual currency, token, in-kind benefit, or any other form of monetary or non-monetary compensation from the Company for your participation in any community adjudication role. The Trust Score deltas described in Section 5.10.6 are reputational signals internal to the Protocol and do not constitute compensation for purposes of any wage-and-hour law, tax law, benefits law, employment-classification doctrine (including without limitation the IRS Section 530 safe-harbor analysis, the Department of Labor economic-realities analysis, the California ABC test, the Borello multi-factor test, and analogous tests under foreign law), or any analogous statutory or common-law classification regime in any jurisdiction. You waive any claim premised on a theory that community adjudication participation creates an employment, agency, joint-venture, partnership, independent-contractor, or compensable relationship with the Company. This Section 5.10.9 controls notwithstanding any contrary inference from the frequency, regularity, or perceived obligation of adjudication assignments and notwithstanding any informal description of any community adjudication role as a "duty," "responsibility," or "service" in user-facing documentation.

5.10.10 Consent to Notification Channels. By registering a personal-identity TIP-ID and accepting these Terms, and for so long as the applicable participation toggle remains in the ON position under Section 5.10.2 (whether by default or by your affirmative re-enabling after a prior opt-out), you consent to receive case-assignment notifications, response-window reminders, and verdict notifications through the communication channels you have configured in your TIP-ID profile (including, without limitation, in-app notification, email, and mobile push notification). The Company may add or modify notification channels prospectively under Section 15.7. You may disable any individual notification channel at any time through profile settings, provided that disabling any or all notification channels does not waive your obligation to respond to assignments within the applicable time windows of Section 5.10.5 while your participation toggle remains in the ON position; if you wish to stop receiving assignments altogether, the proper and only remedy is to exercise your opt-out right under Section 5.10.8 by setting the applicable participation toggle to OFF. Notifications under this Section 5.10.10 are not marketing communications for purposes of the CAN-SPAM Act, the EU ePrivacy Directive, or analogous unsolicited-commercial-communication regimes; they are transactional service communications necessary to the operation of the adjudication function in which you are enrolled by default under Section 5.10.2.

5.11 Filing a Public Dispute as a TIP-ID Holder

5.11.1 Eligibility to File. Any TIP-ID holder may file a public dispute (a "Dispute") against content registered on the Protocol by another TIP-ID holder under the Stage 2 / Stage 3 procedure described in Section 5.4, provided that at the moment of filing all of the following are true: (a) the filer holds a personal-identity TIP-ID with a current Trust Score of at least four hundred (400); (b) the filer is not the registrant of the content under dispute (self-dispute is filtered automatically by the protocol); and (c) the filer has not exceeded the rolling thirty-day anti-abuse cap of five (5) Disputes per thirty (30) days per filer. The Company may prospectively adjust these eligibility parameters under Section 15.7.

5.11.2 Filing Stake. Filing a Dispute requires the filer to stake fifteen (15) Trust Score points at the moment of filing. The stake is escrowed in the form of an immediate Trust Score deduction recorded alongside the Dispute transaction on the DAG and is refundable, with an additional UPHELD bonus, only upon a Stage 2 UPHELD or CONSERVATIVE_LABEL verdict in the filer's favor under the scoring constants referenced in Section 5.10.6. The filing stake is forfeited on a Stage 2 DISMISSED verdict and remains locked pending Stage 3 resolution if Stage 2 results in NO_QUORUM. The filing stake is denominated in Trust Score units, is not monetary, is not refundable in cash or in any virtual currency, and creates no claim against the Company independent of the Trust Score system.

5.11.3 Optional Appeal Stake. A filer who loses at Stage 2 may, at their sole election, file an appeal to Stage 3 under Section 5.4 by staking an additional twenty-five (25) Trust Score points at the moment of appeal filing. The appellant stake is refundable, with an additional OVERTURN bonus, only upon a Stage 3 verdict in the appellant's favor. The appellant stake is forfeited on a Stage 3 verdict against the appellant. The cradle-to-grave net Trust Score effect on the appellant across the full Dispute lifecycle reflects both the Section 5.11.2 filing stake and the Section 5.11.3 appellant stake; the canonical detailed cradle-to-grave scoring table is published at theailab.org.

5.11.4 Disputer Identity and Public-Act Acknowledgment. When you file a Dispute, your TIP-ID is recorded on the DAG as the disputer and is visible on the public case record. The Company does not display your legal name or other personal identifying information in connection with the Dispute except to the extent expressly required by applicable law. By filing a Dispute you acknowledge that: (a) filing is a public act of the TIP-ID community; (b) the Dispute will be evaluated, in the first instance, by a community jury constituted under Section 5.10.2 through Section 5.10.7; (c) an unfavorable verdict may result in the forfeiture of your stake under Section 5.11.2 and, if applicable, Section 5.11.3; and (d) the Dispute record, including your TIP-ID as filer, your selected origin-code claim, your evidence submission, and the final verdict, is preserved on the DAG ledger under Section 3.3 (Immutability) and cannot be expunged or back-dated.

5.11.5 Good-Faith Filing Obligation; Prohibited Purposes. You shall file Disputes only where you have a good-faith, evidence-based belief that the disputed content's declared Origin Code is materially inconsistent with the actual provenance of the content. The Dispute system is provided exclusively for adjudication of Origin Code accuracy and is not a mechanism for content moderation on grounds of viewpoint, topic, taste, copyright infringement, plagiarism, defamation, professional rivalry, personal grievance, or any consideration other than Origin Code accuracy. Filing a Dispute for any improper purpose, including without limitation harassment, retaliation, competitive interference, brigading, coordinated bad-faith filing, or filing intended to consume the rolling thirty-day cap on a targeted registrant, is a violation of Section 9 (Prohibited Conduct) and may, in addition to forfeiture of the filing stake and any appellant stake, result in suspension or revocation of your TIP-ID under Section 6.5 (VP Revocation), Section 13 (Term and Termination), or the Company's other remedies under these Terms.

6.Verification Provider Obligations and Accreditation

6.1 Accreditation Requirement

No entity other than the Company itself may issue TIP-IDs, operate a VP Node, or represent itself as an accredited Verification Provider without prior written accreditation from the Company. Accreditation of independent Verification Providers requires: (a) implementation of all four biometric verification layers; (b) an independent security audit from Trail of Bits, Bishop Fox, Cure53, or an equivalent firm approved by the Company; (c) execution of the TIP-VP Code of Conduct; (d) passage of a jurisdiction assessment; and (e) payment of applicable accreditation fees. The Company's own operation as Verification Provider during the Bootstrap Period is governed by Section 6.6 (which establishes a self-accreditation framework parallel to this Section 6.1) rather than by the prior-written-accreditation requirement of this paragraph; the Company is not required to formally accredit itself under the procedure applicable to independent Verification Providers, and no claim shall arise from the absence of any such formal self-accreditation.

6.2 Jurisdiction Tier Classification

Each VP is assigned a jurisdiction tier based on mandatory government data access laws, data protection authority independence, MLAT treaty participation, and extrajudicial access history: GREEN - no mandatory data access laws requiring disclosure without a court order; AMBER - mandatory laws exist but are subject to judicial oversight; RED - mandatory laws with documented extrajudicial access history. TIP-ID holders must be disclosed their VP's current tier at registration and upon any subsequent change. AMBER tier is indicated by an amber indicator on the AI Trust ID visual badge.

6.3 Warrant Canary Obligations

Every VP must publish a quarterly signed warrant canary confirming no compelled, undisclosed government data access has occurred. Canaries must be signed with the VP's ML-DSA-65 signing key and machine-verifiable. Failure to publish within 90 days of the preceding publication generates a JURISDICTION_ADVISORY transaction. After 30 days without remediation, a JURISDICTION_WARNING is issued and the VP's tier is effectively downgraded with advisory notice sent to all affected TIP-ID holders.

6.4 Accreditation Fees

• Category C (Government entities): no fee
• Category B (Journalism/NGO entities): no fee
• Category A, under 10,000 verifications/month: USD $5,000/year
• Category A, 10,000-100,000 verifications/month: USD $15,000/year
• Category A, over 100,000 verifications/month: USD $40,000/year

6.5 VP Revocation of TIP-IDs

A VP may initiate REVOKE_VP with a signed cause statement and evidence hash. This zeros the affected User's Trust Score with an additional penalty, queues all content registered within the preceding 90 days for Stage 1 adjudication with dispute reason issuer_revocation_cascade, and updates content status to disputed. REVOKE_DECEASED freezes the Trust Score and preserves records with verified deceased author notation. REVOKE_DEVICE addresses device compromise only and does not affect Trust Score or content records.

6.6 The Company as Initial Verification Provider During the Bootstrap Period

6.6.1 Acknowledgment of Dual Role. You expressly acknowledge and accept that during the Bootstrap Period the Company itself may act as the sole or primary Verification Provider for the Services. In that capacity, the Company will collect, process, and store Biometric Data and issue TIP-IDs directly, performing the operational role that would otherwise be performed by an independent VP. The Bootstrap Period is necessitated by the practical requirement to launch a federated identity protocol before independent VPs have completed accreditation, and is undertaken in furtherance of the public-interest mission described in Section 15.23. By registering during the Bootstrap Period, you waive any claim that the Company's operation as both protocol authority and Verification Provider is per se objectionable, constitutes a conflict of interest, or gives rise to any heightened duty of care beyond that expressly set forth in these Terms.

6.6.2 Operating Standards Parity. When acting as a Verification Provider, the Company shall apply to its own operations the same accreditation standards, biometric verification stack, warrant canary obligations, jurisdiction tier criteria, and Code of Conduct described in Sections 6.1 through 6.5 as would be applied to an independent VP. Where the Company performs the role of accrediting body and the role of accredited VP simultaneously, the Company commits to operating under the more rigorous of the two roles' obligations as to any particular requirement. The Company's operation as VP shall be subject to the same independent security audit requirement set forth in Section 6.1(b).

6.6.3 Recusal Protocol for Disputes Involving the Company as VP. Where the Company is the issuing VP of a TIP-ID involved in a Stage 2 or Stage 3 dispute under Section 5.4, jurors and expert panelists drawn from the Stage 2/3 pool shall not include current employees, officers, directors, contractors, or material consultants of the Company. The Company shall maintain a publicly auditable list of disqualified individuals. Adjudication of such disputes shall proceed under the same rules applicable to disputes involving independent VPs. This recusal protocol does not apply to routine, non-disputed protocol operations.

6.6.4 Heightened Biometric Data Protections. When acting as the issuing VP, the Company is the data controller for Biometric Data under, and is the regulated entity under, the following biometric privacy and special-category data regimes (without limitation): (1) the EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679, Art. 9) and the EU AI Act biometric provisions; (2) the U.K. GDPR (Art. 9) and the U.K. Data Protection Act 2018; (3) the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP); (4) the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA, 740 ILCS 14); (5) the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act (CUBI, Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 503.001) and the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA); (6) the Washington biometric privacy statute (RCW 19.375); (7) the New York City Biometric Identifier Information Law (NYC Admin. Code § 22-1201); (8) the New York SHIELD Act biometric provisions; (9) the Tennessee Information Protection Act (2024) and Tennessee biometric provisions; (10) the California CCPA/CPRA sensitive personal information provisions for biometric data; (11) the Colorado Privacy Act (CPA) sensitive-data provisions; (12) the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA), Connecticut Data Privacy Act (CTDPA), and Utah Consumer Privacy Act (UCPA) biometric provisions; (13) the Florida Digital Bill of Rights (2023) biometric provisions; (14) Brazil's Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) sensitive personal data provisions; (15) India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (DPDPA) sensitive personal data provisions; (16) Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act biometric provisions; (17) Canadian federal and provincial privacy laws (PIPEDA, Quebec Bill 64 / Law 25, B.C. PIPA, Alberta PIPA); and (18) analogous biometric or special-category-data regimes in other jurisdictions. The Company shall: (a) obtain express informed written or electronic consent before collection of Biometric Data, which is satisfied by your acceptance of these Terms and completion of the four-stage verification process under Section 3.2; (b) provide a public retention schedule and destruction policy in the Company's Privacy Policy at theailab.org; (c) store all retained Biometric Data only in cryptographically protected form, with raw biometric data never retained in original form per Section 8.1; (d) not sell, lease, trade, or otherwise profit from Biometric Data; and (e) destroy Biometric Data no later than three (3) years after the User's last interaction with the Services, or sooner if required by applicable law, by another provision of these Terms (including the termination-data-handling requirements of Section 13), or by an enforceable User request submitted pursuant to Section 8.4. The Company may retain Biometric Data beyond the three-year ceiling only to the extent reasonably necessary to comply with a legal obligation, defend a claim, or operate the Services consistent with these Terms, and any such extended retention shall be limited to the minimum data and minimum duration reasonably required.

6.6.5 Transition Intent. The Company intends, in good faith, to accredit independent Verification Providers as expeditiously as the Company in its sole discretion considers commercially practicable, consistent with the protocol's security and integrity requirements. The Company further intends, after independent VPs are accredited, to enable Users to migrate their TIP-ID issuance authority from the Company VP to an independent VP through a protocol-defined migration procedure. The statements of intent in this Section 6.6.5 reflect the Company's good-faith mission orientation and are not contractual obligations, representations, or warranties. No claim shall arise from the pace, sequencing, scope, completion, or non-completion of any independent VP accreditation, any migration procedure, or any other transitional activity. The Company's discretion under this Section 6.6.5 is unreviewable.

6.6.6 No Choice-of-Provider Claim. You acknowledge that during the Bootstrap Period, alternative Verification Providers may not exist or may not be available in your jurisdiction. Your decision to register with the Company as VP is voluntary. You may decline to register and obtain a TIP-ID at any time. No claim shall arise from the alleged unavailability of an alternative VP during the Bootstrap Period, including any claim premised on lack of competition, lack of consumer choice, or coercion by absence of alternatives.

6.6.7 Cap and Disclaimers Apply Fully. The Company's operation as Verification Provider does not enlarge the Company's liability under these Terms. All warranty disclaimers in Section 10 (including 10.1 General, 10.7 No Bias Warranty, and 10.8 No Content Evaluation) and all liability limitations in Section 11 (including the $100/12-months-fees cap and the express extension to AI, badge, score, and reputational claims in Section 11) apply with full force to claims arising from the Company's conduct as Verification Provider. The Company's status as Verification Provider is not a waiver of any defense available to the Company under these Terms.

6.6.8 Indemnification Applies Fully. Your indemnification obligation under Section 12 extends to claims arising from your interaction with the Company in its capacity as Verification Provider, on the same terms as it applies to claims arising from the Services generally. Without limiting Section 12, your indemnification obligation expressly includes any third-party claim premised on the alleged failure of the Company-VP to detect a fraudulent registration that you procured.

7.Intellectual Property Rights

7.1 Protocol Specification (CC-BY 4.0)

The TIP Protocol v2.0 specification is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. You may read, implement, teach from, and publish the specification without payment or permission, provided every use includes: "TIP Protocol Specification by Dinesh Mendhe, The AI Lab Intelligence Unobscured, Inc. (theailab.org)."

7.2 Reference Implementation (TIPCL-1.0)

The reference implementation is licensed under TIPCL-1.0, effective January 1, 2026. TIPCL-1.0 is available at no charge to: individual persons under $100K annual revenue; small businesses under $100K annual revenue; nonprofits, NGOs, and charities of any size; accredited educational institutions of any size; government entities of any size; journalism organizations for editorial purposes regardless of size; and R&D/testing use up to 500 external users for a maximum of 12 months. All other commercial users at or above USD $100,000 annual gross revenue must obtain a Commercial License under one of the tiered schedules published at theailab.org/tip-license.

7.3 Commercial License Tiers

A 90-day grace period commences when your revenue first exceeds USD $100,000. Failure to obtain a Commercial License before the grace period expires voids the provisional license retroactively, exposing you to claims for unlicensed use and damages.

7.4 Mandatory Attribution

All users of the Reference Implementation must display in any user-facing interface: "Built on TIP Protocol by The AI Lab Intelligence Unobscured, Inc. (theailab.org) | Licensed under TIPCL-1.0." This attribution obligation survives the 2031 conversion to Apache 2.0 through permanent NOTICE file preservation.

7.5 Trademarks

The following are trademarks, service marks, trade names, or trade dress of The AI Lab Intelligence Unobscured, Inc. (collectively, the "Company Marks"): (a) Trust Identity Protocol™ and its abbreviation TIP™; (b) AI Trust ID™ (including the AI Trust ID™ Seal in all colorways and sizes); (c) AI Trust Registry™; (d) AI Trust Council™; (e) The Global Seal of Trust™; (f) the company name "The AI Lab", "The AI Lab Intelligence Unobscured, Inc.", and the abbreviation "TheAILab"; (g) the slogan "Intelligence, Unobscured."; (h) Origin Code mnemonics OH, AA, AG, and MX as used in connection with the Services; (i) the logos and visual identity of any of the foregoing; and (j) any other marks the Company adopts and uses in connection with the Services from time to time. All rights in the Company Marks are reserved. No trademark license is granted by these Terms or by TIPCL-1.0. A separate written trademark license is required for any use of any Company Mark. Expressly prohibited without such written license: (i) use in any product name, company name, domain name, social media handle, or hashtag; (ii) display of the AI Trust ID™ Seal or any visual element confusingly similar thereto without registry authorization; (iii) any use implying Company endorsement, sponsorship, partnership, or affiliation; (iv) any modification, derivation, translation, transliteration, or stylization of any Company Mark; (v) any use in keyword advertising, search engine optimization, meta tags, or paid search bidding that creates a likelihood of confusion as to source; (vi) any registration or attempted registration of any Company Mark (or any confusingly similar mark) by you in any jurisdiction; and (vii) any use that dilutes, tarnishes, or disparages any Company Mark. The Company reserves all remedies under the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. § 1051 et seq.), the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (15 U.S.C. § 1125(d)), state common-law trademark and unfair competition statutes, the EU Trade Mark Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2017/1001), the U.K. Trade Marks Act 1994, and analogous trademark and unfair competition laws of other jurisdictions, consistent with the reservation of remedies in Section 15.26.

7.6 Patent Pending Notice

The TIP Protocol incorporates inventions subject to two United States provisional patent applications filed in March 2026 under 35 U.S.C. § 111(b), covering claim groups A through J: biometric verification stack (A); origin declaration system (B); deterministic trust scoring (C); dual-badge system (D); HTTP header integration (E); peppered zero-knowledge deduplication (F); adaptive creator-calibrated AI pre-scan (G); multi-type identity revocation (H); GDPR-compliant score visibility control (I); and VP jurisdiction tier classification (J). The non-provisional deadline is March 12, 2027. No patent license is granted by these Terms.

7.7 User License Grant to the Company for Protocol Operation

You hereby grant to the Company and its successors, assignees, affiliates, Verification Providers (whether the Company itself during the Bootstrap Period under Section 6.6 or independent VPs thereafter), node operators, and contractors (collectively for purposes of this Section 7.7, "Company Operators"), a worldwide, perpetual (subject only to the limits in clause (g) below), irrevocable (subject only to clause (g) below), royalty-free, fully paid-up, sublicensable, non-exclusive license to use, host, store, cache, index, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, perform, publicly display, publicly perform, modify (only to the limited extent technically necessary for protocol operation, such as cryptographic hashing, format conversion, and metadata derivation), and otherwise process the following materials submitted by you to the Services (collectively, "User Submitted Materials"): (a) Origin Code declarations and their accompanying supporting attestations; (b) cryptographic hashes (SHAKE-256 and any successor digests) of content you register via TIP-CONTENT under Section 6; (c) metadata associated with your TIP-ID, including jurisdiction tier, verification level, and revocation status; (d) Trust Score inputs, computations, and outputs derived from your conduct on the Protocol; (e) adjudication submissions, evidence, and votes you submit as a Stage 2 juror or Stage 3 expert panelist under Section 5.4; (f) attestations, endorsements, and statements you make under Section 7.4 (Mandatory Attribution); and (g) any other content, signal, or metadata you submit to the Services in connection with the operation of the Protocol. This license is granted solely for the purposes of: (i) operating the Services and the TIP Protocol; (ii) populating the AI Trust Registry public lookup surface; (iii) computing and displaying Trust Scores; (iv) issuing and displaying badges and AI Trust ID™ Seals; (v) executing the §5.4 Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3 adjudication processes; (vi) maintaining the federated DAG ledger under Section 3.3 (Immutability); (vii) responding to law-enforcement and regulatory obligations under Sections 15.20 and 15.24; (viii) conducting fraud prevention, security investigations, and abuse-mitigation activities; (ix) defending the Company and Protected Persons against claims under Section 12 (Indemnification); and (x) any other purpose reasonably related to the operation of the Services as set forth in these Terms or the Integrated Documents under Section 15.1. The license is conditioned on the Company's compliance with the Privacy Policy referenced in Section 15.1 and Section 8 of these Terms. Limits on Perpetuity and Irrevocability. Notwithstanding the perpetual and irrevocable character of this license: (1) you may, by initiating a REVOKE_VOLUNTARY transaction under Section 13.3 or by exercising your data-subject rights under Section 8 and applicable law, terminate prospective use of personal data not embedded in the immutable DAG, subject to the §13.5 enumerated exceptions and the technical-impossibility doctrine for validated DAG records; (2) the Company's continued display, preservation, and use of validated DAG transactions (including without limitation Origin Code declarations, content hashes, Trust Score history, and badge issuance records) survives any User license-revocation under Section 3.3, Section 13.5, and the public-interest exceptions of GDPR Article 17(3) and analogous statutes; and (3) license-revocation by the User does not unwind any third-party reliance, public-lookup display, or downstream use of the Protocol's validated records.

7.8 Feedback License

If you provide to the Company any feedback, comment, suggestion, idea, recommendation, bug report, feature request, complaint, criticism, design proposal, code contribution (excluding contributions made under a separate written agreement such as a contributor license agreement), or other communication concerning the Services, the TIP Protocol, the Reference Implementation, the AI Pre-Scan classifier, the Multi-Model Consensus Classification, the AI Trust Registry, the AI Trust ID™ Seal, or any other Company product, service, or operation (collectively, "Feedback"), you grant to the Company a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid-up, sublicensable, transferable, non-exclusive, fully exploitable license to use, copy, reproduce, modify, distribute, display, perform, create derivative works of, sublicense, transfer, sell, license, and otherwise exploit the Feedback for any purpose, including without limitation incorporation into the Services, incorporation into Company products, marketing, training of AI systems (subject to and consistent with the Company's privacy commitments), publication in technical literature, public presentation, and patent application. You waive any moral rights you may have in the Feedback to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, and you waive any right to compensation, attribution, royalty, share of revenue, equity, or analogous benefit arising from the Company's use of the Feedback. You represent and warrant that: (i) you have the right to provide the Feedback; (ii) the Feedback does not infringe any third party's intellectual property, privacy, or other rights; (iii) the Feedback does not include any confidential information of any third party (including your employer) that you are not authorized to disclose; and (iv) the Feedback is not subject to any open-source license, copyleft license, or analogous obligation that would burden the Company's use thereof. The Company is under no obligation to use, incorporate, credit, or compensate you for any Feedback; the Company's right to use Feedback is independent of any decision by the Company whether to incorporate the Feedback into the Services or any other Company product or service.

7.9 User Retention of Underlying Copyright in Registered Content

The license granted by you to the Company under Section 7.7 is a limited license to operate the Protocol; it is not an assignment, transfer, or sale of copyright, trademark, patent, trade-secret, right of publicity, or analogous right in the underlying content that you register through TIP-CONTENT. You retain all underlying copyright, trademark, patent, trade-secret, right-of-publicity, and analogous rights in the content you register, subject to the limited license granted under Section 7.7. Registration of content with the TIP Protocol does not: (a) constitute publication of the underlying content (the Protocol records a hash and metadata, not the content itself); (b) constitute a license to any third party to use the underlying content (any such license must be granted separately by you); (c) waive any moral right you may have in the underlying content to the extent recognized by applicable law; (d) waive your right to publish, license, sell, or otherwise exploit the underlying content elsewhere; or (e) waive your right to enforce your intellectual property rights against unauthorized third-party use of the underlying content. The Company makes no claim of ownership over the underlying content you register, and the Company's preservation of immutable DAG records of your registration is a technical operation consistent with Sections 3.3 and 13.5 and not an exercise of ownership over the underlying content. For the avoidance of doubt: the Section 15.12 (No Training Use of TIP Data) prohibition on using TIP Protocol data to train AI applies to TIP Protocol data (Origin Codes, Trust Scores, hashes, metadata, registry artifacts); it does not, by itself, restrict your separate ability to license or share the underlying content with third parties (including AI developers) outside the Protocol, subject to your other obligations under these Terms (including Section 9 (Prohibited Conduct) and Section 15.11 (Statutory Compliance)).

7.7 AI Trust ID Seal - Registry-Issued Only

The AI Trust ID™ Seal in all colorways and sizes is a registry-issued credential that may only be generated and distributed by the Company's official registry or an entity with express written authorization. No User, developer, VP, or commercial licensee may self-generate or display any visual element reproducing, approximating, or likely to be confused with the AI Trust ID™ Seal.

8.Privacy, Biometric Data, and GDPR Compliance

8.1 Biometric Data Handling

By initiating registration, you provide express, informed, and freely given consent to the collection, processing, and storage of your Biometric Data. Key handling principles: raw biometric data is never stored in original form - only the SHAKE-256 cryptographic hash of a 512-dimensional facial embedding is retained; government identity documents are processed for verification and immediately deleted; the biometric hash is further protected by a peppered zero-knowledge deduplication system (FIX-02) preventing re-identification; and your private key is generated within and never leaves your device's hardware security enclave.

8.2 GDPR, U.K. GDPR, Swiss FADP, and Analogous Data Protection Compliance

For Users in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, Switzerland, or analogous jurisdictions, the Company processes personal data under: (a) the EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and EU Member State implementing laws for EU/EEA Users; (b) the U.K. GDPR (the retained Regulation as defined in section 3(10) of the U.K. European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018) and the U.K. Data Protection Act 2018 for U.K. Users (which are SEPARATE statutes from EU GDPR post-Brexit and are enforced by the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office); (c) the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) framework for Swiss Users; (d) Brazil's Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) for Brazilian Users; (e) India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (DPDPA) for Indian Users; (f) Canada's PIPEDA and provincial privacy statutes for Canadian Users; (g) Australia's Privacy Act 1988 and Australian Privacy Principles for Australian Users; (h) Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) for Japanese Users; (i) Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) for Singaporean Users; and (j) analogous data protection regimes for Users in other jurisdictions. The Company processes personal data on the following legal bases under GDPR Art. 6 and analogous statutes: (i) contract performance (Art. 6(1)(b)) for TIP-ID issuance and Service delivery; (ii) legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) for fraud prevention, security, and Service integrity; (iii) explicit consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) for FULL_PUBLIC score display mode and any marketing communications under Section 4.9; (iv) compliance with legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) for law enforcement cooperation, mandatory reporting under Section 15.24, and regulatory compliance under Section 15.20; and (v) protection of vital interests (Art. 6(1)(d)) where applicable, including emergency safety scenarios under Section 10.10. Where the User registers biometric data, processing of special-category data is governed by Art. 9 GDPR (and analogous statutes) under the explicit-consent basis (Art. 9(2)(a)), with the additional protections of Section 6.6.4. The Company's Data Protection Officer may be contacted at dpo@theailab.org. The Company has appointed (or shall appoint where required by applicable law) Data Protection Officers under GDPR Art. 37, EU Representatives under GDPR Art. 27, U.K. Representatives under U.K. GDPR Art. 27, and analogous national-level representatives for each jurisdiction in which appointment is required by applicable law.

8.3 Trust Score Display and GDPR Article 22

The default Trust Score display mode is TIER_ONLY (pursuant to GDPR Art. 25 data minimization), showing only the tier label without the numeric score. Users may elect: FULL_PUBLIC (numeric score plus tier, requires explicit opt-in consent); TIER_ONLY (default, tier label only); or VERIFIED_ONLY (binary verified/unverified status). All display mode changes are recorded as signed UPDATE_DISPLAY_MODE transactions on the DAG. Zero-knowledge score threshold proofs are available for relying parties requiring minimum-score verification without disclosure of the numeric value.

8.4 Right to Erasure

Users may submit a GDPR Art. 17 erasure request to dpo@theailab.org. Upon verification, the Company will remove all personal data fields from API responses, write a HISTORY_ERASED transaction to the DAG, and delete off-chain personal data within 30 days, subject to the retention exceptions of GDPR Art. 17(3) and analogous provisions of comparable privacy laws. The Company may retain personal data, in whole or in part, where retention is necessary: (i) for compliance with a legal obligation requiring processing by Union or Member State law to which the Company is subject; (ii) for the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims; (iii) for reasons of public interest in the area of public health, archiving in the public interest, scientific or historical research, or statistical purposes consistent with Art. 89(1); (iv) to operate the Services consistent with these Terms, including the immutable DAG architecture under Section 3.3; or (v) to comply with mandatory reporting obligations under Section 15.24 or analogous statutes. By the technical architecture of the DAG, transaction hashes, CTIDs, Trust Score values, and adjudication outcomes cannot be deleted from the ledger but will no longer be associated with your personal identity in API responses to the extent technically practicable. The Company's good-faith application of the Art. 17(3) exceptions or the technical-architecture limitation shall not constitute a breach of these Terms.

8.5 Data Transfers

Your personal data may be transferred to and processed in the United States and other countries. Cross-border transfers of personal data are conducted under applicable lawful transfer mechanisms, including without limitation: (a) the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/914) for transfers from the EU/EEA; (b) the U.K. International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) and U.K. Addendum to EU SCCs (issued by the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office) for transfers from the United Kingdom; (c) Swiss FDPIC-approved Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers from Switzerland; (d) the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (DPF), U.K. Extension to the DPF, and Swiss-U.S. DPF, where the Company or relevant recipient is DPF-certified; (e) Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs) where adopted; (f) adequacy decisions of the European Commission, the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office, and the Swiss Federal Council; (g) APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) System and Privacy Recognition for Processors (PRP); (h) the cross-border transfer provisions of Canada's PIPEDA, Quebec Law 25, and provincial privacy statutes; (i) Australia's Australian Privacy Principle 8 cross-border disclosure requirements; (j) Brazil's Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) international transfer mechanisms; (k) India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 cross-border transfer rules; (l) Singapore's PDPA Transfer Limitation Obligation; and (m) analogous transfer mechanisms in other jurisdictions. The Company does not sell or voluntarily share personal data with third parties for commercial purposes. Voluntary data sharing by any VP constitutes grounds for immediate revocation of accreditation.

8.6 Sub-Processors

You authorize the Company to engage third-party sub-processors to perform processing activities on behalf of the Company in support of the Services. Sub-processors include, without limitation: cloud infrastructure providers (such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and NVIDIA hosting), payment processors, identity-document verification specialists, anti-fraud and Know-Your-Customer providers, accounting and audit firms, customer-support platforms, email-delivery services, security operations and incident-response providers, and legal counsel. The Company shall require each sub-processor to provide sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organizational measures consistent with the requirements of GDPR Article 28, the analogous obligations of U.S. state privacy statutes, and the data-protection obligations of these Terms. The Company maintains an internal list of material sub-processors and will provide a current copy in response to a reasonable written request to dpo@theailab.org. The Company may add or replace sub-processors at any time, in its sole discretion and without prior individual notice to you, where reasonably necessary for the operation of the Services. Engagement of a sub-processor does not transfer or reduce the Company's obligations to you under these Terms, except that the Company's liability for the acts and omissions of any sub-processor remains subject to the disclaimers of Section 10 and the cap of Section 11.

9.Prohibited Conduct

You agree that you will not, and will not permit or facilitate any third party to:

1. Register more than one (1) active TIP-ID, whether in your own name, under an alias, through a nominee, or by any other means of circumventing the zero-knowledge deduplication system.
2. Submit fraudulent, altered, or misrepresenting identity documents or biometric data during the registration process.
3. Knowingly make a false Origin Code declaration with respect to any content registration.
4. Impersonate any other person, entity, or TIP-ID holder, or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity.
5. Attempt to reverse-engineer, reconstruct, or derive the biometric data or private cryptographic keys of any TIP-ID holder from DAG information.
6. Submit, facilitate, or participate in a sybil attack, coordinated false attestation, or any scheme designed to artificially inflate any User's Trust Score.
7. Display, reproduce, or distribute the AI Trust ID™ Seal or any confusingly similar badge without registry authorization.
8. Use any TIP™ trademark or brand element without a separate trademark license agreement.
9. Deploy the Reference Implementation commercially at or above USD $100,000 annual gross revenue without a valid Commercial License under one of the tiered schedules published at theailab.org/tip-license.
10. Operate a VP Node or issue TIP-IDs without valid Company accreditation.
11. Attempt to alter, suppress, fork, or otherwise compromise the integrity of the DAG ledger, Genesis Block parameters, or any validated transaction.
12. Use the Services to register, promote, or distribute content that violates applicable law, infringes intellectual property rights, constitutes defamation or harassment, depicts minors in a sexual context, or constitutes incitement to violence.
13. Conduct denial-of-service attacks, credential stuffing, port scanning, or any form of automated abuse against any TIP Protocol node, API, or infrastructure.
14. Reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble any Service component except as expressly permitted by applicable law.
15. Remove, obscure, or alter any copyright notice, trademark notice, or attribution requirement from the Reference Implementation or any derivative work.
16. Circumvent, disable, or interfere with any security, authentication, or access control mechanism of the Services.
17. Engage in any conduct that violates any applicable law, regulation, or court order in any jurisdiction (including without limitation any law enumerated in Section 15.11), regardless of whether such conduct is specifically named in this Section 9.
18. Engage in any conduct that breaches these Terms, any policy referenced in these Terms (including the Privacy Policy, the Acceptable Use Policy, the TIPCL-1.0 License, the TIP-VP Code of Conduct, and any policy published by the Company at theailab.org), or any applicable Commercial License agreement.
19. Engage in any other conduct that, in the Company's reasonable judgment, is harmful to the Services, the DAG, other Users, the integrity of the TIP Protocol, the security of the Company's infrastructure, the safety of any Verification Provider's operations, or the legitimate interests of the Company or its Protected Persons as defined in Section 15.18.

10.Disclaimer of Warranties

10.1 General Warranty Disclaimer

10.2 Trust Score Disclaimer

The Trust Score is a mathematical output of the DAG transaction history algorithm. It is not a certification of moral character, journalistic integrity, or professional competence. The Company makes no representation regarding the relationship between a Trust Score and actual trustworthiness in any context outside content origin declaration accuracy. All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.2, including without limitation defamation, false-light, trade-libel, or reputational-harm claims premised on Trust Score display, remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11 (including the §11 paragraph 5 explicit cap extension to Trust Score adjustment and reputational-harm claims), the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, the §15.16 CDA Section 230 reservation, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.2 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of liability, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3. To the extent any portion of this Section 10.2 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction.

10.3 AI Classifier Accuracy Disclaimer

The AI pre-scan classifier, the Multi-Model Consensus Classification system, and any other automated analysis system operated by or on behalf of the Company are probabilistic tools and are not warranted to achieve any particular accuracy rate. False positives (human-authored content assessed as likely AI-generated) and false negatives (AI-generated content assessed as likely human-authored) are inherent characteristics of statistical classification systems and will occur. The Company makes no representation regarding the reliability of any individual classification output. All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.3 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the advisory-classifier framework of Section 5.6, the liability cap of Section 11, the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.3 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of liability, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3 (death or personal injury caused by the Company's gross negligence or willful misconduct, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law in your jurisdiction). To the extent any portion of this Section 10.3 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction.

10.4 Badge Display Disclaimer

TIP Protocol badges, including but not limited to Origin Code labels (OH, AA, AG, MX), Trust Scores, jurisdiction tier indicators, AI Trust ID Seals, and adjudication status indicators ("Pending Review," "Under Review," "Disputed," "Cleared," "Confirmed Mismatch"), are displayed based on information provided by the content creator and reviewed under the Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3 process described in Section 5.4. The Company does not guarantee, warrant, or represent that any displayed badge accurately reflects the true origin of any content. Displayed badges represent the Company's best-effort determination at a particular point in time based on the information then available and may be revised, withdrawn, or augmented at any time. All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.4 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11 (including the §11 paragraph 5 explicit cap extension to badge display and Trust Score claims), the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, the §15.16 CDA Section 230 reservation, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.4 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of liability, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3. To the extent any portion of this Section 10.4 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction.

10.5 Reader Reliance Limitation

10.6 No Guarantee of Continuous Service

The Company makes no warranty that the Services, the DAG, the AI Trust Registry public lookup surface, the AI pre-scan classifier, or any node or API will be uninterrupted, available at any particular service level, or available in any particular jurisdiction. The free-tier of the Services is provided without any service-level agreement. The Company may suspend, throttle, or modify any portion of the Services at any time for any reason, including maintenance, security incidents, regulatory compliance, or strategic change. Suspension or modification of the Services does not give rise to any claim for damages by any User. All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.6 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11, the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.6 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of liability, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3 (death or personal injury caused by the Company's gross negligence or willful misconduct, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law in your jurisdiction). To the extent any portion of this Section 10.6 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction.

10.7 No Bias or Demographic Performance Warranty

You acknowledge that any statistical classification system, including the AI Pre-Scan and Multi-Model Consensus Classification systems operated by or on behalf of the Company, may exhibit performance characteristics that vary across demographic, linguistic, stylistic, or content-type populations. The Company does not warrant, and expressly disclaims any representation, that classification accuracy, false-positive rates, or false-negative rates are uniform across any such population. Variation in statistical performance across populations is a known characteristic of probabilistic classifiers and is not a defect, a breach of these Terms, or a basis for any claim. The Company may, in its sole discretion and as resources permit, undertake calibration work intended to reduce performance disparities where reasonably practicable, but the Company is under no obligation to do so under these Terms and makes no representation that any particular level of demographic uniformity has been achieved or will be achieved. All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.7 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11, the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.7 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of liability, while preserving any non-waivable rights under applicable anti-discrimination laws (including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, Section 1981, New York City Local Law 144, the Illinois Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, and analogous laws) and the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3. To the extent any portion of this Section 10.7 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction.

10.8 No Content Evaluation

The TIP Protocol records origin declarations and signature-bound provenance metadata. The Company does not, by virtue of operating the Protocol or accepting a content registration, evaluate, endorse, certify, or take any position regarding the message, opinion, political viewpoint, factual accuracy, scientific validity, artistic merit, or any other substantive characteristic of any registered content. The Origin Code declares how content was created, not what content says. No badge, score, or registry entry shall be construed as an endorsement, certification, or warranty of the substantive content of any work. The Company expressly disclaims liability for any claim premised on the theory that the Company evaluated, endorsed, or vouched for the substantive content of any registered work. All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.8 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11, the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, the CDA Section 230 reservation of Section 15.16, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.8 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of liability, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3. To the extent any portion of this Section 10.8 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction.

10.9 Data Loss and Service Outage Disclaimer

Users are solely responsible for maintaining their own backups of any User-controlled data, including private keys, account credentials, draft content prior to registration, and any local records of TIP-CONTENT identifiers. The Company is not obligated to provide a data export, recovery, or restoration service of any kind. The immutability of validated DAG transactions under Section 3.3 does not constitute a warranty against any specific form of data loss, mutation, or inaccessibility. All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.9 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11, the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.9 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of liability, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3 (death or personal injury caused by the Company's gross negligence or willful misconduct, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law in your jurisdiction, including non-waivable data-breach-notification, consumer-protection, or analogous statutory rights). To the extent any portion of this Section 10.9 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction.

10.10 Mental Health, Personal Wellbeing, and Self-Harm Disclaimer

The Company expressly disclaims all liability, in contract, tort (including negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress, wrongful death, survival action, and loss of consortium), statute, or any other theory, for: (a) any self-harm, suicide, suicide attempt, self-injury, eating disorder, substance use disorder, mental health crisis, panic attack, hospitalization, or any other adverse personal-wellbeing outcome experienced by any User or by any other natural person, regardless of cause or contributing factor; (b) any decision by a User or other natural person to harm themselves, to harm any other natural person, or to harm any property in response to a Trust Score adjustment, an Origin Code dispute, a public badge display, a registry lookup, a content-classification outcome, a TIP-ID revocation, a reputational change, an emotional or psychological reaction to any feature of the Services, or any other event whatsoever related to the Services; the disclaimer in this paragraph (b) extends to claims by the User themselves (alleging the Services caused their decision and the consequences of that decision), claims by victims of such User-decisions, and claims by family members or estates of any party involved, in each case to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law and subject only to the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3; (c) any allegation that the Services, the AI Pre-Scan, the Multi-Model Consensus Classification, any badge, any Trust Score, any classification outcome, or any communication from the Company or its personnel caused emotional distress, anxiety, depression, paranoia, post-traumatic stress, agoraphobia, social withdrawal, or any other psychological, psychiatric, or medical condition; (d) any allegation of negligent design, negligent operation, or failure to warn with respect to the psychological or wellbeing consequences of any feature of the Services. Users experiencing mental health distress are urged to contact qualified mental health professionals, crisis hotlines, or emergency services in their jurisdiction; the Company does not provide and does not represent that it provides any such service. If a User or any third party communicates to the Company a present intention to harm themselves or another person, the Company may, in its sole discretion and through any of its personnel acting in good faith, take such actions as the Company considers appropriate including notification to emergency services or other authorities where the Company in its discretion considers such notification appropriate or required by applicable law, but the Company has no affirmative duty to take, and no liability for taking or for failing to take, any such action.

All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.10 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11, the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.10 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of liability, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3 (death or personal injury caused by the Company's gross negligence or willful misconduct, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law in your jurisdiction). To the extent any portion of this Section 10.10 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction.

10.11 User-Caused Harm to Third Parties

A User who causes or contributes to harm suffered by any other natural person or legal entity through use of the Services, whether by misrepresenting the origin of content, by harassing another User, by infringing intellectual property of any party, by defaming or trade-libeling a third party, by committing fraud, by stalking, by inciting violence, by impersonating another person or entity, by causing reputational damage, by causing emotional distress, or by any other means, bears sole responsibility for that harm. The Company is not liable to any harmed third party for any such User-caused harm, including liability sounding in negligence, products liability, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, or vicarious liability. The harmed third party's recourse, where any exists, is against the User who caused the harm and not against the Company. This Section 10.11 is enforceable as a covenant by each User not to seek to shift to the Company any responsibility for harm the User caused to a third party, and the indemnification obligation of Section 12 applies fully to any such third-party claim brought against the Company. All matters arising under this Section 10.11 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11, the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.11 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of allocation of responsibility to the User who caused the harm, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3 (death or personal injury caused by the Company's gross negligence or willful misconduct, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law in your jurisdiction). To the extent any portion of this Section 10.11 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction, and any unenforceable User covenant shall be reformed to the broadest enforceable scope.

10.12 Comprehensive Disclaimer for Personal, Economic, Property, and Status Harm

Without limiting any other provision of these Terms, the Company expressly disclaims all liability, in contract, tort, strict liability, statute, or any other theory of recovery, for each of the following categories of harm, whether suffered by a User or by any third party, and whether allegedly caused by, contributed to, exacerbated by, or in any way connected with the Services:

(a) Bodily injury and physical health: any bodily injury, physical injury, illness, disease, disability, or death, except where and to the extent required by applicable law that cannot be excluded under these Terms (including the narrow carve-out of Section 11 paragraph 3 for death or personal injury caused by the Company's gross negligence or willful misconduct).

(b) Property damage: any damage to hardware, software, mobile devices, computing equipment, networks, vehicles, real property, or any other tangible or intangible property of any User or third party, regardless of cause.

(c) Financial and economic loss: any financial loss, economic loss, lost profits, lost revenue, lost business opportunities, lost contracts, lost investments, diminished earning capacity, market-share loss, currency loss, tax consequences, or any other monetary or pecuniary loss.

(d) Employment, professional, and licensing harm: any job loss, demotion, denial of promotion, denial of employment offer, termination, suspension, professional-license consequences, professional-association consequences, board-certification consequences, security-clearance consequences, or workplace disciplinary action.

(e) Reputational and social-standing harm: any loss of social standing, professional reputation, community standing, online reputation, family reputation, or standing within any organization, religious community, or cultural community, beyond the reputational claims already addressed in Section 11 and Section 10.5.

(f) Family, relationship, and domestic harm: any marital breakdown, divorce, separation, custody dispute, denial of visitation, family estrangement, romantic relationship breakdown, friendship loss, or any consequence flowing from a User's family or domestic relationships.

(g) Educational and academic harm: any failed examination, denied admission, denied credential, denied certification, revoked degree, denied scholarship, academic suspension, expulsion, or other educational-status consequence.

(h) Immigration, citizenship, and residency consequences: any visa denial, visa revocation, citizenship-application consequence, residency-status consequence, deportation, exclusion, denial of asylum, or denial of refugee status.

(i) Insurance, benefit, and government-program consequences: any denial of insurance coverage, denial of insurance claim, increase in insurance premium, denial of government benefit, denial of pension, denial of social-security determination, or any other consequence affecting insurance or government-program eligibility or value.

(j) Identity theft, impersonation, and fraud against a User: any harm arising from a third party's fraudulent acquisition, use, or impersonation of a TIP-ID, a related credential, or biometric data, except where the Company has acted with gross negligence or willful misconduct and to the extent such liability cannot be excluded under applicable law.

(k) Cybersecurity incidents: any harm arising from a successful or attempted cyberattack against the Company, a Verification Provider, a User's device, or any third-party system, except as expressly required by applicable data-breach-notification law and to the extent such law cannot be excluded.

(l) Catch-all: any other personal, physical, psychological, economic, property, social, professional, or status harm of a similar character to those enumerated above, whether or not specifically named in this Section 10.12.

All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.12 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11, the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.12 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of liability, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3 (death or personal injury from the Company's gross negligence or willful misconduct, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law in your jurisdiction).

10.13 No Consumer Reporting Agency, Background Check Service, or Tenant Screening Status

The Company is not, and does not operate the Services as, a consumer reporting agency, credit reporting agency, credit bureau, credit information service, background check service, employment screening service, tenant screening service, insurance investigation service, "investigative consumer reporting agency," or any other entity that assembles or evaluates consumer information for the purpose of furnishing consumer reports to third parties. Without limitation: (a) the Company is not a "consumer reporting agency" within the meaning of the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681a(f), or any state consumer-credit-reporting statute including the California Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act (Cal. Civ. Code § 1785.3), the California Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (Cal. Civ. Code § 1786.2), the New York Fair Credit Reporting Act (N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law Art. 25), the Vermont Fair Credit Reporting Act (9 V.S.A. § 2480a), the Massachusetts Consumer Credit Reporting Act (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93 § 50), the Maine Fair Credit Reporting Act, and analogous state statutes; (b) Trust Scores, Origin Code declarations, jurisdiction tier indicators, adjudication status indicators, badge displays, AI Trust ID Seals, and all other artifacts of the TIP Protocol are not "consumer reports" within the meaning of 15 U.S.C. § 1681a(d) or any analogous foreign or state statute, are not "investigative consumer reports" within the meaning of 15 U.S.C. § 1681a(e), are not "credit scores" within the meaning of 15 U.S.C. § 1681g(f), are not "consumer financial information" within the meaning of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 15 U.S.C. § 6801 et seq., and are not "consumer file information" of any other regulated character; (c) the Company is not a "credit reference agency" within the meaning of the U.K. Consumer Credit Act 1974 § 145(8) or the U.K. Data Protection Act 2018, is not a "credit information company" under India's Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act 2005, is not a credit reporting agency under Canada's Consumer Reporting Act (Ont.) or analogous provincial credit-reporting statutes, is not a credit information bureau under the Reserve Bank of India guidelines or analogous foreign banking regulator guidelines, and is not regulated as a credit-information service under the EU Consumer Credit Directive (2008/48/EC) or its successor; (d) the Company is not a "tenant screening service," "tenant information service," or analogous entity under any U.S. state or foreign tenant-screening statute, including without limitation New York Tenant Data Privacy Act (Local Law 73 of 2021), Washington RCW 59.18.257, California Civil Code § 1950.6, Massachusetts tenant-screening regulations, and analogous statutes; (e) the Company is not an "employment screening service," "background check service," or "consumer reporting agency for employment purposes" under FCRA § 1681b(b), the California Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act, the New York City Fair Chance Act, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance on background checks, or analogous statutes; (f) the Company does not offer the Services for the purpose of facilitating decisions on consumer credit, insurance underwriting, employment, tenancy, government licensing or benefits eligibility, or any other "permissible purpose" within the meaning of FCRA § 1681b(a) or analogous statutes, and the Company makes no representation that the Services are suitable for any such use; (g) the Company does not perform "automated decisionmaking" or "profiling" within the meaning of GDPR Art. 22, U.K. GDPR Art. 22, EU AI Act Art. 6 high-risk system thresholds, the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act SB24-205, the California Consumer Privacy Act CPRA automated-decisionmaking regulations, NYC Local Law 144 (automated employment decision tools), the Illinois Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act, or analogous statutes, and to the extent any User or third party uses Trust Score or other Protocol output as an input to such automated decisionmaking, that User or third party assumes all regulatory and legal responsibility for the resulting decision and the Company has no responsibility for such use; (h) the Company does not assemble, compile, or sell consumer dossiers, consumer profiles, marketing lists, identity-graphs, or other "data broker" information products within the meaning of the Vermont Data Broker Act (9 V.S.A. § 2446), the California Data Broker Registration Act (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.99.80), the Texas Data Broker Registration Act (Tex. Bus. & Com. Code Ch. 509), the Oregon Data Broker Registration Act, and analogous statutes (although the Company shall register as a data broker where required by law); and (i) the public AI Trust Registry lookup surface is a transparency tool reflecting only the User's own publicly-recorded declarations and adjudication outcomes on the DAG, and is not a "consumer report" or "background check" prepared by the Company about the User. Any User, third party, or other entity that nonetheless uses Trust Score, Origin Code, adjudication status, badge display, or any other Protocol output as an input to a decision on consumer credit, employment, tenancy, insurance, government licensing or benefits, child custody, immigration, or any other decision regulated under FCRA or any analog statute does so at its own risk and is solely responsible for compliance with all such regulatory obligations, including without limitation FCRA permissible-purpose certifications under § 1681b(f), pre-adverse-action notice requirements under § 1681b(b)(3), adverse-action notice requirements under § 1681m, and analogous foreign and state requirements. The Company expressly disclaims any duty owed to any User or third party premised on the theory that the Company is a consumer reporting agency, background check service, tenant screening service, employment screening service, credit reporting agency, credit information service, data broker, or any analogous regulated entity. To the extent any jurisdiction nonetheless characterizes any aspect of the Services as falling within any of the foregoing regulated categories despite this disclaimer, the Company reserves the right under Section 15.20 to suspend, modify, restrict, geofence, or discontinue the Services in that jurisdiction to comply with the applicable regulatory regime, without liability to any User. All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.13 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11, the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.13 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of regulated-entity status, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3 and any non-waivable rights under FCRA or analogous statutes that cannot be excluded by contract. To the extent any portion of this Section 10.13 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction.

10.14 No Professional Advice, No Professional Relationship

The Services, including the TIP-ID identity issuance, the TIP-CONTENT provenance recording, the Trust Score, the AI Pre-Scan and Multi-Model Consensus Classification outputs, the Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3 adjudication outcomes, the badge displays, the AI Trust ID™ Seal, the AI Trust Registry public lookup surface, the documentation at theailab.org, and all other Services and outputs, are technical infrastructure for content origin declaration and verification. They are not professional advice of any kind and shall not be construed, used, or relied upon as professional advice. Without limitation: (a) no legal advice: no Company communication, Service feature, badge, Trust Score, classifier output, or documentation constitutes legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship, attorney-work-product protection, or legal-privilege relationship is formed between the Company (or any Protected Person under Section 15.18) and any User, reader, or third party by virtue of the Services; the Company is not a law firm and does not engage in the practice of law; (b) no medical or mental-health advice: no Service feature, badge, classifier output, or other Service output constitutes medical advice, psychiatric advice, psychological advice, counseling advice, therapy, diagnosis, treatment, or any other professional health-care service, and no doctor-patient, therapist-client, or analogous professional-care relationship is formed by virtue of the Services; the Company is not a health-care provider, mental-health-care provider, suicide-prevention service, crisis-intervention service, or behavioral-health service; persons in mental-health crisis should contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (United States), Samaritans (United Kingdom), or analogous national crisis services in their jurisdiction, in addition to any other steps acknowledged in Section 10.10; (c) no financial, investment, securities, banking, accounting, or tax advice: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, or output constitutes financial advice, investment advice, securities advice, broker-dealer recommendation, advisory recommendation under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, banking advice, accounting advice, audit advice, bookkeeping advice, tax advice, tax-preparation service, or other regulated financial advisory service, and no broker-client, investment-advisory, banking-customer, accountant-client, or tax-preparer relationship is formed by virtue of the Services; the Company is not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, bank, money transmitter, certified public accountant, enrolled agent, tax preparer, or other financial-services provider; this is in addition to Section 15.25 (No Securities, No Tokens, No Financial Instruments); (d) no insurance advice or insurance-producer relationship: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, or output constitutes insurance advice, underwriting analysis, claims-adjusting determination, broker recommendation, or other regulated insurance service, and no insurance-producer-customer or insurance-broker-client relationship is formed by virtue of the Services; the Company is not a licensed insurance producer, broker, agent, adjuster, surplus-lines broker, or carrier; (e) no real-estate, mortgage, or housing advice: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, or output constitutes real-estate advice, brokerage recommendation, mortgage-loan-officer advice, appraisal, home-inspection determination, or other regulated real-estate service, and no broker-client or analogous real-estate relationship is formed by virtue of the Services; the Company is not a licensed real-estate broker, agent, appraiser, mortgage broker, mortgage loan officer, or housing counselor; (f) no career, employment, or background-investigation advice: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, or output constitutes career-counseling advice, employment-coaching advice, recruiting recommendation, employment-investigation determination, or other regulated employment service; this is in addition to Section 10.13's disclaimer of employment-screening-service status; (g) no education advice: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, or output constitutes educational counseling, academic advising, admissions consulting, tutoring, plagiarism-determination, academic-integrity adjudication, credentialing service, or other regulated education service, and no educator-student or analogous relationship is formed by virtue of the Services; (h) no parenting, child-welfare, or family advice: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, or output constitutes parenting advice, child-welfare determination, custody recommendation, child-protective-services investigation, social-work service, or other regulated family service, and no social-worker-client or analogous relationship is formed by virtue of the Services; the Company is not a licensed social worker, licensed professional counselor, marriage and family therapist, or child-welfare investigator; (i) no pastoral, religious, spiritual, or chaplaincy advice: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, or output constitutes pastoral advice, religious counseling, spiritual direction, chaplaincy service, confessional communication, or other religious-care service, and no clergy-penitent or analogous relationship is formed by virtue of the Services; the Company is not a religious institution, ministry, or pastoral-care provider; (j) no journalism, editorial, or fact-checking advice: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, or output constitutes a journalistic determination, editorial endorsement, fact-checking judgment, source verification (beyond the narrow Origin Code declaration framework), libel-vetting service, or other regulated journalism service; the Company is not a news organization, fact-checker, or editorial publisher within the meaning of any journalism shield law or analog statute; (k) no cybersecurity, incident-response, or threat-intelligence advice: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, or output constitutes a cybersecurity assessment, incident-response recommendation, threat-intelligence determination, penetration-testing report, vulnerability disclosure, or other regulated cybersecurity service; the Company is not a Managed Security Service Provider, CISA-credentialed Incident Response Service Provider, or analogous regulated cybersecurity entity; (l) no AI safety, alignment, evaluation, or red-team certification: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, or output constitutes an AI safety certification, AI alignment endorsement, AI evaluation result within the meaning of the EU AI Act or NIST AI Risk Management Framework, AI red-team report, or other regulated AI-assurance service; the Company is not a notified body, conformity-assessment body, or regulated AI auditor under the EU AI Act, the U.S. NIST AI RMF, the U.K. AI Safety Institute framework, or analogous regimes; (m) no engineering, scientific, professional-services, or expert-witness opinion: no Service feature, Trust Score, badge, classifier output, or other Service output constitutes a licensed engineering opinion, professional scientific opinion, regulated technical certification, or expert-witness opinion within the meaning of Federal Rule of Evidence 702, Federal Rule of Evidence 703, U.K. Civil Procedure Rules Part 35, or analogous foreign procedural rules, and the Company shall not be compelled, by subpoena or otherwise, to act as an expert witness or testifying expert in any proceeding except as required by valid legal process under Section 15.24, in which case the testimony shall be limited to the fact of what is recorded on the public DAG and shall not constitute opinion testimony; and (n) catch-all: no other professional, regulated, licensed, or fiduciary advisory service of any kind is provided through the Services, and no other professional, regulated, licensed, or fiduciary relationship is formed by virtue of the Services. Users seeking professional advice in any of the foregoing domains shall consult a duly licensed professional in the relevant jurisdiction. Any reliance on the Services as a substitute for professional advice is at the User's sole risk, and the Company expressly disclaims any duty of care owed to any User, reader, or third party that is premised on the theory that the Services constitute or include professional advice or that a professional relationship has been formed. To the extent the laws of any jurisdiction would otherwise imply a professional relationship or duty of care from facts that include the operation of the Services, this Section 10.14 is intended to negate any such implication to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. All claims arising from the matters disclaimed in this Section 10.14 remain subject to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the liability cap of Section 11, the dispute resolution framework of Section 14, the No Fiduciary Duty provision of Section 15.21, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. This Section 10.14 is intended to be construed broadly in favor of disclaimer of professional-advice and professional-relationship status, while preserving the narrow carve-outs of Section 11 paragraph 3. To the extent any portion of this Section 10.14 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction or with respect to any specific professional category, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction.

11.Limitation of Liability

The Company's total cumulative liability to you for all claims shall not exceed the greater of: (a) the total fees you actually paid to the Company in the twelve-month period immediately preceding the claim; or (b) one hundred United States dollars (USD $100.00).

These limitations do not apply to: (i) death or personal injury caused by the Company's gross negligence or willful misconduct; (ii) any liability for the Company's fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; (iii) under California Civil Code § 1668 and analogous laws of other jurisdictions, liability for the Company's willful injury to the person or property of another, and liability for the Company's gross negligence (whether or not such gross negligence resulted in death or personal injury); (iv) under the United Kingdom Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977, the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and analogous laws, any liability that cannot be excluded by contract; (v) under the European Union laws of any Member State, any liability arising from gross negligence (faute lourde, grobe Fahrlässigkeit), willful intent (dol, Vorsatz), or breach of any non-waivable consumer-protection right; or (vi) any other liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law in your jurisdiction. The Company's risk allocation under this Section 11 is intended to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in your jurisdiction; the carve-outs of this paragraph 3 preserve only the minimum liability required by such law and shall be construed narrowly.

You acknowledge that the immutable nature of the DAG means certain harms, including permanent Trust Score reductions and persistent content provenance records, cannot be undone by the Company regardless of fault. This is an essential characteristic of the Services that you accept as a condition of use.

For the avoidance of doubt, the limitations of this Section 11 expressly apply, without limitation, to: (a) any claim arising from the operation or output of the AI Pre-Scan, Multi-Model Consensus Classification, third-party Classification Provider, or any other automated analysis system; (b) any claim arising from a Stage 2 human jury determination or Stage 3 expert panel determination; (c) any claim arising from the display, revision, or withdrawal of any TIP Protocol badge; (d) any claim arising from a Trust Score adjustment; (e) any claim arising from the temporary or permanent classification of content as "Pending Review," "Under Review," "Disputed," or "Confirmed Mismatch"; (f) any claim arising from reputational harm allegedly resulting from any of the foregoing; (g) any claim brought by any third party in reliance on a badge displayed by the Company; (h) any claim arising from data loss, data corruption, data deletion, service outage, downtime, latency, throughput degradation, or unavailability of any Service component as described in Section 10.9; (i) any claim arising from mental health distress, emotional distress, self-harm, suicide, suicide attempt, wrongful death, survival action, loss of consortium, negligent infliction of emotional distress, or any other psychological or wellbeing outcome as described in Section 10.10; (j) any claim arising from User-caused harm to third parties through use of the Services as described in Section 10.11; (k) any claim arising from any category of personal, economic, property, professional, family, educational, immigration, insurance, identity-theft, cybersecurity, or other harm enumerated in Section 10.12; (l) any claim arising from the Company's operation as Verification Provider during the Bootstrap Period under Section 6.6, including biometric data handling; (m) any claim arising from the Company's response to or compliance with law enforcement requests or mandatory reporting obligations under Section 15.24; (n) any claim premised on the theory that the Company is a consumer reporting agency, credit reporting agency, background check service, tenant screening service, employment screening service, data broker, automated-decisionmaking provider, or any analogous regulated entity as disclaimed in Section 10.13, including without limitation claims under the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, GDPR Art. 22, the EU AI Act, the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act, NYC Local Law 144, the U.K. Consumer Credit Act, and analogous statutes; and (o) any claim premised on the theory that the Company or any Protected Person provided or rendered professional advice (legal, medical, mental-health, financial, securities, banking, accounting, tax, insurance, real-estate, employment, education, parenting, family, pastoral, journalism, cybersecurity, AI safety, engineering, scientific, expert-witness, or other professional advice) or entered into any professional relationship (attorney-client, doctor-patient, therapist-client, broker-customer, investment-advisory, accountant-client, insurance-producer-customer, social-worker-client, educator-student, clergy-penitent, or other professional or fiduciary relationship) with any User, reader, or third party, all as disclaimed in Section 10.14. No theory of recovery, including but not limited to contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability, statutory liability, products liability, or any other legal or equitable theory, shall result in liability of the Company in excess of the cap set forth in this Section 11, subject only to the narrow carve-outs of paragraph 3 of this Section 11.

Cap Mechanics: Essential-Purpose Waiver, Aggregate Application, Common-Control Aggregation, Rolling Period, and Pro-Rata Allocation. The Section 11 cap is intended to apply at all times to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, subject only to the narrow carve-outs of paragraph 3 of this Section 11. To prevent erosion of the cap by doctrinal arguments or aggregation strategies, the following supplemental mechanics apply: (a) Essential-Purpose Waiver. The Section 11 cap, the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the Section 14 dispute-resolution framework, and the §15.18 Protected Persons shield are intended to be enforced as a single, integrated risk-allocation bargain, even if any other remedy under these Terms is held to fail of its essential purpose. You expressly waive any argument that the §11 cap should be set aside or modified under Uniform Commercial Code § 2-719(2), the doctrine of failure of essential purpose, the doctrine of "minimum adequate remedy," the doctrine of unconscionability (subject to the narrow exceptions of §11 paragraph 3), or any analogous state, federal, or foreign doctrine. The cap is the parties' agreed allocation of risk and stands independently of any other remedy available to you under these Terms. To the extent UCC § 2-719(2) or an analogous doctrine would otherwise permit recovery beyond the cap, you and the Company expressly agree that the cap shall continue to apply and that any additional recovery shall be available only to the minimum extent required by applicable law that cannot be waived by contract. (b) Aggregate Cap. The Section 11 cap is the Company's aggregate maximum liability to you across all claims, all theories of recovery, and all time periods, and not a per-claim, per-theory, per-incident, per-month, or per-year cap. Multiple claims, theories, or incidents shall be aggregated against the single cap, and recovery on one claim, theory, or incident reduces the amount available for any subsequent claim, theory, or incident on a dollar-for-dollar basis. (c) Common-Control Aggregation. The Section 11 cap is the Company's aggregate maximum liability to you and to all of your affiliates, subsidiaries, parents, sister companies, and other entities under common control with you (collectively, "Affiliates"), and not separate caps applicable to each Affiliate. Where you and any Affiliate jointly or separately assert claims arising out of the same or substantially related conduct, the Company's aggregate maximum liability is the single Section 11 cap, allocated pro-rata among the claimants in proportion to their proven damages or as the arbitrator determines is equitable. "Common control" is determined in accordance with the standards of Internal Revenue Code § 1563, Federal Trade Commission Hart-Scott-Rodino Act 16 C.F.R. § 801, GAAP consolidated-financial-statement standards under ASC 810 (variable interest entities and voting-interest models), and analogous foreign accounting standards (including IFRS 10), with the broader of any such tests controlling. (d) Rolling 12-Month Period; No Reset. The "twelve-month period immediately preceding the claim" referenced in the Section 11 cap formula refers to the twelve-month period ending on the date the first claim accrued, regardless of when the claim is asserted, regardless of when any subsequent claim accrues, and regardless of any tolling, suspension, or extension of the limitations period. The cap is not "reset" by the passage of time, by the accrual of subsequent claims, by the filing of subsequent claims, or by any other event. The Section 11 cap is a single, cumulative cap on the Company's liability under these Terms, not a recurring or periodic cap. (e) Pro-Rata Allocation to Multiple Claimants. If two or more Users (other than Affiliates aggregated under clause (c)) assert claims against the Company that, if successful, would together exceed the Section 11 cap, the cap shall be allocated pro-rata among such Users in proportion to their proven damages, as determined by the arbitrator(s) or court(s) of competent jurisdiction. No User is entitled to first-mover advantage, accelerated payment, or priority recovery from the cap. Where Users assert claims in different proceedings (arbitration, court, or otherwise), the Company may stay payment on any single claim pending resolution of substantially related claims in other proceedings, in order to allow pro-rata allocation across the full claimant pool, subject to compliance with §14.10 confidentiality obligations and applicable procedural law. (f) Application to Future Claims. The Section 11 cap, including the aggregate, common-control, rolling-period, and pro-rata mechanics of this paragraph, applies prospectively to all claims accruing on or after the Effective Date of this Agreement, regardless of when asserted. (g) Cumulative With Other Risk-Allocation Provisions. The Section 11 cap and these supplemental mechanics are cumulative with, and do not replace, the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the indemnification obligations of Section 12, the Section 14 dispute-resolution framework (including the §14.3 class waiver, the §14.5 statute of limitations, the §14.8 mass-arbitration coordination, the §14.9 class-waiver-blow-up severance, and the §14.10 confidentiality regime), and the Section 15 general provisions (including the §15.18 Protected Persons shield, the §15.28 anti-assignment/anti-subrogation/anti-champerty provisions, the §15.30 vexatious-litigation protections, and the §15.31 right to refuse service). All such provisions stand independently and may be enforced separately and cumulatively by the Company and any Protected Person. (h) Severability and Reformation. The supplemental mechanics of this paragraph are severable across clauses (a) through (g) and across jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to enforce the Section 11 cap to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.

12.Indemnification

12.1 Substantive Indemnification Obligation

You shall defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Company and all Protected Persons as defined in Section 15.18 (which includes, without limitation, current and former officers, directors, employees, interns, volunteers, contractors, consultants, advisors, agents, founders, representatives, Stage 2 jurors and Stage 3 expert panelists, Verification Provider staff, node operators, licensors, shareholders, investors, affiliates, successors, and the family members and estates enumerated in Section 15.18 clause (5)) from and against all claims, actions, damages, liabilities, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees, expert fees, court costs, arbitration costs, settlement payments, judgment satisfaction, and pre-judgment and post-judgment interest) arising out of or relating to: (a) your breach of any representation, warranty, covenant, or obligation in this Agreement; (b) any content you register on the TIP DAG, including claims of copyright infringement, defamation, false-light, invasion of privacy, right of publicity, or violation of any law; (c) your violation of applicable law in any jurisdiction; (d) your fraudulent identity registration, impersonation, or false age representation; (e) your unauthorized use of any TIP trademark or the AI Trust ID™ Seal; (f) your use of the Reference Implementation without a required Commercial License; (g) any third-party claim premised on or alleging breach of any of the disclaimers in §10.9 (Data Loss and Service Outage), §10.10 (Mental Health, Personal Wellbeing, and Self-Harm), §10.11 (User-Caused Harm to Third Parties), §10.12 (Comprehensive Personal, Economic, Property, and Status Harm Disclaimer), §10.13 (No Consumer Reporting Agency, Background Check Service, or Tenant Screening Status), or §10.14 (No Professional Advice, No Professional Relationship), where the third-party harm arises from or is connected with the User's conduct, use of the Services, or status as a User, including without limitation any third-party claim premised on the User's use of Trust Score, Origin Code, or other Protocol output as an input to any decision regulated under the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act, GDPR Art. 22, or any analogous statute, or any third-party claim premised on the User's representation, implication, or use of Service output as if it were professional advice of any kind; or (h) any third-party claim premised on a User's false Origin Code declaration or false TIP-CONTENT registration, including without limitation claims by parties allegedly harmed by reliance on a falsely declared Origin Code.

12.2 Notice of Claim

The Company shall provide you with written notice of any claim, action, or proceeding for which the Company seeks indemnification under this Section 12 reasonably promptly after the Company becomes aware of such claim, action, or proceeding. The Company's failure to provide such notice within a reasonable time shall not relieve you of your indemnification obligation under this Section 12 except, and only to the extent that, the Company's delay materially and actually prejudiced your ability to defend the claim. Notice shall be sent in accordance with Section 15.7 or by such other means as the Company elects, including without limitation by electronic mail to the email address you provided at registration. You shall provide the Company with written notice of any claim or potential claim against you that may give rise to indemnification under this Section 12 reasonably promptly after you become aware of such claim or potential claim.

12.3 Right to Select Counsel and Control Defense

The Company reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to: (a) assume and control the defense and settlement of any claim, action, or proceeding for which the Company seeks indemnification under this Section 12, using counsel of the Company's choice; (b) require you to defend the Company at your sole cost using counsel of the Company's reasonable approval (and you may not unreasonably withhold approval of counsel the Company selects, nor select counsel known to have a conflict, an adverse-interest record, or insufficient experience or capacity for the matter); or (c) tender the defense back to you with the Company retaining the right to assume control at any later time upon written notice. If the Company assumes the defense under clause (a), the Company shall use commercially reasonable efforts to consult with you on material defense decisions, but the Company's reasonable judgment shall control. You shall pay the Company's reasonable defense costs (including attorneys' fees, expert fees, court costs, and arbitration costs) within thirty (30) days of invoice. Failure to pay defense costs is a material breach of this Section 12 and entitles the Company to all remedies under Sections 13, 14, 15.26, and 15.30, including without limitation the fee-shifting and individual-adversary-personal-liability remedies of Section 15.30.

12.4 Cooperation Obligation

You shall fully cooperate with the Company in the defense, investigation, or settlement of any claim, action, or proceeding for which the Company seeks indemnification under this Section 12, including without limitation by: (a) providing the Company and its counsel with all reasonably requested documents, information, evidence, and access to witnesses, employees, and records (including digital records, communications, and metadata), promptly and at your sole cost; (b) making yourself, your officers, your directors, your employees, your contractors, and your other agents available for interview, deposition, declaration, affidavit, hearing testimony, and trial testimony as reasonably requested; (c) executing and delivering, promptly upon request, all documents, certifications, declarations, releases, and other instruments reasonably necessary for the defense; (d) preserving all documents, communications, metadata, and other evidence relevant to the claim, in accordance with applicable legal hold and litigation-preservation duties under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, analogous state and foreign procedural rules, and the spoliation-prevention doctrines of Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212 (S.D.N.Y. 2003) and analogous foreign authorities; (e) not making any public statement, social-media post, blog post, press release, or other communication concerning the claim, the defense, the parties, or the Company's products or operations without the Company's prior written consent (consent not to be unreasonably withheld for non-prejudicial communications, but withheld in all events for communications that would prejudice the defense, compromise privilege, or violate the confidentiality provisions of Section 14.10); and (f) refraining from any conduct that would prejudice the Company's defense, compromise attorney-client privilege, compromise attorney-work-product protection, or otherwise impair the Company's ability to defend the claim on the merits. Failure to cooperate is a material breach of this Section 12 and may, in the Company's discretion, be raised as an affirmative defense by the Company against any subsequent claim by you against the Company for damages allegedly caused by the same underlying conduct.

12.5 No Settlement Without Company Consent

You shall not enter into any settlement, consent decree, stipulation of judgment, mediation agreement, alternative-dispute-resolution award, public statement of admission, or other resolution of any claim, action, or proceeding for which the Company seeks indemnification under this Section 12, without the prior written consent of the Company. The Company's consent may be granted or withheld in the Company's sole discretion, but shall not be unreasonably withheld for any settlement that (i) provides for a complete and unconditional release of the Company and all Protected Persons, (ii) does not require any payment, performance, or admission by the Company or any Protected Person, (iii) does not impose any non-monetary obligation on the Company or any Protected Person, (iv) does not contain any provision that may be construed as an admission of fault, liability, or wrongdoing by the Company or any Protected Person, and (v) does not require the Company or any Protected Person to take or refrain from any action that would impair the Company's reputation, business, intellectual property, or future operations. Any settlement entered into in violation of this Section 12.5 is unenforceable against the Company and any Protected Person, may be repudiated by the Company at any time, and shall not satisfy your indemnification obligation under this Section 12; you shall remain fully liable for the underlying claim notwithstanding any such purported settlement.

12.6 No Admission of Liability

You shall not make any admission of liability, fault, wrongdoing, breach, or culpability on behalf of the Company or any Protected Person, in any forum (including without limitation in court filings, in discovery responses, in deposition or sworn testimony, in mediation, in arbitration, in public statements, on social media, in blog posts, in press releases, or in communications with regulators, law enforcement, journalists, advocacy organizations, or members of the public), without the prior written consent of the Company. Any purported admission made in violation of this Section 12.6 is unauthorized, does not bind the Company or any Protected Person, may be repudiated by the Company at any time, and the Company expressly reserves the right to take all available remedies (including without limitation those of Sections 15.26 and 15.30) against any User who makes a purported admission in violation of this Section 12.6 that prejudices the Company's defense or reputation.

12.7 Mitigation

You shall use commercially reasonable efforts to mitigate, contain, and limit the damages, costs, and expenses arising from any claim for which the Company seeks indemnification under this Section 12. Failure to mitigate is a defense available to you against the indemnification obligation only to the extent (i) the failure was reasonable under the circumstances, (ii) the failure did not arise from your breach of any other obligation in this Agreement, and (iii) the failure did not increase the damages claimed against the Company. The Company's own mitigation efforts (or lack thereof) shall not relieve you of your indemnification obligation to the extent the Company acted reasonably under the circumstances, and the Company's good-faith judgment regarding the reasonableness of its own mitigation shall be entitled to deference under the business-judgment rule.

12.8 Defense Costs and Judgment Allocation

Your indemnification obligation under this Section 12 covers both defense costs (incurred to defend a claim regardless of the outcome) and judgment costs (incurred upon a finding of liability, settlement, or comparable resolution). Defense costs include, without limitation: attorneys' fees billed at the standard hourly rates of the Company's chosen counsel; paralegal fees; expert fees; consulting fees; court filing fees; arbitration administrative fees and arbitrator fees; deposition and transcript costs; document production, e-discovery, and forensic-analysis costs; travel and lodging expenses; service-of-process costs; expert witness fees and travel; mediator fees; and any other reasonable expense of defense or investigation. Judgment costs include, without limitation: any settlement payment approved under Section 12.5; any final judgment (including pre-judgment and post-judgment interest); any award of attorneys' fees, costs, or sanctions imposed against the Company or any Protected Person; any consent decree, injunctive-relief compliance cost, or other equitable-relief compliance cost; and any restitution, disgorgement, or analogous monetary remedy. Defense costs and judgment costs are payable by you on a current basis (defense costs as incurred, judgment costs within thirty (30) days of judgment, settlement, or other final resolution), without any requirement that the Company first exhaust its own remedies or insurance.

12.9 Subrogation Upon Indemnification

Upon your performance of any indemnification obligation under this Section 12 (whether by paying defense costs, satisfying a judgment, funding a settlement, or otherwise), you shall be subrogated to the Company's and the Protected Person's rights of recovery against the third-party claimant only to the extent of the amount paid by you, and only after the Company and the Protected Person have been made fully whole for all defense costs, judgment costs, and consequential damages. You shall not, by virtue of indemnification under this Section 12, acquire any subrogation right against the Company, any Protected Person, any other User, or any third party for whom the Company has no liability under these Terms (in addition to the Anti-Subrogation provisions of Section 15.28(b)). The Company may, in its discretion, elect to pursue or not pursue any subrogation recovery in the Company's name; you have no right to compel the Company to pursue subrogation, and the Company has no duty to mitigate by pursuing subrogation.

12.10 Application to All Protected Persons; Joint and Several Liability; Survival

The indemnification obligations of this Section 12 run in favor of, and may be enforced individually by, the Company and each Protected Person as defined in Section 15.18, in their capacity as Company personnel, equity holders, affiliates, successors, family members, and estates. Where multiple Users may share responsibility for any claim (for example, joint registrations of content, coordinated conduct, or shared accounts), the indemnification obligations of all such Users are joint and several with respect to the full amount of the indemnified loss, and the Company may pursue recovery against any one such User for the full amount without first exhausting recovery against any other. This Section 12 survives termination of these Terms under Section 13 and applies to any claim that accrued, was filed, or could have been filed during the term of this Agreement.

13.Term and Termination

13.1 Term

This Agreement commences on the date of your acceptance under Section 1 and continues until terminated in accordance with this Section 13. The Agreement applies on a continuing basis to every interaction you have with the Services from the date of acceptance forward, including without limitation every TIP-ID issuance request, every TIP-CONTENT registration, every Trust Score recalculation, every badge display request, every AI Trust Registry public lookup access, every adjudication participation, and every API call.

13.2 Termination by Company

The Company may suspend, restrict, geofence, throttle, demote, mark, or terminate your access to the Services, in whole or in part, at any time, with or without cause, and with or without prior notice, in the Company's sole and unfettered discretion, consistent with Section 15.31 (Right to Refuse Service) and subject to no liability to you. Without limiting the foregoing, examples of grounds for suspension or termination include, without limitation: (a) material or repeated breach of any provision of these Terms, any Integrated Document under Section 15.1, any Acceptable Use Policy, or any other Company policy; (b) conduct threatening DAG integrity, classifier integrity, or Service operation; (c) conduct causing or threatening harm to other Users, third parties, or the public; (d) fraudulent or unlawful conduct (including identity fraud, age misrepresentation, false Origin Code declaration, impersonation, and analogous misconduct); (e) failure to pay applicable Commercial License fees within thirty (30) days of written demand; (f) receipt of a valid legal order, subpoena, court order, regulatory directive, or law-enforcement referral substantiating a basis for termination; (g) regulatory, sanctions, or export-control compliance requirements under Sections 15.6 and 15.20; (h) discontinuation of the Services in your jurisdiction in the Company's discretion; (i) termination of the Services as a whole; (j) successful Stage 2 or Stage 3 adjudication of false Origin Code declaration under Section 5.4; (k) repeat-infringer terminations under Section 15.22; (l) violations of Section 9 (Prohibited Conduct); (m) violations of Section 15.6 (Export Controls and Sanctions Compliance); (n) breach of cooperation obligations under Section 12.4; (o) public statements admitting liability on behalf of the Company in violation of Section 12.6; (p) breach of confidentiality obligations under Section 14.10; (q) attempted claim-assignment or champertous arrangement in violation of Section 15.28; (r) initiation of frivolous, vexatious, or retaliatory litigation in violation of Section 15.30; and (s) any other ground the Company in its discretion determines justifies suspension or termination. The enumerated grounds are illustrative and non-exhaustive; the Company's termination right is not limited to the listed grounds.

13.3 Voluntary Termination by User

You may voluntarily terminate your account by initiating a REVOKE_VOLUNTARY transaction on the DAG. Voluntary termination has the following effects: (a) your Trust Score is archived as the value at time of revocation, with the prior history immutably preserved on the DAG under Section 3.3; (b) content records previously registered by you are preserved on the DAG with authorship attribution shown as "[Revoked]"; (c) re-registration is permitted on a fresh starting basis (with a default starting score of 500 absent contrary protocol parameters) after a cooling-off period set by Company policy; (d) off-chain personal data is deleted within thirty (30) days of the REVOKE_VOLUNTARY transaction, subject to retention required by applicable law (including without limitation tax records, regulatory records, and law-enforcement preservation orders), and subject to the immutability of DAG records under Section 3.3 and the no-DAG-deletion principle of Section 13.5; (e) accrued but unpaid Commercial License fees are accelerated and immediately due; and (f) all surviving provisions of this Agreement continue to apply to you in accordance with Section 13.10 and Section 15.27. Voluntary termination by you does not extinguish any pre-termination liability or any indemnification, defense, or other obligation owed to the Company or any Protected Person.

13.4 Effect of Termination on Accrued Rights and Obligations

Termination of this Agreement (whether by the Company under Section 13.2 or by you under Section 13.3) does not extinguish, discharge, release, or in any other way limit: (a) any claim, right, remedy, cause of action, defense, immunity, or protection of the Company or any Protected Person that accrued before, or arises out of conduct or events occurring before, the effective date of termination; (b) any claim, right, remedy, cause of action, defense, immunity, or protection of the Company or any Protected Person against you that arises out of, or is connected with, your conduct or status during the term of this Agreement, regardless of when such claim is asserted; (c) any duty owed by you to the Company or any Protected Person under these Terms, including without limitation the indemnification obligations of Section 12, the cooperation obligation of Section 12.4, the confidentiality obligations of Section 14.10, the anti-assignment-of-claims and anti-subrogation obligations of Section 15.28, and the survival framework of Section 13.10 and Section 15.27; (d) any obligation you have to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Company and Protected Persons against any pending, threatened, or future third-party claim related to your pre-termination conduct; or (e) any monetary obligation, including without limitation outstanding fees, defense costs under Section 12.8, judgment costs under Section 12.8, sanctions liability under Section 15.30, statutory-damages liability for breach of any obligation, restitution, disgorgement, or analogous remedy.

13.5 Effect of Termination on the Immutable DAG Record

Notwithstanding termination of this Agreement, the DAG transactions previously written reflecting your TIP-ID issuance, your TIP-CONTENT registrations, your Trust Score adjustments, your adjudication outcomes, your badge issuance and display events, and all other validated DAG events involving you remain immutably recorded on the DAG under Section 3.3 and are not subject to deletion, modification, or retraction by reason of termination. The Company has no technical or legal obligation to delete, alter, retract, suppress, or rewrite any validated DAG transaction in response to termination. Termination does not entitle you to any "right to be forgotten," right to erasure, right of deletion, right of correction, or analogous data-subject right with respect to validated DAG records, except to the extent that any non-DAG personal data is deleted in accordance with Section 13.3(d) and the Privacy provisions of Section 8 and applicable law. To the extent that any data-protection statute (including without limitation GDPR Art. 17, U.K. GDPR Art. 17, CCPA Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.105, and analogous statutes) would otherwise require deletion of validated DAG records, the Company expressly reserves all applicable statutory exceptions, including without limitation: (i) the fraud-prevention and security exception (GDPR Art. 17(3)(b) and (d), CCPA Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.105(d)(2) and (3)); (ii) the legal-claims exception (GDPR Art. 17(3)(e)); (iii) the freedom-of-information and freedom-of-expression exception (GDPR Art. 17(3)(a)); (iv) the public-interest archiving exception (GDPR Art. 17(3)(d)); (v) the legal-obligation exception (GDPR Art. 17(3)(b)); (vi) the technical-impossibility doctrine where deletion would compromise the cryptographic integrity of the DAG (analogous to GDPR Art. 17(2) and CCPA Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.105(c)); and (vii) any analogous foreign or state statutory exception. Section 3.3 (Immutability of DAG Transactions) and this Section 13.5 are essential characteristics of the Services that you accept as a condition of use.

13.6 Effect of Termination on Biometric Data and Personal Data

The Company's handling of Biometric Data and other personal data on termination is governed by Section 8 (Privacy, Biometric Data, and GDPR) and the Privacy Policy referenced in Section 15.1. Without limiting Section 8, the Company shall (subject to law-enforcement preservation orders, mandatory record-retention requirements, and the public-interest exceptions of Section 13.5): (a) cease active processing of your Biometric Data for new TIP-ID issuance purposes; (b) retain Biometric Data only to the extent required by applicable law, by an ongoing investigation, by a pending dispute, or by the immutable cryptographic structure of the DAG; (c) honor data-subject rights under GDPR Articles 15-22, U.K. GDPR analogs, CCPA, LGPD, DPDPA 2023, and analogous statutes, subject to the Section 13.5 exceptions and the DAG-immutability constraints of Section 3.3; and (d) provide reasonable notice of the Company's retention practices in accordance with the Privacy Policy. The Company is not liable for retention of Biometric Data required by law or by the immutable cryptographic structure of the DAG.

13.7 Acceleration of Outstanding Fees

Upon termination of this Agreement for any reason, any outstanding Commercial License fees, audit fees, accreditation fees, or other fees owed by you to the Company (including any fees that would otherwise have become due during the remainder of the then-current license term but for termination) are accelerated and become immediately due and payable. The Company may, in its discretion: (a) invoice you for accelerated fees with payment due within thirty (30) days; (b) offset accelerated fees against any pre-paid balance held by the Company on your account; or (c) pursue collection through any available legal mechanism, including without limitation the Company's reservation of remedies under Section 15.26, the fee-shifting and personal-liability provisions of Section 15.30, and the joint-and-several recovery provisions of Section 12.10. Failure to pay accelerated fees within thirty (30) days is itself a separate material breach giving rise to additional remedies, including Trust Score adjustment, public-registry notation of unpaid fees (where consistent with applicable privacy law), and referral to collections.

13.8 Effect of Termination on Pending Disputes

Termination of this Agreement does not affect any dispute, claim, demand for arbitration, arbitration proceeding, court proceeding, regulatory complaint, or administrative proceeding that has been initiated by or against the Company, any Protected Person, or you, before, on, or after the effective date of termination, and that arose out of conduct or events occurring before the effective date of termination. All such disputes shall continue to be governed by Section 14 (Dispute Resolution and Governing Law), the §11 liability cap, the §10 disclaimers, the §15.18 Protected Persons shield, the §12 Indemnification, and all other provisions of these Terms in effect at the time the conduct giving rise to the dispute occurred. The Company expressly reserves the right to assert these Terms as a defense, including the §14 arbitration agreement, the §14.3 class waiver, the §14.10 confidentiality obligation, and the §15.28 anti-assignment provisions, against any dispute brought after termination that arises out of pre-termination conduct.

13.9 No Refund on Termination for Cause

Termination of this Agreement by the Company under Section 13.2 (whether or not characterized as "for cause") does not entitle you to any refund of fees previously paid, prorated refund, credit, set-off, or analogous monetary remedy, except: (a) to the extent the Company in its discretion elects to provide a prorated refund as a goodwill gesture (which does not constitute a waiver of any term of this Agreement or an admission of liability); (b) where required by mandatory consumer-protection law in your jurisdiction that cannot be waived by contract (in which case the refund is limited to the minimum required by such law and the Company shall apply the §11 cap to such refund); or (c) where expressly required by the terms of an applicable Commercial License agreement under Section 7.3. Termination of this Agreement by you under Section 13.3 (voluntary termination) does not entitle you to any refund. For the avoidance of doubt, no termination entitles you to recovery of: any defense costs you incurred during the term; any opportunity costs from your participation in the Services; any sunk costs from your business reliance on the Services; or any consequential, incidental, special, punitive, or exemplary damages from termination (subject to the §11 paragraph 3 narrow carve-outs).

13.10 Continuing Obligations Post-Termination

Notwithstanding termination of this Agreement, the following obligations of yours continue in full force and effect indefinitely (or for the period specified in the applicable Section), and termination does not relieve you of these obligations: (a) the indemnification, cooperation, settlement, admission, mitigation, defense cost, subrogation, and joint-and-several obligations of Section 12 (Sections 12.1 through 12.10); (b) the confidentiality obligations of Section 14.10; (c) the anti-assignment, anti-subrogation, and anti-champerty obligations of Section 15.28; (d) the no-training-use obligations of Section 15.12; (e) the anti-reverse-engineering obligations of Section 15.15; (f) the export-controls and sanctions obligations of Section 15.6; (g) the obligations under Section 8 (Privacy) that survive termination (including without limitation data-handling commitments for retained data); (h) the obligations under any Integrated Document under Section 15.1 that survive termination; (i) the statutory and common-law obligations imposed on you by applicable law regardless of contract; and (j) any other obligation expressly stated to survive in these Terms or in the survival enumeration of Section 13.11 and Section 15.27.

13.11 Reinstatement

Reinstatement of any terminated account is at the sole discretion of the Company. The Company is under no obligation to consider any reinstatement request, and may decline reinstatement for any reason or no reason consistent with Section 15.31. Where the Company in its discretion elects to consider reinstatement, the Company may impose conditions including without limitation: (a) payment of any outstanding fees and any reinstatement fee; (b) satisfaction of any pending indemnification or defense obligations under Section 12; (c) successful re-completion of biometric verification under Section 6.6 (or the then-current VP equivalent); (d) cure of any breach that gave rise to termination; (e) restoration of any harmed third party; (f) provision of additional representations, warranties, or covenants; (g) acceptance of additional restrictions or conditions on use of the Services; or (h) any other condition the Company in its discretion considers appropriate. The reinstated account is subject to the then-current Terms, which may be materially different from the Terms in effect at the time of original registration. Reinstatement does not retroactively undo Trust Score adjustments, badge suppressions, adjudication outcomes, or other validated DAG transactions that occurred during the period of termination, subject to the immutability of Section 3.3.

13.12 Survival of Provisions

The following provisions of this Agreement, in addition to any other provision that by its nature should survive termination, survive termination of this Agreement under this Section 13 and continue in full force and effect: Sections 3.3 (Immutability), 4.6 (Minors), 4.7 (Stolen Credential Liability), 4.8 (Effect of User Death, Incapacity, or Bankruptcy), 4.9 (Communications Consent for transactional and compliance categories), 5.6 through 5.9 (AI Classifier Advisory, Consent, Assumption of Risk, Correction Opportunities), 6.6 in its entirety (The Company as Initial Verification Provider), 7 in its entirety (Intellectual Property, including 7.7 User License Grant for Protocol Operation, 7.8 Feedback License, and 7.9 User Retention of Underlying Copyright), 8 in its entirety (Privacy, including 8.6 Sub-Processors), 10 in its entirety (Disclaimers, including 10.4 Badge Display, 10.5 Reader Reliance, 10.6 Continuous Service, 10.7 No Bias Warranty, 10.8 No Content Evaluation, 10.9 Data Loss and Service Outage, 10.10 Mental Health and Self-Harm, 10.11 User-Caused Third-Party Harm, 10.12 Comprehensive Personal, Economic, Property, and Status Harm, 10.13 No Consumer Reporting Agency, Background Check Service, or Tenant Screening Status, and 10.14 No Professional Advice and No Professional Relationship), 11 (Limitations), 12 in its entirety (Indemnification, including 12.1 Substantive Obligation, 12.2 Notice, 12.3 Counsel Selection and Defense Control, 12.4 Cooperation, 12.5 No Settlement Without Consent, 12.6 No Admission of Liability, 12.7 Mitigation, 12.8 Defense Costs and Judgment Allocation, 12.9 Subrogation, and 12.10 Joint and Several Liability), 13 in its entirety (Term and Termination, including 13.4 Effect on Accrued Rights, 13.5 Effect on Immutable DAG Record, 13.6 Effect on Biometric Data, 13.7 Acceleration of Outstanding Fees, 13.8 Effect on Pending Disputes, 13.9 No Refund on Termination for Cause, 13.10 Continuing Obligations Post-Termination, 13.11 Reinstatement, and 13.12 Survival of Provisions itself, which survives by its own operation), 14 in its entirety (Dispute Resolution, including 14.5 Statute of Limitations, 14.7 Pre-Arbitration Meet and Confer, 14.8 Mass Arbitration Coordination Protocol, 14.9 Severability and Class-Waiver Blow-Up, 14.10 Confidentiality of Arbitration Proceedings, and 14.11 Bellwether Arbitration Procedure for Mass-Filing Defense, 14.12 Settlement Negotiation Confidentiality and FRE 408 Reservation, and 14.13 Arbitrator Authority Limitations and Standards of Review), and 15 (General Provisions, including 15.8 through 15.47 inclusive, with particular emphasis on 15.21 No Fiduciary Duty, 15.22 DMCA Notice and Takedown Procedure, 15.23 Public Interest Operation, 15.24 Law Enforcement Cooperation and Mandatory Reporting, 15.25 No Securities, 15.26 Reservation of Company Remedies, 15.27 Survival itself, which survives by its own operation, 15.28 Anti-Assignment of Claims, Anti-Subrogation, and Anti-Champerty, 15.29 No General Duty to Monitor and Good Samaritan Protections, 15.30 Vexatious Litigation Protection, 15.31 Right to Refuse Service and First Amendment Editorial Discretion, 15.32 User Representations, Warranties, and Covenants, 15.33 AI-Specific Liability Defenses for Emerging Litigation Theories, 15.34 Conspicuous Notice, Knowing Assent, and Mutual Assent Recital, 15.35 Equitable Remedies Comprehensive Reservation, 15.36 Anti-Harassment, Anti-Doxxing, and Personal-Safety Protection for Company Personnel, 15.37 Antitrust, Competition Law, and Pro-Competitive Features Reservation, 15.38 Node Operators as Independent Contractors, 15.39 Company Insolvency, Bankruptcy, Receivership, and Successor Obligations, 15.40 Insurance, Self-Insurance, and No Proof-of-Insurance Required, 15.41 Quasi-Contract, Unjust Enrichment, and Equitable-Theory Defenses Reservation, 15.42 Anti-Tortious-Interference With Company Contracts and Business Relationships, 15.43 Regulatory Investigation, Consent Decree, and No-Admission Reservation, 15.44 Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing · Scope, Limitations, and Specific Waivers, 15.45 Cybersecurity Incident Notification and Response Framework, 15.46 Performance Standards Disclaimer · Narrow Definitions of Gross Negligence and Willful Misconduct, and 15.47 Personal Jurisdiction, Service of Process, Forum Non Conveniens, and Anti-Forum-Shopping Defenses).

14.Dispute Resolution and Governing Law

14.1 Governing Law

This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States of America, without regard to conflict-of-law principles and without regard to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

14.2 Mandatory Arbitration

14.3 Class Action Waiver

ALL CLAIMS MUST BE BROUGHT IN YOUR INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY. THE ARBITRATOR MAY NOT CONSOLIDATE MORE THAN ONE PERSON'S CLAIMS AND MAY NOT PRESIDE OVER ANY CLASS OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. IF A CLAIM PROCEEDS IN COURT, EACH PARTY WAIVES ANY RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL.

14.4 Equitable Relief

Either party may seek emergency injunctive or equitable relief from a court of competent jurisdiction in New Castle County, Delaware, to prevent actual or threatened violation of intellectual property rights, misappropriation of trade secrets, or irreparable harm pending an arbitration award.

14.5 Statute of Limitations: One Year

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, any claim or cause of action arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of the Services must be commenced within one (1) year after the cause of action accrues. Any claim not brought within that period is permanently barred. This contractual limitation applies regardless of whether the applicable statute of limitations under governing law would otherwise be longer. The Company reserves all rights with respect to claims it may bring against you, and this Section 14.5 does not limit such claims.

14.6 Costs and Attorney Fees

Each party shall bear its own costs in any arbitration commenced under this Section 14, except that the prevailing party may recover reasonable attorney fees and arbitration costs from the non-prevailing party where permitted by applicable law and the JAMS Commercial Arbitration Rules.

14.7 Mandatory Pre-Arbitration Meet and Confer

Before commencing any arbitration or court proceeding (other than an application for emergency injunctive relief under Section 14.4 or a small claims court action), the claimant must first send a detailed written notice of claim by certified mail to the Company at the address in Section 15.7, with a copy to chairman@theailab.org, describing: (a) the specific facts giving rise to the claim; (b) the specific TIP-CONTENT records, TIP-ID identifiers, badge displays, or other artifacts at issue; (c) the legal theory or theories asserted; and (d) the specific relief requested. The claimant and the Company shall meet and confer in good faith for a period of not less than sixty (60) days after the Company's receipt of the notice of claim, by telephone or video conference at mutually agreed times, before either party may commence arbitration. The 60-day period may be shortened only by mutual written agreement. Failure to comply with this Section 14.7 in good faith is a basis for the arbitrator or court to dismiss the claim or to award fees and costs to the Company. The Company is not obligated to extend the one-year statute of limitations of Section 14.5 to accommodate the meet-and-confer period; claimants should issue notice early.

14.8 Mass Arbitration Coordination Protocol

This Section 14.8 applies when twenty-five (25) or more individual claimants represented by the same counsel, by counsel acting in coordination, or by counsel acting under a common fee arrangement file arbitration demands against the Company arising out of substantially similar facts, legal theories, or transactional events within any ninety (90) day period (a "Coordinated Group"). Coordinated Groups shall be administered as follows:

(a) Counsel Disclosure. Counsel representing twenty-five (25) or more claimants in a Coordinated Group shall disclose to the Company within thirty (30) days of the first demand: (i) the identity of all then-represented claimants in the Group; (ii) the fee arrangement under which counsel represents them; (iii) the source of any litigation funding; and (iv) any communications counsel has had soliciting claimants. Failure to disclose is grounds for the arbitrator to dismiss undisclosed claimants from the Group.

(b) Initial Batch and Stay. The first fifty (50) demands filed in a Coordinated Group shall be designated the "Initial Batch" and shall proceed to arbitration under Section 14.2. All other demands within the Coordinated Group shall be administratively stayed pending resolution of the Initial Batch. The one-year statute of limitations of Section 14.5 shall be tolled with respect to stayed demands solely during the period of administrative stay.

(c) Bellwether Resolution. From the Initial Batch, not more than ten (10) representative bellwether cases shall be selected by mutual agreement of the parties, or by the arbitrator if no agreement is reached within thirty (30) days, and shall proceed to final adjudication on the merits. The remaining Initial Batch demands shall be held pending bellwether resolution and shall be informed by the bellwether outcomes.

(d) Collateral Estoppel. Findings of fact and conclusions of law that are common to the Coordinated Group in the bellwether cases shall apply by collateral estoppel to all stayed demands in the Group, both in support of and against the Company, as the bellwether outcomes warrant.

(e) Filing Fee Allocation. Notwithstanding any contrary provision of the JAMS Commercial Arbitration Rules, the Company's aggregate share of arbitration filing fees, administrative fees, and arbitrator compensation across the entire Coordinated Group shall not exceed the aggregate of the Section 11 liability cap applied to each claimant individually. Filing fees in excess of that aggregate shall be apportioned equitably between the claimants and their counsel. Counsel who file Coordinated Group demands without ability to fund the equitable apportionment may not compel the Company to pay above the aggregate cap.

(f) Class-Adjacent Filtering. The Company reserves the right to seek dismissal of any demand within a Coordinated Group on the grounds that the demand is substantively a class action or representative action prohibited by Section 14.3 (Class Action Waiver), notwithstanding the demand's individual-form pleading. Repetition of substantially identical pleadings across the Group is evidence of class-adjacent character.

(g) Good-Faith Filtering. Any demand within a Coordinated Group that fails to satisfy the individualized-claim requirements of Section 14.7 (Pre-Arbitration Meet and Confer) shall be subject to summary dismissal. Counsel may not satisfy Section 14.7 with a single notice of claim purporting to cover an entire Coordinated Group; each individual claimant must independently satisfy Section 14.7 to proceed.

(h) Severability and Public Policy. If any provision of this Section 14.8 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction, the remaining provisions continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. This Section 14.8 is intended to coordinate the orderly administration of substantively related claims; it is not intended to and shall not be construed to bar any individual claimant from pursuing a bona fide individual claim on its own merits.

14.9 Severability and Continuation; Class-Waiver Blow-Up

To the extent any provision of this Section 14 is held invalid, illegal, or unenforceable in any jurisdiction (whether by the arbitrator, a court of competent jurisdiction, or a regulator with authority), the remaining provisions of this Section 14 shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction. The Class Action Waiver of Section 14.3 is a material term essential to the Company's risk allocation and is not severable from the bargain in the following specific sense: if a court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction holds the Class Action Waiver of Section 14.3 unenforceable as applied to any particular claim, the parties expressly agree that such claim shall be SEVERED FROM THE ARBITRATION AGREEMENT of Section 14.2 and shall PROCEED IN A COURT OF COMPETENT JURISDICTION IN NEW CASTLE COUNTY, DELAWARE ON AN INDIVIDUAL (AND NOT CLASS OR REPRESENTATIVE) BASIS, with each party expressly waiving any right to a jury trial as set forth in Section 14.3 and any right to consolidate, aggregate, or coordinate the severed claim with any other party's claim. The arbitration agreement of Section 14.2 shall continue to apply with full force to all other claims not subject to the specific severance described in this sentence. Under no circumstances shall a holding that the Class Action Waiver is unenforceable be construed to authorize class arbitration, representative arbitration, or class litigation of any claim; the parties' bargain is that all claims proceed individually, in either arbitration (the default) or court (only where the Class Action Waiver is held unenforceable as to that specific claim). The Statute of Limitations of Section 14.5, the Pre-Arbitration Meet and Confer of Section 14.7, the Mass Arbitration Coordination Protocol of Section 14.8, and the Reservation of Company Remedies of Section 15.26 shall apply to any severed claim that proceeds in court to the maximum extent compatible with that court's procedural rules.

14.10 Confidentiality of Arbitration Proceedings

The parties expressly agree that the JAMS Commercial Arbitration Rules do not provide automatic confidentiality, and that the following contractual confidentiality regime applies as a material term of the parties' arbitration bargain: (a) the existence, nature, status, and content of any dispute, demand for arbitration, mediation, or pre-arbitration notice of claim under Section 14.7; the parties' written submissions, pleadings, exhibits, witness statements, deposition transcripts, document productions, written discovery responses, expert reports, and other materials produced or exchanged in the proceeding; the proceedings themselves, including oral arguments, hearings, and pre-hearing conferences; the arbitrator's communications, rulings, orders, and procedural directives; and any interim, partial, or final award rendered by the arbitrator (collectively, "Arbitration Information") shall be treated as strictly confidential by both parties and by their respective counsel, employees, agents, experts, consultants, and witnesses; (b) neither party shall disclose, publish, post, share, or otherwise communicate Arbitration Information to any third party, including without limitation to media outlets, journalists, podcasters, social-media platforms, online review sites, advocacy organizations, plaintiffs' counsel pools, mass-arbitration intake networks, third-party litigation funders, regulators (other than as expressly permitted in clause (c)), or members of the public, except as expressly permitted in clause (c); (c) the confidentiality obligation does not prohibit: (i) disclosure to the disclosing party's own legal counsel, accountants, tax preparers, auditors, insurers, and reinsurers under their own professional duty of confidentiality; (ii) disclosure necessary to enforce, vacate, modify, or confirm the arbitration award in a court of competent jurisdiction under the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. §§ 9-11, or analogous foreign or state arbitration statutes, with the disclosing party obligated to seek the court's protective order or to file under seal where reasonably available; (iii) disclosure required by valid legal process, court order, regulatory subpoena, securities-law disclosure obligation, or similar mandatory legal requirement, with the disclosing party obligated to provide the other party prompt advance notice (where not prohibited) sufficient to allow the other party to seek a protective order; (iv) disclosure with the prior written consent of the other party; (v) disclosure of the bare fact that an arbitration has been resolved (without identifying the other party or disclosing the terms) where required for regulatory reporting or financial-statement disclosure; (vi) disclosure to a court adjudicating a class-waiver-blow-up severed claim under Section 14.9, with the parties cooperating in seeking sealing or a protective order; and (vii) disclosure to a successor, assignee, or acquirer of the Company under the conditions of Section 15.4 (Assignment) and subject to the assignee's written agreement to be bound by this confidentiality regime; (d) the confidentiality obligation extends to and binds the parties' counsel; counsel shall obtain confidentiality undertakings from any expert, consultant, witness, paralegal, third-party-litigation-finance counterparty (subject to Section 15.28(c)), or other person to whom Arbitration Information is disclosed under clause (c)(i); breach of confidentiality by any such person shall be attributable to the party that engaged or retained such person; (e) the arbitrator is hereby authorized to enter protective orders implementing this confidentiality regime, to issue confidentiality designations and restricted-access designations consistent with industry standards, to impose sanctions including evidentiary sanctions for breach, and to award liquidated damages or actual damages plus reasonable attorneys' fees for breach of confidentiality, subject to the Section 11 liability cap as applied to each party in its capacity as a non-Company party; (f) if any portion of Arbitration Information becomes publicly available through no breach by either party, the confidentiality obligation lapses as to the portion that has become publicly available, but continues to apply to any portion remaining non-public; (g) this confidentiality regime applies equally to claims that proceed in court under the class-waiver-blow-up severance of Section 14.9, with the parties cooperating in seeking sealing of pleadings, protective orders for discovery, and confidential treatment of any judgment, subject to the court's discretion and applicable public-access doctrines (the inability to obtain full sealing in court shall not invalidate the parties' arbitration-stage confidentiality bargain); (h) this Section 14.10 survives termination of these Terms under Section 13, applies retroactively to any pre-existing dispute that has not yet been resolved, and continues in effect indefinitely with respect to Arbitration Information that pertains to any claim that has been asserted or could have been asserted under these Terms; (i) any breach of this Section 14.10 by a party or its counsel is a material breach of these Terms, may be raised by the non-breaching party as an affirmative defense to any continued assertion of the underlying claim, and entitles the non-breaching party to seek injunctive relief in court (notwithstanding the arbitration agreement of Section 14.2) and damages in arbitration, as well as the sanctions provided in clause (e); and (j) this Section 14.10 is severable across claim categories, party categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate the remainder, and any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope. The Company's interest in confidentiality of arbitration is material to its risk allocation under these Terms because public disclosure of Arbitration Information would: (1) compromise the Company's competitive position by exposing operational, financial, classifier-design, biometric-handling, VP-audit, and adjudication-process information; (2) facilitate the coordinated mass-arbitration and claims-aggregation conduct already prohibited by Sections 14.3, 14.8, and 15.28; and (3) impose reputational harm to the Company and Protected Persons disproportionate to the merits of any individual claim. The confidentiality regime is mutual and protects both parties' interests in non-publication of dispute information.

14.11 Bellwether Arbitration Procedure for Mass-Filing Defense

This Section 14.11 is supplemental to and not in derogation of the Mass Arbitration Coordination Protocol of Section 14.8 and the Severability and Class-Waiver Blow-Up of Section 14.9. Where a Mass Filing (defined below) is initiated by or on behalf of any User against the Company, the following bellwether procedure applies as a mandatory condition precedent to (a) any Company obligation to pay individual filing fees for non-bellwether demands beyond the cap of Section 14.8(e), (b) any Company obligation to participate in substantive arbitration of non-bellwether demands, and (c) any non-bellwether demand proceeding to merits adjudication. (a) Definition of Mass Filing. A "Mass Filing" means twenty-five (25) or more demands for arbitration that, in the Company's reasonable judgment after consultation with JAMS and any common counsel under Section 14.8(b), are: (i) filed by or coordinated by the same law firm, network of law firms, claims aggregator, or third-party litigation funder (subject to Section 15.28(c) disclosure); (ii) filed within a rolling ninety (90) day period; and (iii) substantively similar in that they share common questions of fact or law concerning the Company's conduct, products, classifier outputs, badge decisions, Trust Score determinations, biometric handling, or other Service operations. (b) Bellwether Selection. Within thirty (30) days of the Company's notice that a Mass Filing has been identified, the Company and the common claimants' counsel shall each select five (5) demands from the Mass Filing for individual bellwether arbitration, for a total of ten (10) bellwether arbitrations. If common claimants' counsel fails to select within the thirty-day period, the Company may select all ten bellwether demands. Bellwether selections shall reasonably reflect the range of factual and legal claims in the Mass Filing; counsel-selected bellwethers may not be limited to weak or strong claims only. (c) Bellwether Arbitration Schedule. The ten bellwether arbitrations shall proceed in individual JAMS arbitrations under Section 14.2, on an expedited schedule with: (i) discovery completed within ninety (90) days of bellwether selection; (ii) hearings completed within one hundred eighty (180) days of bellwether selection; and (iii) final awards issued within two hundred forty (240) days of bellwether selection. The Company shall pay its own filing fees and one-half of the JAMS administrative and arbitrator compensation costs of each bellwether arbitration, and the bellwether claimants (or their counsel) shall pay the other half, in accordance with the JAMS Commercial Arbitration Rules cost-allocation provisions and Section 14.8(e). (d) Stay of Non-Bellwether Demands. All non-bellwether demands within the Mass Filing are stayed during the pendency of the bellwether arbitrations. During the stay: (i) the Company has no obligation to pay individual filing fees, administrative fees, or arbitrator compensation for non-bellwether demands; (ii) JAMS administrative deadlines applicable to non-bellwether demands are tolled; (iii) the Statute of Limitations of Section 14.5 is tolled with respect to the non-bellwether claimants for the duration of the stay; and (iv) the Pre-Arbitration Meet and Confer requirement of Section 14.7 remains in effect with respect to each non-bellwether demand and may be revisited upon the lifting of the stay. (e) Settlement Following Bellwether. Upon completion of the ten bellwether arbitrations, the Company and common claimants' counsel shall enter into a good-faith ninety (90) day settlement-discussion period concerning the non-bellwether demands, with reference to the bellwether outcomes as the most reliable available indicators of the merits of the Mass Filing. The Company is not obligated to settle on any particular terms; the Company's settlement participation is a continuing acknowledgment of the parties' good-faith engagement with the dispute-resolution process, not an admission of liability. (f) Resolution of Non-Bellwether Demands After Bellwether. Where the parties do not reach a settlement within the ninety-day post-bellwether period, the non-bellwether demands shall proceed in individual JAMS arbitrations on the following terms: (i) Distinguishing-Facts Showing Required. Each non-bellwether claimant shall file, within sixty (60) days of the end of the settlement-discussion period, a written submission to the JAMS administrator demonstrating that the non-bellwether demand presents factual or legal claims materially different from each of the ten bellwether arbitrations or that the bellwether outcomes do not on their face dispose of the non-bellwether demand on the merits. A claimant's failure to file such a submission within the sixty-day period shall result in dismissal of the non-bellwether demand without prejudice (subject to the claimant's right to refile under the Statute of Limitations of Section 14.5 as tolled under clause (d)(iii)). (ii) Company Filing-Fee Cap Sequencing. The Company's aggregate share of filing fees, administrative fees, and arbitrator compensation across the entire Mass Filing (including the bellwether arbitrations) shall not exceed the aggregate of the Section 11 liability cap applied to each claimant individually, consistent with Section 14.8(e). Where bellwether outcomes show the Company prevailed in eighty percent (80%) or more of the bellwether arbitrations, the Company's filing-fee cap applies with full force and the Company may, in its discretion, decline to pay any further filing fees on non-bellwether demands; failure of the non-bellwether claimants to fund the filing fees in such circumstances shall result in dismissal of the non-bellwether demands. (iii) Procedural Substitution. The Company may, in its discretion and with notice to JAMS and common claimants' counsel, propose batch-processing of non-bellwether demands in groups (consistent with the Sequential Processing rule of Section 14.8(d)) or alternative procedural treatment that preserves individual-claim status while avoiding duplicative procedure. (g) Common-Counsel Cooperation. Where the Mass Filing is represented by common counsel under Section 14.8(b), such counsel shall cooperate in good faith with the bellwether procedure, including without limitation: timely bellwether selection; participation in scheduling; avoidance of duplicative discovery; honoring the Section 14.10 Confidentiality regime with respect to bellwether proceedings; and complying with the Section 12.4 cooperation analogs applicable to common counsel in mass-arbitration contexts. Common counsel's failure to cooperate is sanctionable under Section 14.8(g) (Good-Faith Filtering), Section 15.30 (Vexatious Litigation Protection), and any other applicable remedy. (h) Class-Adjacent Pleadings. Notwithstanding the bellwether procedure, the Class Action Waiver of Section 14.3 remains in full force: no bellwether arbitration shall be conducted as a class arbitration, representative arbitration, or class-adjacent proceeding; bellwether outcomes are not binding on non-bellwether claimants in res judicata or collateral estoppel respects (subject to the doctrine of non-mutual collateral estoppel where applicable under Delaware law); the bellwether procedure is a docket-management tool, not a class-certification mechanism. (i) No Bellwether Election by Claimants. The right to invoke this Section 14.11 bellwether procedure resides with the Company; common claimants' counsel cannot unilaterally compel bellwether selection or stay other demands. Where common claimants' counsel desire a streamlined procedure but the Company has not invoked Section 14.11, the parties may stipulate to bellwether or analogous procedure subject to JAMS approval. (j) Counsel Verification Continuing. Common claimants' counsel's verification obligations under Section 14.7 (Mandatory Pre-Arbitration Meet and Confer) and Section 14.8(c) (Common-Counsel Disclosure) continue throughout the bellwether procedure; common counsel shall periodically certify that the non-bellwether demands continue to satisfy good-faith individualized-claim requirements. (k) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 14.11 are severable across clauses (a) through (j), Mass Filing categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to coordinate the orderly administration of mass filings without permitting class arbitration or representative arbitration prohibited by Section 14.3.

14.12 Settlement Negotiation Confidentiality and FRE 408 Reservation

The parties expressly invoke and reserve, for all settlement discussions, mediation, conciliation, meet-and-confer sessions, pre-arbitration negotiations, post-bellwether settlement-discussion periods, mass-arbitration coordination communications, and analogous resolution-oriented communications between any User (or User's counsel) and the Company (or Protected Persons or Company counsel) arising under or in connection with these Terms, the protection of the following privileges, exclusions, and inadmissibility rules: (a) Federal Rule of Evidence 408. All statements, communications, offers, counter-offers, demands, exhibits, summaries, expert opinions, mediation submissions, and analogous information exchanged in the course of negotiating or attempting to negotiate a settlement of any dispute under or in connection with these Terms shall be inadmissible to prove or disprove the validity or amount of a disputed claim or to impeach by a prior inconsistent statement or contradiction, to the maximum extent provided by Federal Rule of Evidence 408 and analogous state, foreign, and arbitral-rule analogs. The parties expressly invoke Rule 408's protection for both the simple offer/counter-offer ("conduct or statement made during compromise negotiations about the claim") and the broader "conduct or statement made during negotiations" rule of Rule 408(a)(2). (b) Mediation Privilege. Communications in any mediation conducted under these Terms (including the §14.7 Mandatory Pre-Arbitration Meet and Confer, the §14.11(e) Post-Bellwether Settlement-Discussion Period, any JAMS-administered mediation under JAMS Mediation Rules, or any other formal or informal mediation) are protected by mediation privilege under: (i) the Uniform Mediation Act (UMA) as adopted by Delaware, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and analogous U.S. states; (ii) Federal Rule of Evidence 501 mediation privilege as recognized by federal courts; (iii) state-specific mediation-confidentiality statutes (including California Evidence Code §§ 1115-1129, Texas Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 154.073, New York N.Y. Jud. Law § 533, Florida Fla. Stat. § 44.405, and analogous state statutes); (iv) the EU Mediation Directive 2008/52/EC and Member State implementations; (v) the U.K. Civil Procedure Rules Part 26 ADR provisions and the U.K. Civil Mediation Council Code of Practice; (vi) analogous foreign mediation-confidentiality regimes; and (vii) the JAMS Mediation Rules confidentiality framework. (c) State Analogs. The parties additionally invoke all state-court rules of evidence analogous to FRE 408, including without limitation California Evidence Code § 1152, New York CPLR § 4547, Texas Rule of Evidence 408, Illinois Rule of Evidence 408, Florida Rule of Evidence 90.408, Delaware Rule of Evidence 408, and analogous rules of every U.S. state. Where a state rule provides broader protection than FRE 408, the broader protection applies. (d) Foreign Analogs. For Users outside the United States, the parties additionally invoke: (i) the "without prejudice" rule of English common law and the analogous protections under U.K. Civil Procedure Rules; (ii) the German Verfahrensgrundsatz der Vertraulichkeit for mediation; (iii) the French Code de procédure civile articles 21-1 et seq. mediation confidentiality; (iv) the Singapore Mediation Act 2017; (v) the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Mediation (2002, as revised 2018) and the Singapore Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (2019); (vi) analogous foreign settlement-privilege rules. (e) Arbitral-Rule Confidentiality. The JAMS Comprehensive Arbitration Rules and JAMS Commercial Arbitration Rules confidentiality provisions (which apply to JAMS arbitration under §14.2 and are supplemented by §14.10) apply to all settlement-oriented communications occurring during the pendency of an arbitration, in addition to the protections of clauses (a) through (d). (f) Application to Pre-Arbitration and Post-Bellwether Phases. The protections of this Section 14.12 apply: (i) to the §14.7 Mandatory Pre-Arbitration Meet and Confer phase, including all communications occurring during the 30-day or 60-day notice period; (ii) to the §14.8 Mass Arbitration Coordination phase, including all communications between common counsel and the Company concerning Coordinated Group identification, sequencing, and resolution; (iii) to the §14.11(e) Post-Bellwether Settlement-Discussion Period, including all communications during the 90-day settlement-discussion phase; (iv) to any communication between the User (or User's counsel) and the Company (or Company's counsel) regarding the disputed claim, whether initiated by either party; and (v) to any communication exchanged with a mediator, arbitrator, or analogous neutral third party for purposes of settlement. (g) Limits. The protections of this Section 14.12 do not apply to: (i) the parties' final settlement agreement itself (which may be presented to the arbitrator or court for enforcement); (ii) communications made for purposes other than negotiating settlement, such as routine business communications not directed at resolving the dispute; (iii) communications made in furtherance of fraud or a crime (under the crime-fraud exception); or (iv) communications expressly designated by both parties as non-confidential. The party seeking to admit a communication notwithstanding this Section 14.12 bears the burden of demonstrating that one of these limits applies. (h) Specific Application to Mass Arbitration. Under no circumstances may any communication concerning settlement of any individual demand within a Coordinated Group under §14.8 or a Mass Filing under §14.11 be used as evidence in any other individual or aggregated proceeding within or related to the same Coordinated Group or Mass Filing, or in any subsequent class action, regulatory action, or court litigation, except to the extent expressly required by applicable law (in which case the disclosing party shall seek a protective order, sealing, or in-camera review consistent with §14.10). (i) Sanctions for Breach. Breach of this Section 14.12 by a User or User's counsel is a material breach of these Terms giving rise to the remedies of §14.10 (confidentiality of arbitration), §15.30 (vexatious litigation protection), §15.35 (equitable remedies), and any other applicable remedy. The non-breaching party may seek immediate injunctive relief to prevent further disclosure, and the breaching party shall be liable for actual damages (including attorneys' fees and reputational damages) and, where the breach is intentional and material, for the liquidated damages amounts of §15.36 by analogy or such other reasonable estimate as the arbitrator or court determines. (j) Severability and Reformation. The protections and reservations of this Section 14.12 are severable across clauses (a) through (i), claim categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to maximize settlement-negotiation confidentiality and to encourage good-faith dispute resolution.

14.13 Arbitrator Authority Limitations and Standards of Review

The authority of any arbitrator (or arbitral panel) acting under Section 14.2 (JAMS Commercial Arbitration Rules) is expressly limited as follows: (a) Bound by These Terms. The arbitrator shall apply these Terms as written and shall not modify, reform, supplement, or substitute the parties' express agreement, except where reformation is expressly authorized by a severability or reformation provision of these Terms (such as §14.9, §15.2, or any section-specific severability clause). (b) No Class or Representative Certification. The arbitrator does not have authority to certify any class action, representative action, collective action, mass action, private-attorney-general action, or any analogous representative proceeding, in arbitration or in court. The §14.3 Class Action Waiver is binding on the arbitrator. Any question of the enforceability of the Class Action Waiver as applied to any specific claim is reserved to a court of competent jurisdiction under §14.9, and the arbitrator has no authority to determine such question. (c) No Consolidation Outside §14.8 Framework. The arbitrator does not have authority to consolidate, coordinate, or otherwise group multiple individual demands into a joint proceeding, except as expressly authorized by the §14.8 Mass Arbitration Coordination Protocol and §14.11 Bellwether Arbitration Procedure, and only on the terms set forth therein. (d) No Award Beyond §11 Cap. The arbitrator shall not award damages in excess of the Section 11 cap, applied with the cap-mechanics of the §11 supplemental paragraph (essential-purpose waiver, aggregate cap, common-control aggregation, rolling-period, pro-rata allocation). Any purported award in excess of the cap is void to the extent of the excess and subject to modification under 9 U.S.C. § 11(b) for award exceeding the arbitrator's authority. (e) Limited Discovery. The arbitrator shall not order discovery in excess of the JAMS Commercial Arbitration Rules' standard discovery scope, except where both parties expressly stipulate. The arbitrator shall give particular deference to the Company's trade-secret, security, and §15.33(f) no-compelled-disclosure-of-model-internals interests, and shall enter protective orders and analogous procedural protections to safeguard such interests. (f) No Modification of These Terms. The arbitrator does not have authority to modify, reform, supplement, or replace any provision of these Terms, except where reformation is expressly authorized by a severability clause and is necessary to render the provision enforceable to its broadest enforceable scope. The arbitrator shall not "blue-pencil" provisions to expand User remedies beyond what the express provision authorizes. (g) No Waiver of Company Defenses. The arbitrator shall not, by any procedural order or substantive ruling, waive any defense, immunity, or protection of the Company or any Protected Person under these Terms or applicable law, including without limitation: the §11 cap; the §10 disclaimers (including §10.9 data loss/outage, §10.10 mental health/self-harm, §10.11 user-caused harm, §10.12 comprehensive personal/economic/property harm, §10.13 no CRA status, §10.14 no professional advice); the §12 indemnification framework; the §14.10 confidentiality; the §14.12 settlement-negotiation confidentiality; the §15.18 Protected Persons shield; the §15.26 reservation of remedies; the §15.28 anti-assignment; the §15.29 no-duty-to-monitor and Good Samaritan; the §15.30 vexatious-litigation protection; the §15.31 First Amendment editorial discretion and right-to-refuse-service; the §15.33 AI-specific defenses; the §15.35 equitable-remedies reservation; the §15.36 anti-harassment; the §15.37 antitrust defenses; the §15.41 quasi-contract defenses; the §15.42 anti-tortious-interference; the §15.43 regulatory-cooperation no-admission; the §15.44 implied-covenant limitations; or any other defense expressly reserved. (h) No Punitive Damages Beyond Statutory Minimum. The arbitrator shall not award punitive, exemplary, multiple, or analogous non-compensatory damages, except where (i) applicable law expressly requires such damages and (ii) the User claim's substantive theory specifically authorizes such damages on the facts proven, subject in all events to the §11 paragraph 3 narrow carve-outs and any applicable statutory cap on punitive damages. (i) No Determination of Class-Waiver Arbitrability. The arbitrator does not have authority to determine the enforceability of the §14.3 Class Action Waiver, the §14.9 Class-Waiver Blow-Up severance, or any related arbitrability question. These questions are expressly reserved to a court of competent jurisdiction under §14.9. The arbitrator's failure to honor this allocation is grounds for vacatur under 9 U.S.C. § 10(a)(4) (arbitrator exceeded powers). (j) No Specific Performance Against Company Beyond §15.35. The arbitrator may award the Company specific performance against the User under §15.35 (Equitable Remedies Comprehensive Reservation). The arbitrator may not award the User specific performance against the Company beyond what is expressly authorized in these Terms; in particular, the arbitrator may not compel the Company to provide Service to a refused or terminated User contrary to §15.31 (Right to Refuse Service). (k) Awards Subject to FAA Standards of Review. Any final award rendered by the arbitrator is subject to confirmation, vacatur, or modification under the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. §§ 9-11, including the grounds of: (i) corruption, fraud, or undue means under §10(a)(1); (ii) evident partiality or corruption under §10(a)(2); (iii) misconduct under §10(a)(3); (iv) arbitrator exceeding powers under §10(a)(4); and (v) the §11 modification grounds. The Company expressly reserves the right to seek vacatur or modification of any award that exceeds the arbitrator's authority under this Section 14.13. (l) "Manifest Disregard of the Law" Standard Reserved. The Company expressly reserves the right to seek vacatur of any award on the grounds of "manifest disregard of the law" as recognized by federal circuit courts pre- and post-Hall Street Associates, L.L.C. v. Mattel, Inc., 552 U.S. 576 (2008), to the extent such standard remains available in the jurisdiction of confirmation. (m) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 14.13 are severable across clauses (a) through (l), arbitrator-authority categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the court of competent jurisdiction to the broadest enforceable scope.

15.General Provisions

15.1 Entire Agreement. This Agreement, together with the following referenced documents and policies (each, an "Integrated Document"), constitutes the entire agreement between the parties and supersedes all prior agreements regarding the subject matter hereof: (a) the TIP Community License v1.0 (TIPCL-1.0) at theailab.org/tip-license; (b) any Commercial License agreement applicable to you under Section 7.3; (c) the Company's Privacy Policy at theailab.org/tip-privacy-policy; (d) the Company's Acceptable Use Policy at theailab.org/tip-acceptable-use; (e) the TIP Protocol Specification (CC-BY 4.0) at github.com/theailaborg/tip-protocol; (f) the TIP-VP Code of Conduct (for Verification Providers and the Company in its Bootstrap Period VP role); (g) the AI Trust ID™ Seal Visual Identity Guidelines (where applicable); (h) the Data Processing Agreement at theailab.org/dpa (where applicable to your role as data controller or processor); (i) the Service Level Agreement at theailab.org/sla (for Commercial-tier Users where applicable); (j) the SMS Opt-In and SMS Opt-Out policies at theailab.org/sms-opt-in and theailab.org/sms-opt-out; (k) the Company's general site Terms at theailab.org/terms; and (l) any other policy, agreement, or supplemental terms the Company publishes from time to time at theailab.org or otherwise communicates in writing to you. In the event of conflict between these Terms and any Integrated Document, the more specific provision governs the specific subject matter; in the event of irreconcilable conflict, these Terms prevail unless the conflicting Integrated Document expressly states otherwise.

15.2 Severability. If any provision is held invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full force, and the invalid provision shall be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it valid while preserving the parties' intent.

15.3 Waiver. No failure or delay in exercising any right constitutes a waiver thereof. No waiver is effective unless made in writing and signed by an authorized officer of the Company.

15.4 Assignment. You may not assign or delegate these Terms or any rights or obligations under them without prior written consent of the Company. The Company may assign these Terms, in whole or in part, together with all rights, obligations, claims, defenses, indemnities, and protections, to any affiliate, successor entity, acquirer, or other transferee without your consent, provided the assignee assumes all obligations under these Terms. Upon any such assignment, the assignee succeeds to all rights, defenses, and protections of the Company under these Terms, including without limitation the limitations of Section 11, the framework of Section 14, the reservations of Section 15.26, and the survival framework of Section 15.27. Any purported assignment in violation of this Section is void.

15.5 Force Majeure. The Company is not liable for any delay, failure, suspension, or impaired performance resulting from any event or circumstance beyond the Company's reasonable control, including without limitation: (a) acts of God, natural disasters (earthquake, flood, fire, hurricane, tornado, tsunami, volcanic eruption, severe weather, geomagnetic storm, solar flare); (b) war, armed conflict, hostilities (whether declared or not), invasion, insurrection, civil unrest, riots, sabotage, or acts of foreign or domestic enemies; (c) terrorism, hostage situations, kidnapping, or threats thereof; (d) pandemic, epidemic, public health emergency, quarantine, mass illness, or workforce-disabling outbreaks; (e) governmental action, regulation, sanctions, embargo, trade restriction, license denial or revocation, executive order, court order, or administrative directive; (f) telecommunications failure, internet shutdown or interruption, submarine cable cut, DNS failure, domain seizure, or critical-network outage; (g) cyberattack, ransomware, distributed denial of service, advanced persistent threat, supply-chain compromise, or large-scale cryptographic compromise; (h) failure of a critical vendor, cloud-infrastructure provider, payment processor, identity-verification specialist, or other third-party service provider essential to the Services; (i) supply-chain disruption, shipping delay, materials shortage, or production halt; (j) power outage, grid failure, fuel shortage, or critical-utility interruption; (k) strike, work stoppage, labor unrest, or workforce action; (l) advances in computing capability (including quantum computing) that compromise the cryptographic primitives on which the Services depend; (m) coordinated AI-scale adversarial attacks against the Company's classification systems or the broader TIP Protocol network; (n) chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear incidents; or (o) any other event or circumstance, whether or not foreseen or foreseeable, that is beyond the Company's reasonable control. During any force majeure event, the Company may, at its sole discretion, suspend or limit performance for the duration of the event plus a reasonable recovery period, and the Company has no obligation to provide any refund, credit, or compensation for performance affected by such event.

15.6 Export Controls and Sanctions Compliance. The Services, including post-quantum cryptographic components (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA, SHAKE-256), may be subject to export control regulations in multiple jurisdictions, including without limitation: (a) the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR, 15 C.F.R. Parts 730-774) administered by the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security; (b) the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR, 22 C.F.R. Parts 120-130) administered by the U.S. State Department; (c) the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions programs administered by the U.S. Treasury Department; (d) the EU Dual-Use Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2021/821) and EU sanctions regulations administered by the European Commission; (e) the U.K. Export Control Order 2008, Export Control Act 2002, and Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 administered by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation and the Department for International Trade; (f) Japan's Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act administered by METI; (g) China's Export Control Law (2020) administered by MOFCOM; (h) Canada's Export and Import Permits Act and Special Economic Measures Act; (i) Australia's Defence Trade Controls Act 2012 and Autonomous Sanctions Act 2011; and (j) analogous export-control, sanctions, and trade-restriction regimes in other jurisdictions. You represent and warrant that: (i) you are not located in, organized under the laws of, under the control of, or a national of any country subject to a comprehensive U.S., EU, UK, or UN export embargo (currently including, without limitation, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, the Crimea region of Ukraine, and the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics); (ii) you are not on any U.S. government restricted-party list (including the SDN List, Denied Persons List, Entity List, Unverified List, and Sectoral Sanctions Identifications List), the EU Consolidated Sanctions List, the U.K. Consolidated List of Financial Sanctions Targets, or any analogous restricted-party list of any other jurisdiction; (iii) you will not use the Services to transfer, re-export, or otherwise make available any cryptographic or controlled technology to any restricted destination or restricted party; and (iv) you will obtain any required export license or authorization from the appropriate jurisdictional authority before any controlled use of the Services. Violation of this Section 15.6 is a material breach of these Terms, and the Company reserves the right under Section 15.20 to suspend, restrict, or geofence the Services to comply with applicable export control or sanctions requirements.

15.7 Notices. Legal notices to the Company must be sent by certified mail to: The AI Lab Intelligence Unobscured, Inc., 131 Continental Dr, Suite 305, Newark, DE 19713, Attention: Legal, with a copy to chairman@theailab.org, or to such other address or electronic destination as the Company may designate from time to time by written notice to you, by update to these Terms, or by prominent notice on theailab.org. A notice sent to the most recent address designated by the Company on theailab.org, or in the absence of such update to the address set forth above, shall be deemed properly delivered upon receipt. The Company shall use commercially reasonable efforts to maintain the current notice address publicly on theailab.org; however, failure to maintain such notice does not relieve a User of the obligation to send notice to the address most reasonably calculated to provide actual receipt to the Company at the time the notice is sent.

15.8 No Third-Party Beneficiaries. Except as expressly provided for Verification Providers, node operators, and the Company's officers, directors, employees, and agents in Sections 11 and 12, these Terms do not create any third-party beneficiary rights. No reader, viewer, or other party who encounters a TIP Protocol badge acquires any contractual right against the Company by virtue of that encounter.

15.9 Right to Modify Operational Parameters. The Company reserves the right at any time, with or without notice and in its sole discretion, to modify, adjust, or recalibrate: (a) AI classification confidence thresholds, including the values T_baseline, H, and the 0.94 hard ceiling described in Section 5.3 (subject to the Genesis Block immutability constraints described in Section 3.3); (b) the Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3 adjudication routing rules described in Section 5.4; (c) the Trust Score penalty schedule described in Section 5.5; (d) the jurisdiction tier classification methodology described in Section 6.2; (e) the warrant canary remediation timeline described in Section 6.3; (f) the accreditation fee schedule described in Section 6.4; (g) the score display modes described in Section 8.3; and (h) any other operational parameter not expressly fixed by the Genesis Block. Material changes that adversely affect existing Users will be communicated at least thirty (30) days in advance pursuant to Section 1. Non-material changes, including adjustments to internal classifier weights, may take effect immediately. The right to modify operational parameters does not extend to retroactive adjustment of completed adjudication outcomes recorded on the DAG.

15.10 Service Availability and No SLA for Free Tier. Free-tier Users acknowledge and agree that no service-level commitment is made with respect to uptime, latency, throughput, or any other availability metric of the Services. Commercial-tier Users receive service-level commitments only as expressly set forth in their applicable Commercial License or accompanying service-level agreement, if any. The Company is not liable for damages of any kind arising from any outage, degradation, or unavailability of the free tier.

15.11 Statutory Compliance. You represent and warrant that your use of the Services complies with all applicable laws of every jurisdiction in which you operate, including without limitation laws governing: (a) identity verification and digital identity (including eIDAS, India Aadhaar regulations, and analogous regimes); (b) biometric data (including BIPA, CUBI, Washington Biometric Privacy Act, GDPR special-category data rules, and analogous biometric privacy statutes); (c) age verification and children's data (including COPPA, GDPR Art. 8, U.K. Age Appropriate Design Code, California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, and analogous regimes); (d) content disclosure and AI transparency (including EU AI Act, EU Digital Services Act, U.K. Online Safety Act, Florida SB 7072, Texas HB 20, and analogous regimes); (e) intellectual property (including copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, right of publicity, and unfair competition laws); (f) anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing (including the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act, FinCEN regulations, EU AMLD framework, and analogous regimes); (g) sanctions and export controls (as set forth in Section 15.6); (h) consumer protection (including FTC Act § 5, state UDAP statutes, EU Consumer Rights Directive, and analogous regimes); (i) anti-corruption and anti-bribery (including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.K. Bribery Act 2010, the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, and analogous regimes); (j) tax law in every jurisdiction in which you are tax-resident or have a taxable nexus; (k) cybersecurity and breach notification (including the New York SHIELD Act, all U.S. state data-breach-notification statutes, the EU NIS2 Directive, and analogous regimes); (l) AI-specific regulations (including the EU AI Act, the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act, NYC Local Law 144, the Illinois Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act, and analogous regimes); (m) general privacy and data protection (including GDPR, U.K. GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, Virginia VCDPA, Colorado CPA, Connecticut CTDPA, Utah UCPA, Texas TDPSA, Brazil LGPD, India DPDPA 2023, and analogous regimes); (n) securities and financial regulation (including the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, EU MiCA Regulation, state Blue Sky laws, and analogous regimes, subject to the disclaimer of Section 15.25); (o) healthcare data laws (including HIPAA, HITECH, and analogous regimes, where applicable to the User's use of the Services); (p) credit and financial-services laws (including FCRA, GLBA, EU PSD2, and analogous regimes, where applicable); (q) employment and labor laws (including federal and state equal-employment-opportunity statutes, the National Labor Relations Act, state wage and hour laws, and analogous foreign regimes); and (r) any other law or regulation applicable to the User. You bear sole responsibility for determining the legality of your use of the Services in your jurisdiction. The Company does not provide legal advice and the availability of the Services in any jurisdiction is not a representation that the Services may lawfully be used in that jurisdiction.

15.12 No Training Use of TIP Data. You may not use any TIP Protocol data, including but not limited to TIP-IDs, content registrations, Trust Scores, adjudication outcomes, badge displays, or any data obtained from the AI Trust Registry public lookup surface, to train, fine-tune, evaluate, benchmark, or otherwise improve any artificial intelligence model, machine learning system, or competing content-provenance system, except (a) with the express prior written consent of the Company, or (b) for non-commercial academic research conducted by an accredited educational institution and (i) not funded in whole or in material part by any commercial entity that competes with the Company or that intends to commercialize the research outputs, (ii) disclosed in writing to the Company at research@theailab.org within thirty (30) days of the institution first becoming aware of this Section, whether or not the research is already underway, and (iii) the resulting research publications are made available to the Company under no-charge license. Any commercial spinout, licensing, or technology transfer arising from research conducted under this carve-out requires a separate written agreement with the Company. This Section 15.12 is intended to prevent the use of the protocol's data outputs to construct adversarial systems that would degrade the integrity of the protocol. For the avoidance of doubt, the prohibition in this Section 15.12 binds third parties only and does not restrict the Company's own narrow, mission-bound use of TIP Protocol data in service of the protocol's public-interest mission. The Company may use TIP Protocol data, processed in aggregated and de-identified form to the maximum extent technically possible while preserving operational utility, to train, evaluate, validate, and continuously improve the Company's own protocol-integrity systems, including without limitation the AI Pre-Scan classifier and the Multi-Model Consensus Classification described in Sections 5.4 and 5.6, and any successor classification, fraud-detection, or abuse-pattern-recognition systems operated by or on behalf of the Company. The sole and limited purpose of this use is to keep the protocol effective for everyone who relies on it: to reduce false positives and false negatives in Origin Code classification, to detect new forms of identity impersonation and deepfake generation as adversaries adapt, to identify coordinated abuse patterns before they harm participants, and to improve the accuracy of the trust signals that every Creator, Institution, Publisher, Operator, and Partner depends on. The Company commits, as a continuing material covenant, that data used under this paragraph (i) is processed in aggregated and de-identified form to the maximum extent technically possible while preserving classifier utility; (ii) is not sold, licensed, rented, or otherwise transferred to any third party for commercial monetization; (iii) is not used to construct, train, or improve any product whose primary purpose is unrelated to the protocol's mission of verified human identity and AI content provenance; (iv) is not combined with data sources outside the Protocol in any manner that would re-identify individual Users; and (v) is handled consistently with the privacy commitments of the TIP Privacy Policy, the AI Trust Council Charter, and the AI Trust Council Bylaws (including the Mission Alignment Clause of Bylaws Article IV and the Public Records commitments of Bylaws Article XI). The Company is grateful to every participant whose registration and use of the Protocol strengthens the collective accuracy of the trust layer; this collective accuracy belongs to the commons, and the Company holds itself accountable to preserve it as such.

15.13 Electronic Records and Signatures. You consent to receive all communications, agreements, and notices from the Company in electronic form. Electronic signatures, including click-through acceptance, biometric verification completion, and DAG transaction signatures, are legally binding and equivalent to handwritten signatures under the U.S. Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN Act, 15 U.S.C. § 7001 et seq.), the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) as adopted by the various U.S. states, the EU eIDAS Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 910/2014), the U.K. Electronic Communications Act 2000, Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) Part 2, Australia's Electronic Transactions Act 1999, India's Information Technology Act 2000, and analogous statutes in other jurisdictions. Your acceptance of these Terms in any manner described in Section 1 paragraph 2 constitutes your affirmative consent to electronic disclosure of all required information under such statutes, to the extent such consent is required for those statutes to apply.

15.14 Headings for Convenience. Section headings and subheadings throughout this Agreement are provided for convenience of reference only and do not affect the meaning or interpretation of any provision.

15.15 Anti-Reverse-Engineering of Classification Systems. Without limiting Section 9, you may not reverse-engineer, probe, fuzz, adversarially train against, or otherwise attempt to derive the internal weights, prompts, training data, model architectures, or decision boundaries of any AI Pre-Scan, Multi-Model Consensus Classification, or other automated analysis system operated by or on behalf of the Company. Attempted circumvention of any such system is a material breach of these Terms and may result in immediate revocation of your TIP-ID without right of recovery of Trust Score or fees paid.

15.16 Reservation of Intermediary Safe-Harbor Protections. The TIP Protocol is an interactive computer service within the meaning of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230, and is an intermediary service provider within the meaning of analogous foreign safe-harbor statutes, including without limitation: (a) the EU eCommerce Directive (Directive 2000/31/EC) and the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065); (b) the U.K. Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 and the U.K. Online Safety Act 2023; (c) Japan's Provider Liability Limitation Act (Act No. 137 of 2001); (d) Singapore's Electronic Transactions Act and Online Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act; (e) India's Information Technology Act 2000 § 79 (intermediary safe harbor); (f) Canada's analogous intermediary-liability provisions under federal and provincial law; (g) Australia's Online Safety Act 2021 and Broadcasting Services Act intermediary provisions; (h) Brazil's Marco Civil da Internet (Law 12.965/2014); and (i) analogous intermediary or safe-harbor statutes of other jurisdictions. The Company is not the publisher or speaker of any content registered through the Services by any User, and the registration of content with an Origin Code declaration shall not be construed as adoption, ratification, or republication of that content by the Company. The Company expressly reserves all protections, immunities, defenses, and limitations of liability available under 47 U.S.C. § 230(c) and each of the foreign statutes enumerated above. Nothing in these Terms shall be construed to waive any such protection, and any inadvertent failure to invoke a specific statutory provision shall not constitute waiver of the underlying protection.

15.17 Independent Verification Providers as Independent Contractors. This Section 15.17 applies to independent Verification Providers and does not apply to the Company's own operation as Verification Provider during the Bootstrap Period, which is governed by Section 6.6. Each independent Verification Provider is an independent legal entity, separately incorporated, separately staffed, and separately operated. No independent Verification Provider is an agent, employee, partner, joint venturer, or representative of the Company. The Company exercises no day-to-day operational control over any independent Verification Provider beyond enforcement of the accreditation standards and Code of Conduct described in Section 6. The Company is not liable for the acts or omissions of any independent Verification Provider under any theory of respondeat superior, agency, vicarious liability, or apparent authority. Claims against an independent Verification Provider arising from biometric verification, identity issuance, or operational conduct shall be brought solely against that Verification Provider, not against the Company. The Company's only obligation with respect to independent Verification Provider misconduct is to apply the accreditation revocation procedures described in Section 6 where the facts warrant.

15.18 Personal Liability Shield for All Personnel, Equity Holders, Affiliates, and Successors. No claim arising out of or related to these Terms or the Services may be brought against any of the Protected Persons defined below in such Protected Person's personal, individual, or non-corporate capacity. All such claims, to the extent they may be brought at all, must be brought against the appropriate corporate entity in its corporate capacity, subject in all events to the limitations of Sections 11, 14, and 15.26. The appropriate corporate entity is determined as follows: (A) for Protected Persons described in clause (1) of this Section 15.18 other than Verification Provider staff, and for clause (2) equity holders and clause (5) family members, the Company; (B) for Protected Persons described as Verification Provider staff acting under Section 6 within clause (1), the relevant Verification Provider entity, in accordance with Section 15.17 (the Company is not the appropriate defendant for VP-staff conduct except where the Company is itself the Verification Provider during the Bootstrap Period under Section 6.6); (C) for Protected Persons under clause (3), the relevant affiliated entity (parent, subsidiary, sister, or other affiliate), in accordance with standard corporate-law separation; and (D) for Protected Persons under clause (4), the relevant successor, assignee, or acquirer entity that succeeded to the corresponding obligation. "Protected Persons" means, collectively: (1) any individual who is, was, or may in the future be any of the following with respect to the Company, in any capacity, whether full-time, part-time, formal, informal, compensated, or uncompensated: an officer, director, board member, board observer, employee, former employee, intern, trainee, apprentice, fellow, volunteer, secondee, contractor, subcontractor, consultant, advisor (formal or informal), agent, founder, co-founder, representative, Stage 2 juror or Stage 3 expert panelist serving under Section 5.4, Verification Provider staff acting under Section 6, or any other natural person performing services for or on behalf of the Company in any capacity; (2) any shareholder, member, equity holder, investor, lender, noteholder, optionee, warrant holder, or other holder of any economic interest in the Company; (3) any parent entity, subsidiary, sister company, affiliate, or other entity under common control with the Company, and any individual who is, was, or may in the future be (in any capacity, whether full-time, part-time, formal, informal, compensated, or uncompensated) an officer, director, board member, board observer, employee, former employee, intern, trainee, apprentice, fellow, volunteer, secondee, contractor, subcontractor, consultant, advisor (formal or informal), agent, founder, co-founder, representative, or any other natural person performing services for or on behalf of any such entity; (4) any successor, assignee, or acquirer of the Company or any portion of its business or assets, and any individual who is, was, or may in the future be (in any capacity, whether full-time, part-time, formal, informal, compensated, or uncompensated) an officer, director, board member, board observer, employee, former employee, intern, trainee, apprentice, fellow, volunteer, secondee, contractor, subcontractor, consultant, advisor (formal or informal), agent, founder, co-founder, representative, or any other natural person performing services for or on behalf of any such successor, assignee, or acquirer; and (5) the spouse, domestic partner, immediate family member, or estate of any individual described in clauses (1), (3), or (4), to the extent of any derivative claim, loss-of-consortium claim, wrongful-death survival claim, alienation-of-affection claim, negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim brought by the family member in their own capacity, or similar claim premised on the conduct of that individual in the protected capacity. This Section 15.18 is enforceable as a covenant not to sue any Protected Person and may be raised as a complete defense to any claim against a Protected Person in such capacity. The protection of this Section 15.18 is supplemental to and not in derogation of: (a) the Company's certificate of incorporation, including any provision adopted pursuant to 8 Del. C. § 102(b)(7); (b) the Company's bylaws; (c) any indemnification agreement between the Company and any Protected Person; (d) the limited-liability protection that applicable corporate law affords to shareholders and other equity holders; (e) the volunteer-protection provisions of the federal Volunteer Protection Act, 42 U.S.C. § 14501 et seq., and analogous state statutes, where applicable; and (f) any other applicable law providing personal-liability protection. Nothing in this Section 15.18 shall be construed to limit any claim that the Company itself may have against any Protected Person under separate contract or statute, or to limit claims for conduct that is, on the face of the pleading, demonstrably outside the scope of the protected capacity. To the extent any portion of this Section 15.18 is held unenforceable in any jurisdiction with respect to any specific Protected Person category, any specific claim type, or any specific theory of recovery, the remainder shall continue to apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law in that jurisdiction. The protection of this Section 15.18 is severable across Protected Person categories: invalidity of the protection for one category (for example, clause (5) family members in a jurisdiction that does not enforce derivative-claim covenants) does not invalidate the protection for any other category, and each clause (1) through (5) shall stand independently to the maximum enforceable extent. The protection is likewise severable across claim types: invalidity of the protection against one claim type does not invalidate the protection against any other claim type. Any unenforceable covenant in this Section 15.18 shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope rather than stricken in its entirety.

15.19 No Partnership, Joint Venture, or Agency. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, employment relationship, franchise, agency, or fiduciary relationship between you and the Company. You have no authority to bind, represent, or act on behalf of the Company by virtue of these Terms, your use of the Services, or your registration of any TIP-ID. No conduct by the Company shall be construed as creating apparent authority for any User, Verification Provider, node operator, or other party to act on the Company's behalf.

15.20 Right to Suspend or Modify for Regulatory Compliance. Notwithstanding any other provision of these Terms, the Company may at any time suspend, restrict, geofence, disable, modify, or discontinue any feature of the Services, or revoke any TIP-ID or content registration, where the Company in its sole and reasonable discretion determines that such action is necessary or advisable to comply with applicable law, regulatory guidance, sanctions, court order, or administrative directive of any jurisdiction in which the Company operates or provides Services. Action taken under this Section 15.20 is not a breach of these Terms and gives rise to no claim by any User. The Company shall make commercially reasonable efforts to provide notice of such action to affected Users where doing so is not itself prohibited by the applicable legal requirement.

15.21 No Fiduciary Duty. Nothing in these Terms, the Company's operation of the Services, the Company's collection and handling of Biometric Data, the Company's operation as Verification Provider during the Bootstrap Period under Section 6.6, or any aspect of the Company's relationship with you creates a fiduciary, trust, agency, or other heightened duty of care between the Company and you beyond the duties expressly set forth in these Terms. The relationship between the Company and you is contractual, arm's length, and limited to the rights and obligations expressly stated in this Agreement. You shall not assert any claim premised on the existence of a fiduciary or trust relationship between the Company and you, including but not limited to claims premised on the Company's handling of Biometric Data, the Company's dual role during the Bootstrap Period, or the Company's discretion in operating any feature of the Services.

15.22 Copyright Notice and Takedown Procedure (DMCA and Foreign Equivalents). If you believe in good faith that content registered through the TIP Protocol infringes your copyright, you may submit a notification to the Company in accordance with the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512 (DMCA) and any analogous foreign copyright safe-harbor or intermediary-liability regime, including without limitation: (i) the EU Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/790, Article 17) and the EU eCommerce Directive 2000/31/EC; (ii) the U.K. Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the U.K. Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002; (iii) the Canadian Copyright Act §§ 41.25-41.27 (notice-and-notice regime); (iv) the Australian Copyright Act 1968 §§ 116AA-116AJ; (v) the Japanese Copyright Act and Provider Liability Limitation Act; (vi) the Singapore Copyright Act 2021 §§ 192-193; (vii) India's Copyright Act 1957 § 52(1)(b) and IT Act 2000 § 79; (viii) Brazil's Marco Civil da Internet (Law 12.965/2014) and Copyright Law (Law 9.610/1998); and (ix) analogous copyright safe-harbor statutes in other jurisdictions. The Company expressly reserves all protections, immunities, defenses, and limitations of liability available under the DMCA and each of the foreign statutes enumerated above. Notifications shall be sent to: The AI Lab Intelligence Unobscured, Inc., Attention: DMCA Agent, 131 Continental Dr, Suite 305, Newark, DE 19713, with an electronic copy to dmca@theailab.org. A complete notification must include: (a) a physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on the owner's behalf; (b) identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed; (c) identification of the TIP-CONTENT record, CTID, or other registry artifact alleged to enable or facilitate the infringement and information reasonably sufficient to permit the Company to locate the record; (d) the notifier's name, address, telephone number, and email address; (e) a statement that the notifier has a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and (f) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that the notifier is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner. The Company shall review compliant DMCA notifications and, where the Company in its reasonable discretion considers the notification to substantiate a credible copyright claim, may mark the relevant TIP-CONTENT record with a copyright-dispute status indicator in the AI Trust Registry public lookup surface and request the registering User to provide a counter-notification under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g) or to amend the registration. The Company has no technical ability to delete or modify any validated DAG transaction once written, and the immutability of the DAG (Section 3.3) is not a waiver of any rights of any copyright owner; rather, the Company's DMCA response is limited to suppression of display in the public lookup surface and to revocation of the registering User's TIP-ID in appropriate cases. A counter-notification shall comply with 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3). The Company maintains a policy of terminating, in appropriate circumstances and at the Company's reasonable discretion, the TIP-ID of any User who is the subject of three or more substantiated DMCA notifications within any rolling twelve (12) month period (a "repeat infringer" under 17 U.S.C. § 512(i)). The TIP-CONTENT record is a metadata signature of content origin, not the underlying content; rights holders should also pursue takedown of underlying infringing content through the platforms that actually host it.

15.23 Public Interest Operation. The Company operates the TIP Protocol, the AI Trust Registry, and (during the Bootstrap Period) the Verification Provider function as part of a stated public-interest mission to provide open, federated, post-quantum-secure infrastructure for verified human identity and content provenance on the internet. The mission is reflected in: (a) the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license of the Protocol Specification, which permits any party to fork or compete with the Company; (b) the TIPCL-1.0 license of the Reference Implementation, which provides free use for individuals under $100K revenue, small businesses under $100K revenue, nonprofits, accredited educational institutions, government entities, and journalism organizations of any size for editorial use; (c) the TIPCL-1.0 conversion to Apache License 2.0 on January 1, 2031, ensuring the implementation becomes fully open-source within five years; (d) the Company's stated intent under Section 6.6.5 to accredit independent Verification Providers in good faith and transition issuance to a federated VP network; and (e) the Company's election, as of the Effective Date of this Agreement, to launch the Services without external grant funding or undisclosed commercial sponsorship. The factual statements in clauses (a) through (e) describe the Company's posture at the Effective Date and are not warranties that this posture will be maintained indefinitely. The Company may, in its discretion and consistent with its mission, accept funding, grants, or commercial sponsorship at any time after the Effective Date and shall disclose material funding sources in accordance with applicable law. The public-interest framing of the Services is a material consideration informing the Company's exercise of discretion under these Terms and shall be given weight in any interpretation of an ambiguous provision in favor of the Company's good-faith pursuit of the mission. The public-interest framing is not, however, a representation that the Services are operated as a public utility, a common carrier, a state actor, or any other entity subject to heightened public-law duties, and no claim shall arise on any such theory.

15.24 Law Enforcement Cooperation and Mandatory Reporting. The Company shall: (a) comply with all valid legal process, including subpoenas, court orders, search warrants, preservation requests, national security letters, and other lawful demands for User information or registered content metadata served on the Company by competent authority in any jurisdiction in which the Company operates; (b) make reports of apparent child sexual abuse material (CSAM) required by any applicable mandatory reporting statute, including without limitation 18 U.S.C. § 2258A (U.S. mandatory reporting to NCMEC), the EU CSAM Reporting Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2021/1232) and Directive 2011/93/EU on combating sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, the U.K. Protection of Children Act 1978 and U.K. Online Safety Act 2023 (reporting to the Internet Watch Foundation), Canada's Mandatory Reporting Act (S.C. 2011, c. 4) (reporting to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection), Australia's Online Safety Act 2021 (reporting to the eSafety Commissioner and Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation), Germany's StGB § 184b and Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), France's Loi 2020-766 (reporting to PHAROS), Japan's Act on Punishment of Activities Relating to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, Singapore's Penal Code child-exploitation provisions, the INHOPE network of national hotlines, and analogous statutes and clearinghouses in other jurisdictions; such reports shall be made without prior notice to the affected User and without delay, regardless of any other provision of these Terms; (c) at the Company's reasonable discretion, cooperate with law enforcement investigations of suspected criminal activity by Users, including by preserving evidence under 18 U.S.C. § 2703(f) or analogous statutes for the periods required by law; (d) at the Company's reasonable discretion, suspend or revoke the TIP-ID of any User who is the subject of a substantiated law enforcement referral, without prior notice where prior notice would compromise the investigation or contravene the legal demand; (e) provide such User information as is required by law in response to valid legal process, in a form consistent with the technical architecture of the Services; and (f) where not prohibited by the applicable legal demand, notify the affected User of the legal demand and the Company's response within a commercially reasonable time. The Company shall not be liable to you for any action taken in good faith under this Section 15.24, including responses to legal process, mandatory CSAM reports, evidence preservation, account suspension pursuant to a substantiated referral, or any other law enforcement cooperation. Nothing in these Terms shall be construed as a waiver of, or limitation on, the Company's right or obligation to comply with mandatory reporting laws, valid legal process, or any other obligation to law enforcement.

15.25 No Securities, No Tokens, No Financial Instruments. TIP-IDs, Content Transaction Identifiers (CTIDs), Trust Scores, the DAG ledger, the AI Trust ID Seal, and all other artifacts and records of the TIP Protocol are intended exclusively as instruments of identity, content provenance, reputation, and certification. They are not, and shall not be characterized, marketed, sold, traded, transferred, used, or held as: (a) securities under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, or analogous foreign statutes; (b) commodities or commodity interests under the Commodity Exchange Act or the jurisdiction of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission; (c) crypto-assets, tokens, coins, e-money, stablecoins, utility tokens, or other digital financial instruments under the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act, U.S. Treasury / FinCEN guidance, the European Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), the U.K. Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, or analogous foreign regimes; (d) money, money transmission, or monetary value of any kind under U.S. state money transmitter laws or analogous foreign regimes; (e) investment contracts under any applicable law including the Howey test; or (f) any instrument bearing a right to or expectation of financial return, dividend, interest, distribution, capital gain, or appreciation in value. By registering for or using the Services, you acknowledge that you are not purchasing a security, investment, token, coin, or other financial instrument, and you waive any claim premised on the theory that the Services or any of their artifacts constitute the offer, sale, or distribution of any such instrument. Where applicable jurisdictional law may nonetheless characterize any aspect of the Services as a regulated financial instrument despite this disclaimer, the Company reserves the right under Section 15.20 to suspend, modify, restrict, geofence, or discontinue the Services to comply with such characterization, without liability to you. The Company does not facilitate, encourage, or recognize any secondary market in any TIP Protocol artifact and disclaims any duty to support or maintain any such market.

15.26 Reservation of the Company's Statutory and Equitable Remedies. Nothing in these Terms shall be construed to waive, release, limit, or impair any right, remedy, or cause of action that the Company may have against you or any third party under applicable law, including but not limited to: (a) the Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1836, and analogous state trade-secret statutes; (b) the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, and analogous state computer-crime statutes; (c) the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1051 et seq., including trademark infringement, dilution, false designation of origin, false advertising, and unfair competition; (d) the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d); (e) the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C., for any infringement of the Company's copyrighted works in the Reference Implementation, the Protocol Specification (subject to its CC-BY 4.0 license terms), the AI Trust ID Seal artwork, or any other Company-owned material; (f) U.S. patent law, 35 U.S.C., for any infringement of any patent that issues from or claims priority to the provisional applications referenced in Section 7.6; (g) the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 1201 et seq., for circumvention of any technical protection measure; (h) state and federal common law of unjust enrichment, conversion, fraud, tortious interference, defamation of the Company, trade libel, and unfair business practices; (i) state and federal racketeering statutes including the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1961 et seq., where applicable; (j) state and federal anti-spam, anti-robocalling, and anti-hacking statutes; and (k) any other statutory or common-law right or remedy. The arbitration provisions of Section 14 do not apply to the Company's enforcement of intellectual property rights or to applications by the Company for emergency injunctive relief, which the Company may pursue in any court of competent jurisdiction. The one-year limitation period of Section 14.5 applies only to claims brought against the Company by you and does not limit the Company's claims against you.

15.27 Survival. The survival enumeration in Section 13 governs. For the avoidance of doubt, the surviving sections include without limitation: Section 3.3 (Immutability of DAG transactions), Sections 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, and 4.9 (Minors, Stolen Credential Liability, Effect of User Death/Incapacity/Bankruptcy, and Communications Consent), Sections 5.6 through 5.9 inclusive (AI Classifier Advisory, Consent to Analysis, Assumption of Risk, and Multiple Correction Opportunities), Section 6.6 in its entirety (The Company as Initial Verification Provider, including all biometric protections and recusal protocols), Section 7 in its entirety (Intellectual Property, including 7.7 User License Grant for Protocol Operation, 7.8 Feedback License, and 7.9 User Retention of Underlying Copyright), Section 8 in its entirety (Privacy, Biometric Data, GDPR, and 8.6 Sub-Processors), Section 10 in its entirety (Disclaimer of Warranties, including 10.4 Badge Display Disclaimer, 10.5 Reader Reliance Limitation, 10.6 No Guarantee of Continuous Service, 10.7 No Bias Warranty, 10.8 No Content Evaluation, 10.9 Data Loss and Service Outage Disclaimer, 10.10 Mental Health and Self-Harm Disclaimer, 10.11 User-Caused Harm to Third Parties, 10.12 Comprehensive Personal, Economic, Property, and Status Harm Disclaimer, 10.13 No Consumer Reporting Agency, Background Check Service, or Tenant Screening Status Disclaimer, and 10.14 No Professional Advice and No Professional Relationship Disclaimer), Section 11 (Limitation of Liability), Section 12 in its entirety (Indemnification, including 12.1 Substantive Obligation, 12.2 Notice of Claim, 12.3 Right to Select Counsel and Control Defense, 12.4 Cooperation Obligation, 12.5 No Settlement Without Company Consent, 12.6 No Admission of Liability, 12.7 Mitigation, 12.8 Defense Costs and Judgment Allocation, 12.9 Subrogation Upon Indemnification, and 12.10 Application to All Protected Persons and Joint and Several Liability), Section 14 in its entirety (Dispute Resolution and Governing Law, including 14.5 Statute of Limitations, 14.7 Mandatory Pre-Arbitration Meet and Confer, 14.8 Mass Arbitration Coordination Protocol, 14.9 Severability and Class-Waiver Blow-Up, 14.10 Confidentiality of Arbitration Proceedings, and 14.11 Bellwether Arbitration Procedure for Mass-Filing Defense, 14.12 Settlement Negotiation Confidentiality and FRE 408 Reservation, and 14.13 Arbitrator Authority Limitations and Standards of Review), and Section 15 (General Provisions, including 15.8 through 15.47 inclusive, with particular emphasis on 15.21 No Fiduciary Duty, 15.22 DMCA Notice and Takedown Procedure, 15.23 Public Interest Operation, 15.24 Law Enforcement Cooperation and Mandatory Reporting, 15.25 No Securities, 15.26 Reservation of the Company's Statutory and Equitable Remedies, 15.27 Survival itself, which survives by its own operation as a material term essential to the Company's risk allocation, 15.28 Anti-Assignment of Claims, Anti-Subrogation, and Anti-Champerty, 15.29 No General Duty to Monitor and Good Samaritan Protections for Voluntary Moderation, 15.30 Vexatious Litigation Protection, 15.31 Right to Refuse Service and First Amendment Editorial Discretion, 15.32 User Representations, Warranties, and Covenants, 15.33 AI-Specific Liability Defenses for Emerging Litigation Theories, 15.34 Conspicuous Notice, Knowing Assent, and Mutual Assent Recital, 15.35 Equitable Remedies Comprehensive Reservation, 15.36 Anti-Harassment, Anti-Doxxing, and Personal-Safety Protection for Company Personnel, 15.37 Antitrust, Competition Law, and Pro-Competitive Features Reservation, 15.38 Node Operators as Independent Contractors, 15.39 Company Insolvency, Bankruptcy, Receivership, and Successor Obligations, 15.40 Insurance, Self-Insurance, and No Proof-of-Insurance Required, 15.41 Quasi-Contract, Unjust Enrichment, and Equitable-Theory Defenses Reservation, 15.42 Anti-Tortious-Interference With Company Contracts and Business Relationships, 15.43 Regulatory Investigation, Consent Decree, and No-Admission Reservation, 15.44 Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing · Scope, Limitations, and Specific Waivers, 15.45 Cybersecurity Incident Notification and Response Framework, 15.46 Performance Standards Disclaimer · Narrow Definitions of Gross Negligence and Willful Misconduct, and 15.47 Personal Jurisdiction, Service of Process, Forum Non Conveniens, and Anti-Forum-Shopping Defenses). Survival of these provisions is essential to the Company's risk allocation and is a material term of this Agreement.

15.28 Anti-Assignment of Claims, Anti-Subrogation, and Anti-Champerty. The following limitations are material to the Company's risk allocation under these Terms, are intended to prevent third-party aggregation, monetization, or arbitrage of claims against the Company, and shall be construed broadly in favor of the Company: (a) Anti-Assignment of Claims. You shall not assign, transfer, sell, monetize, securitize, pledge, hypothecate, or otherwise convey any claim, demand, cause of action, chose-in-action, right of recovery, or interest in any potential proceeds arising out of or related to these Terms, the Services, the Company, or any Protected Person, to any third party, whether before or after the claim accrues, without the prior written consent of the Company (which may be granted or withheld in the Company's sole discretion). Any purported assignment, transfer, sale, monetization, securitization, pledge, or hypothecation in violation of this Section 15.28(a) is void ab initio, gives the purported assignee no standing to assert the claim against the Company or any Protected Person, and may be raised by the Company as a complete affirmative defense to any claim asserted by such purported assignee. This prohibition applies, without limitation, to: (i) assignment of claims to a litigation funder, claims aggregator, mass-tort intake firm, or class-action plaintiffs' firm; (ii) assignment of claims to an insurer, reinsurer, or surety in the form of a release-and-assignment agreement, whether characterized as subrogation, contribution, indemnification, or otherwise (subject to clause (b) below); (iii) assignment of claims to a creditor, secured party, or trustee in bankruptcy as collateral or in satisfaction of a debt (subject to the requirements of applicable bankruptcy law); (iv) assignment of claims as part of a sale of substantially all of the assets of a User's business; and (v) any assignment that has the effect of separating the claim from the User who is the actual party in interest with respect to the Services. This Section 15.28(a) does not prohibit transfer by operation of law upon a User's death, incapacity, or bankruptcy where such transfer is required by mandatory law and is not the product of a voluntary assignment. (b) Anti-Subrogation. You and any insurer, reinsurer, surety, indemnitor, guarantor, or other party that provides coverage, reimbursement, or financial protection to you for any harm that the Company or any Protected Person could be alleged to have caused, contributed to, exacerbated, or in any way connected with (including without limitation cyber insurance, professional liability insurance, identity-theft insurance, technology errors and omissions insurance, general liability insurance, media liability insurance, directors and officers insurance, employment practices liability insurance, errors and omissions insurance, and analogous coverage) (collectively, the "Subrogation Parties") expressly waive any and all rights of subrogation, contribution, indemnification, equitable subrogation, conventional subrogation, statutory subrogation, contractual subrogation, or other right of recovery, by suit, set-off, claim against insurance proceeds, or otherwise, against the Company and each Protected Person arising out of or related to these Terms, the Services, or any harm allegedly caused or contributed to by the Company. You shall procure, where commercially reasonable and where required by your insurer's underwriting, a waiver of subrogation in favor of the Company and each Protected Person from each of your Subrogation Parties. The Company's risk allocation under these Terms (including the Section 11 cap, the Section 10 disclaimers, and the Section 15.18 Protected Persons shield) is intended to apply equally to direct claims by you and to indirect claims by your Subrogation Parties, and shall not be circumvented by the assertion of a subrogated, contribution, or indemnification claim. Any payment by a Subrogation Party to you for harm allegedly caused by the Company shall be made on a "no-subrogation" basis, and the failure to obtain such a waiver from a Subrogation Party shall not impair the enforceability of this Section 15.28(b) as between you and the Company. (c) Anti-Champerty, Anti-Maintenance, and Litigation-Finance Disclosure. You shall not enter into any champertous arrangement, maintenance arrangement, or third-party litigation-finance arrangement (collectively, "Litigation Finance") with respect to any claim against the Company or any Protected Person, except where such arrangement is expressly disclosed in writing to the Company at the time of the first communication asserting the claim (and, if the claim proceeds in arbitration under Section 14, to the arbitrator) and except as may be required by applicable law in jurisdictions that have legalized third-party litigation finance subject to mandatory disclosure. You acknowledge that champerty and maintenance remain unlawful or otherwise restricted in certain U.S. states (including without limitation Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida (subject to recent legislative developments), Kentucky, and Minnesota) and in certain foreign jurisdictions (including without limitation parts of Ireland, certain civil-law jurisdictions, and historically the United Kingdom prior to liberalization), and you shall comply with all such restrictions. The Company reserves the right to: (i) request and receive disclosure of the existence, identity, and economic terms of any Litigation Finance arrangement applicable to any claim asserted against the Company; (ii) raise champerty, maintenance, illegality, or public-policy defenses, where such defenses are available under applicable law, in any proceeding involving a Litigation-Financed claim; and (iii) seek discovery in arbitration or court of the existence and terms of any Litigation Finance arrangement applicable to a claim against the Company, on the theory that such arrangement is relevant to the credibility and economic interests of the claimant and the real party in interest. (d) No Class Action through Assignment. The Class Action Waiver of Section 14.3 and the prohibitions of this Section 15.28 collectively reflect the parties' bargain that all claims against the Company shall be asserted only by the individual User who is the actual party in interest, in such User's individual capacity, and shall not be aggregated, consolidated, securitized, sold, or otherwise combined with the claims of other Users by any means, including without limitation assignment, subrogation, champerty, or any other claim-aggregation mechanism. Any purported aggregation of claims through any such mechanism shall be unwound and the claims returned to the individual real-party-in-interest Users for individual assertion subject to Sections 14 and 15. (e) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.28 are severable across clauses (a), (b), (c), and (d), and severable across claim categories, Protected Person categories, and jurisdictions. Invalidity of any portion in any jurisdiction or as applied to any specific claim, claim category, or party shall not invalidate any other portion or application. Any unenforceable provision shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope rather than stricken in its entirety, in light of the parties' clearly expressed intent to prevent third-party aggregation, monetization, and arbitrage of claims against the Company.

15.29 No General Duty to Monitor; Good Samaritan Protections for Voluntary Moderation. The Company has no general obligation to monitor, screen, pre-publication review, post-publication audit, surveil, or affirmatively investigate User communications, Origin Code declarations, content registrations, Trust Score behavior, or any other User activity on the Services, beyond the express obligations set forth in these Terms (including without limitation the Bootstrap Period biometric verification of Section 6.6 and the law enforcement cooperation of Section 15.24). The Company expressly reserves: (a) the absence of any general monitoring obligation under (i) the EU eCommerce Directive (Directive 2000/31/EC) Article 15 (prohibition on general monitoring obligations), (ii) the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) Articles 7, 8, and 9 (limitation of monitoring obligations and "good Samaritan" protections), (iii) the U.K. Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 (S.I. 2002 No. 2013) Regulations 17-19, (iv) the U.K. Online Safety Act 2023 to the extent consistent with the no-general-monitoring principle, (v) India's Information Technology Act 2000 § 79 read with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, (vi) Japan's Provider Liability Limitation Act (Act No. 137 of 2001), (vii) Singapore's Electronic Transactions Act and Online Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act, (viii) Australia's Online Safety Act 2021, Schedule 5 to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, and the Basic Online Safety Expectations Determination 2022, (ix) Brazil's Marco Civil da Internet (Law 12.965/2014) Article 19 (intermediary liability conditioned on specific judicial order), (x) Canada's analogous federal and provincial intermediary-liability provisions, and (xi) analogous no-general-monitoring rules of other jurisdictions; and (b) the "Good Samaritan" protections of 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2)(A) for any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of any material the Company considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, fraudulent, deceptive, false, malicious, or otherwise objectionable, including without limitation any Stage 1, Stage 2, or Stage 3 adjudication outcome under Section 5.4, any badge suppression or status change in the AI Trust Registry public lookup surface, any classifier-driven flagging or routing decision, any DMCA-related status mark or counter-notification request under Section 15.22, any termination of a repeat infringer under Section 15.22, any account suspension or TIP-ID revocation pursuant to Section 5.5 or Section 6.5 (REVOKE_VP cascade), any law enforcement cooperation under Section 15.24, and any regulatory-compliance suspension under Section 15.20, and the "Good Samaritan" protections of 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2)(B) for any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in clause (b), and analogous good-Samaritan protections under foreign safe-harbor regimes. The Company's exercise (or non-exercise) of editorial, moderation, classifier, or adjudication discretion shall not constitute (i) an undertaking to monitor any other content or behavior, (ii) a waiver of any safe-harbor protection, (iii) an admission that the Company is the publisher or speaker of any content, or (iv) the creation of any heightened duty of care to any User or third party. The Company's good-faith voluntary moderation actions shall be construed as Good Samaritan activity entitled to immunity under 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2) and analogous foreign protections to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, and any claim premised on the theory that the Company's moderation actions waived safe-harbor protections, created a duty of care, or made the Company a publisher rather than an intermediary shall fail. The Company's right to act in good faith under this Section 15.29 is supplemental to and not in derogation of any other right reserved under these Terms, including without limitation Sections 5.4, 5.5, 6.5, 9, 13, 15.16, 15.20, 15.22, 15.24, and 15.26.

15.30 Vexatious Litigation Protection: Anti-SLAPP, Fee-Shifting, and Individual-Adversary Personal Liability. The Company expressly reserves, and shall not be deemed to have waived by non-invocation or by any other conduct, the following protections against frivolous, vexatious, retaliatory, harassing, or strategic-lawsuit-against-public-participation ("SLAPP") litigation brought against the Company or any Protected Person as defined in Section 15.18: (a) Anti-SLAPP Statutes. The Company reserves all rights, remedies, and procedural mechanisms (including expedited motions to strike, automatic discovery stays, accelerated appellate review, and statutory attorneys'-fee and cost recovery) available under: (i) the California Code of Civil Procedure § 425.16 et seq.; (ii) the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA), Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ch. 27; (iii) the Washington Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA), RCW 4.105; (iv) the District of Columbia Anti-SLAPP Act, D.C. Code § 16-5501 et seq.; (v) the Nevada Anti-SLAPP statute, NRS 41.635-41.670; (vi) the Oregon Anti-SLAPP statute, ORS 31.150-31.155; (vii) the Massachusetts Anti-SLAPP statute, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 231 § 59H; (viii) the New York Anti-SLAPP statute, N.Y. Civ. Rights Law §§ 70-a and 76-a; (ix) the Vermont Anti-SLAPP statute, 12 V.S.A. § 1041; (x) the Colorado UPEPA, C.R.S. § 13-20-1101 et seq.; (xi) the Hawaii Anti-SLAPP statute, HRS § 634F; (xii) the Indiana Anti-SLAPP statute, Ind. Code § 34-7-7; (xiii) the Illinois Citizen Participation Act, 735 ILCS 110; (xiv) the Maryland Anti-SLAPP statute, Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code § 5-807; (xv) the Tennessee Public Participation Act, Tenn. Code § 20-17-101 et seq.; (xvi) the Arizona UPEPA, A.R.S. § 12-751; (xvii) the Kentucky UPEPA, KRS § 454.470 et seq.; (xviii) the Utah UPEPA, Utah Code § 78B-25; (xix) the Missouri Anti-SLAPP statute, Mo. Rev. Stat. § 537.528; (xx) the New Mexico Anti-SLAPP statute, NMSA § 38-2-9.1; (xxi) the Pennsylvania UPEPA, 42 Pa.C.S. § 8340 et seq.; (xxii) the Georgia Anti-SLAPP statute, O.C.G.A. § 9-11-11.1; (xxiii) the Florida Anti-SLAPP statute, Fla. Stat. § 768.295; (xxiv) the Connecticut Anti-SLAPP statute, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-196a; (xxv) the Louisiana Anti-SLAPP statute, La. Code Civ. Proc. art. 971; (xxvi) the Maine Anti-SLAPP statute, 14 M.R.S. § 556; (xxvii) the Minnesota Free-Speech-Protection statute (where applicable); (xxviii) the Rhode Island Anti-SLAPP statute, R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-33-1 et seq.; (xxix) the Oklahoma Citizens Participation Act, 12 O.S. § 1430 et seq.; (xxx) the Kansas Public Speech Protection Act, K.S.A. § 60-5320 et seq.; (xxxi) the Virginia statutory anti-SLAPP protections, Va. Code § 8.01-223.2; (xxxii) the Delaware free-expression protections (subject to specific statutory and common-law developments); (xxxiii) any other state or territorial anti-SLAPP, anti-frivolous-litigation, or public-participation-protection statute; and (xxxiv) analogous foreign protections (including the EU Anti-SLAPP Directive (EU) 2024/1069 transposed in EU Member States, the UK common-law and statutory protections against strategic lawsuits, Canadian provincial Protection of Public Participation Acts including Ontario PPPA § 137.1 and analogous statutes, and Australian Public Interest Disclosure protections). (b) Fee-Shifting Recovery from Claimants and Counsel. The Company reserves the right to seek and recover, upon prevailing in any litigation or arbitration brought against the Company or any Protected Person, attorneys' fees, expert fees, court costs, arbitration costs, deposition costs, document-production costs, and all other reasonable expenses of defense, from any of the following on a joint-and-several basis: (i) the claimant in such claimant's individual capacity (and not merely from the claimant's estate, business entity, or proceeds of recovery); (ii) the claimant's counsel of record, on the theory of personal sanctions, statutory fee-shifting, common-law indemnity, malicious prosecution, abuse of process, wrongful initiation, or analogous theory permitted by applicable law; (iii) any third-party litigation funder, claims aggregator, or financial backer of the litigation, to the extent disclosure under Section 15.28(c) reveals such a party; (iv) any insurer or surety that issued litigation-related coverage to the claimant; and (v) any other party with an economic interest in the outcome of the litigation. The Company's recovery rights under this clause (b) are not capped by Section 11, which by its terms applies only to the Company's liability TO the User, not the Company's recovery FROM the User. (c) Federal Rule 11 and 28 U.S.C. § 1927 Sanctions; Analogous State and Foreign Sanctions. The Company reserves all rights to seek sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(c) for filings made in violation of Rule 11(b) (signed without reasonable inquiry, presented for an improper purpose, lacking evidentiary support, or warranted by frivolous legal arguments), under 28 U.S.C. § 1927 (counsel personal liability for vexatious multiplication of proceedings), under the court's inherent authority (Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32 (1991), and analogous foreign inherent-authority doctrines), under analogous state-court sanctions rules (including California CCP § 128.7, Texas TRCP Rule 13, Florida Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.110(h), New York 22 NYCRR 130-1.1, and analogous state rules), under analogous arbitration-rule sanctions provisions (including JAMS Comprehensive Arbitration Rule 29(b), JAMS Commercial Arbitration Rule 26, and analogous foreign rule provisions), and under analogous foreign court-rule sanctions (including UK Civil Procedure Rules Part 44 wasted-costs orders, Canadian Federal Courts Rules costs-against-counsel-personally, Australian Federal Court Rules Part 40, and analogous regimes). (d) Malicious Prosecution, Abuse of Process, Wrongful Initiation, and Tortious Interference. The Company reserves all rights, upon termination of any frivolous, vexatious, retaliatory, or bad-faith litigation in the Company's favor, to bring a subsequent action against the original claimant, the claimant's counsel personally, and any third-party litigation funder, claims aggregator, or financial backer of the original litigation, on theories including without limitation: malicious prosecution; abuse of process; wrongful initiation of civil proceedings; tortious interference with the Company's contractual relations with other Users, Verification Providers, or business counterparties; tortious interference with the Company's prospective economic advantage; civil conspiracy where two or more parties acted in concert in bringing the frivolous claim; intentional infliction of emotional distress upon Company officers, directors, employees, founders, or other Protected Persons under Section 15.18 (in such Protected Persons' individual capacities, with the Company representing them under indemnification arrangements); defamation, trade libel, and false-light invasion of privacy where the claimant made public statements concerning the litigation that were false and defamatory; and analogous common-law and statutory causes of action available under the law of any applicable jurisdiction. (e) No Liability Cap on Company's Recovery From Adversaries; Joint-and-Several Liability. The Section 11 liability cap and the Section 14.5 one-year statute of limitations apply only to claims by Users against the Company and do not cap or time-bar the Company's recovery against frivolous claimants, their counsel, or third-party backers under this Section 15.30. The Company's recovery against multiple adversaries shall be joint-and-several, and the Company may pursue collection against any one adversary for the full amount of the recovery without first exhausting collection against any other adversary, subject to applicable rules of contribution among joint tortfeasors. (f) Reservation Applies to All Forms of Adverse Action. This Section 15.30 applies to litigation, arbitration, administrative proceedings, regulatory complaints, bar complaints against the Company's counsel, public-relations campaigns, social-media-driven harassment campaigns, mass-arbitration coordination prohibited by Section 14.8, claim-assignment schemes prohibited by Section 15.28, and any other form of adverse action against the Company or any Protected Person under Section 15.18. (g) Protected Persons May Invoke in Individual Capacity. Any Protected Person under Section 15.18 may invoke the protections of this Section 15.30 in such Protected Person's individual capacity, separately from the Company's invocation, and may join in or separately bring any recovery action permitted under this Section 15.30. The Company shall, consistent with its indemnification obligations under its certificate of incorporation, bylaws, and any indemnification agreement with any Protected Person, advance the costs of any such Protected Person's invocation of this Section 15.30 in such Protected Person's individual capacity. (h) Severability. The provisions of this Section 15.30 are severable across clauses, claim categories, Protected Person categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope. (i) No Limitation on Other Rights. Nothing in this Section 15.30 shall be construed to limit the Company's rights under Section 15.26 (Reservation of Company Remedies), Section 12 (Indemnification), Section 15.28 (Anti-Assignment, Anti-Subrogation, Anti-Champerty), or any other provision of these Terms or any applicable law; the rights reserved in this Section 15.30 are additional to and not in derogation of any other rights of the Company. The Company's invocation of this Section 15.30 against any adversary is itself protected good-faith petition activity under the U.S. Constitution First Amendment Petition Clause (subject to Bill Johnson's Restaurants v. NLRB, 461 U.S. 731 (1983)), analogous foreign petition-clause doctrines, and the anti-SLAPP statutes enumerated in clause (a).

15.31 Right to Refuse Service, Decline Registration, and Terminate Access; First Amendment Editorial Discretion; No Public Accommodation Status. The Company expressly reserves the following affirmative rights, which are complementary to (and not in derogation of) the disclaimers of Section 15.23 (Public Interest Operation) and the discretionary-suspension rights of Section 15.20 (Regulatory Compliance): (a) Discretionary Registration. The Company may, in its sole and unfettered discretion, decline to register any applicant for a TIP-ID, decline to issue any AI Trust ID™ Seal, decline to record any TIP-CONTENT registration, decline to accept any Verification Provider applicant for accreditation under Section 6, or decline to accept any other applicant for any feature of the Services, at any time, for any reason or no reason, without any obligation to explain or justify the declination, and without any liability to the rejected applicant. No applicant has a contractual, statutory, constitutional, common-law, or equitable right to be issued a TIP-ID, to be accredited as a Verification Provider, or to receive any other feature of the Services, and the Company's declination is not a breach of these Terms or of any other duty. (b) Discretionary Continuation. The Company may, in its sole and unfettered discretion, suspend, restrict, geofence, throttle, demote, mark as "Pending Review" or "Under Review" or "Disputed" or "Confirmed Mismatch," revoke, terminate, or otherwise modify any TIP-ID, TIP-CONTENT registration, AI Trust ID™ Seal display, Trust Score display mode, Verification Provider accreditation, or any other feature of the Services, at any time, for any reason or no reason, without notice (subject to the notice obligations of Sections 1 and 13 where applicable), and without any liability to the affected User, Verification Provider, or third party, subject only to the express obligations set forth in these Terms. (c) First Amendment Editorial Discretion. The Company's exercise of judgment regarding (i) which content registrations to accept, mark, suppress, or revoke; (ii) which Origin Code declarations to flag, route to Stage 2 or Stage 3, or otherwise scrutinize; (iii) which Trust Score adjustments to make; (iv) which badge displays to publish or withhold; (v) which Verification Providers to accredit; and (vi) any other curatorial or editorial decision concerning the Services, constitutes protected editorial activity under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as applied to the Company by Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, 144 S. Ct. 2383 (2024) and NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton, 49 F.4th 439 (5th Cir. 2022) (as vacated and remanded by the Supreme Court for further proceedings consistent with Moody), and as further protected under analogous First Amendment doctrines, the First Amendment Petition Clause, the Newspaper Editorial Discretion line of cases beginning with Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974), the compelled-association doctrine of Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000), and analogous protections under state constitutions, the European Convention on Human Rights Article 10 (freedom of expression), the U.K. Human Rights Act 1998 (incorporating ECHR Article 10), the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms § 2(b), the Australian implied freedom of political communication, and analogous foreign expressive-freedom protections. The Company's editorial discretion is not a "marketplace" or "common carrier" service that may be regulated as such. Any state or foreign statute purporting to compel the Company to host particular content, accept particular users, refrain from particular editorial choices, or otherwise override the Company's editorial discretion (including without limitation Texas HB 20, Florida SB 7072, and analogous statutes) shall be construed in a manner consistent with the Company's First Amendment editorial discretion, and the Company expressly reserves the right to challenge any such statute as applied to the Company. (d) No Public Accommodation Status. The Services are not a "place of public accommodation" within the meaning of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000a; Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12181 et seq.; the Unruh Civil Rights Act, Cal. Civ. Code § 51 et seq.; the New York Human Rights Law, N.Y. Exec. Law § 296; the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, N.J.S.A. § 10:5-12; the Massachusetts Public Accommodations Act, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272 § 92A; the Illinois Human Rights Act, 775 ILCS 5; the District of Columbia Human Rights Act, D.C. Code § 2-1402.31; analogous statutes of other U.S. states and territories; the U.K. Equality Act 2010 (where applied to digital services); the EU Web Accessibility Directive 2016/2102 (Member State implementations); the Canadian Human Rights Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. H-6; the Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (where applied to digital services); and analogous foreign statutes. To the extent any jurisdiction nonetheless characterizes the Services as a place of public accommodation despite this disclaimer, the Company shall (i) make commercially reasonable accessibility accommodations consistent with WCAG 2.1 AA or such other standard as applicable law may require, (ii) reserve the right under Section 15.20 to modify, suspend, restrict, geofence, or discontinue the Services in that jurisdiction to comply with the applicable regime, and (iii) reserve the right to challenge the characterization as applied to a federated identity-and-provenance protocol that is fundamentally different from a brick-and-mortar place of public accommodation or a general-purpose social-media platform. Nothing in this clause (d) constitutes a waiver of any defense available to the Company under any anti-discrimination statute, and nothing in this clause (d) authorizes the Company to engage in intentional discrimination prohibited by any non-waivable provision of applicable anti-discrimination law. (e) No Compelled Service Under Anti-Discrimination Pretext. The Company's discretionary registration and continuation rights under clauses (a) and (b) are not abrogated by any claim that the rejected applicant or terminated User is a member of a protected class, in the absence of (i) proof of intentional discrimination on the basis of the protected characteristic and (ii) the absence of any legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for the Company's decision (which the Company may articulate at any time post-hoc, including non-disclosable internal-policy reasons, intellectual-property protection reasons, fraud-prevention reasons, security reasons, regulatory-compliance reasons, public-safety reasons, or any other reason consistent with applicable law). The Company's burden of articulating a legitimate non-discriminatory reason is satisfied by reference to any provision of these Terms or any publicly stated Company policy. (f) No Private Right of Action for Refused Service. No applicant whose registration is declined, no User whose registration is revoked, no Verification Provider whose accreditation is declined or revoked, and no third party affected by such decisions has any private right of action against the Company premised on the theory that the Company was required to provide the requested service, accreditation, or accommodation. Any such claim shall be construed as barred by this Section 15.31, by Section 15.23 (No Common Carrier or Public Utility Status), and by the First Amendment editorial-discretion protections of clause (c). (g) Editorial Decisions Are Not Defamation, Tortious Interference, or False Light. The Company's editorial decisions to mark content as "Pending Review," "Under Review," "Disputed," or "Confirmed Mismatch" under Section 5.4, to suppress badge display under Section 15.22, or to revoke a TIP-ID under Sections 5.5 or 6.5, are protected editorial speech and shall not give rise to claims for defamation, false light, tortious interference, trade libel, business disparagement, or analogous claims, subject in all events to the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the §11 liability cap, the Good Samaritan protections of Section 15.29, and the §14 dispute resolution framework. (h) No Estoppel; Discretionary Acceptance Is Not a Warranty. The Company's acceptance of any specific TIP-ID applicant, TIP-CONTENT registration, Verification Provider applicant, or other Service request shall not be construed as: (i) a warranty that the acceptance is permanent or unconditional; (ii) a representation that subsequent similar applicants will be accepted; (iii) a waiver of the Company's right to apply additional, modified, or stricter standards to subsequent applicants; (iv) an estoppel against the Company's exercise of discretion in subsequent decisions; or (v) the creation of any course-of-dealing modification of these Terms. Each Company decision is independent. (i) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.31 are severable across clauses, claim categories, Protected Person categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to preserve maximal editorial discretion to the Company.

15.32 User Representations, Warranties, and Covenants (Consolidating Clause). As a material inducement to the Company's acceptance of your registration and continuing operation of the Services for your benefit, and continuing for the entire duration of your use of the Services and surviving termination under Section 13, you represent, warrant, and covenant to the Company and to each Protected Person under Section 15.18 that, on and as of the date of your acceptance of these Terms and on and as of each subsequent interaction with the Services: (a) Mental Capacity. You possess full mental, cognitive, and legal capacity under the law of the jurisdiction in which you reside to enter into binding contracts, to comprehend the rights and obligations created by this Agreement, to consent to the data-processing activities described in Section 8, to consent to the arbitration agreement of Section 14, and to consent to the waivers and limitations of Sections 10, 11, 12, 14, and 15; you are not subject to any judicial or administrative determination of mental incapacity, guardianship, conservatorship, or analogous adjudication that limits your contractual capacity; and you are not entering this Agreement under the influence of any substance, condition, or circumstance that would impair your contractual capacity under applicable law. (b) Age. You are at least eighteen (18) years of age, or such higher age as may be required by applicable law in your jurisdiction; or, if a minor permitted to use the Services under the conditions of Section 4.6, you have the express, informed, written consent of your parent or legal guardian, and your parent or legal guardian has agreed to be bound by these Terms as your legal representative and as an indemnitor under Section 12. (c) Identity Authenticity. Each piece of information you provide to the Company at registration and on each interaction with the Services (including biometric data, identity documents, name, address, contact information, and Origin Code declarations) is accurate, complete, current, and pertains to you in your personal capacity (and not to any other natural person, deceased person, fictional person, AI agent, corporate entity, or composite identity), except where you have express authority to act on behalf of a corporate entity in your representative capacity. (d) Authority. Where you act on behalf of a corporate entity, partnership, trust, government entity, or other legal entity, you represent and warrant that you possess full and unimpaired authority under the entity's governing instruments and applicable law to bind the entity to these Terms, to consent to data-processing activities, to consent to the arbitration agreement of Section 14, and to undertake the indemnification obligations of Section 12 on behalf of the entity. (e) Compliance With Sanctions and Restricted-Party Lists. You and (where applicable) the entity on whose behalf you act re-affirm the representations and warranties of Section 15.6, including without limitation that neither you nor any such entity is located in, organized under the laws of, controlled by, or a national of any country subject to comprehensive U.S., EU, U.K., or U.N. sanctions; that neither you nor any such entity is on any U.S., EU, U.K., or other restricted-party list; and that your use of the Services will comply with all applicable export-control and sanctions regimes. (f) Compliance With Statutory Law. You re-affirm the representations and warranties of Section 15.11, including without limitation that your use of the Services complies with all applicable laws of every jurisdiction in which you operate, including identity-verification, biometric-data, age-verification, content-disclosure, intellectual-property, anti-money-laundering, sanctions, consumer-protection, anti-corruption, tax, cybersecurity, AI-specific, privacy and data-protection, securities, healthcare, credit-and-financial-services, and employment-and-labor laws. (g) Truthfulness of Origin Code Declarations. Each Origin Code declaration you make under Section 5 is, to the best of your knowledge after reasonable inquiry, accurate, complete, and not misleading, including the declared origin (OH, AA, AG, or MX) and any supporting attestations; you have not registered any content under a knowingly false Origin Code; and you understand that knowing false declarations are subject to Trust Score penalties under Section 5.5, adjudication outcomes under Section 5.4, account termination under Section 13.2, indemnification under Section 12, and the Company's reservation of remedies under Section 15.26. (h) Authority to Register Content. Each piece of content you register through TIP-CONTENT under Section 6 is content you have lawful authority to register, including by reason of authorship, license, work-for-hire arrangement, or other valid legal basis; registration does not infringe any third party's copyright, trademark, right of publicity, right of privacy, trade-secret right, or other right; and you have not registered content on behalf of any other party without that party's express authorization. (i) No Prior Ban. You have not been previously suspended, terminated, or banned from the Services or from any analogous content-provenance, identity-verification, or trust-scoring service, except as you have disclosed in writing to the Company; you are not subject to any court order, regulatory order, or administrative order that prohibits or restricts your use of the Services; and you are not currently the subject of any pending investigation, proceeding, or other adverse action by any governmental authority that, if substantiated, would render your continued use of the Services unlawful. (j) No Coordination With Banned Parties. You are not acting in coordination with, on behalf of, or at the direction of any party that has been suspended, terminated, or banned from the Services, except as expressly authorized in writing by the Company; you are not a "sock puppet," straw registrant, or proxy for any such banned party; and you will not enable any such banned party to use the Services through your TIP-ID, account, or credentials. (k) No Reliance on Service as Professional Advice. You re-affirm Section 10.14: you have not relied on, and will not rely on, the Services as legal, medical, mental-health, financial, securities, banking, accounting, tax, insurance, real-estate, employment, education, parenting, family, pastoral, journalism, cybersecurity, AI safety, engineering, scientific, or other professional advice; you have not relied on, and will not rely on, the Services as a substitute for consultation with a duly licensed professional; and no professional relationship has been or will be formed between you and the Company by virtue of the Services. (l) Acknowledgment of Probabilistic AI. You re-affirm Sections 5.6 through 5.9, 10.3, and 10.7: you understand and accept that the AI Pre-Scan, Multi-Model Consensus Classification, and other automated analysis systems are probabilistic tools that exhibit known false-positive and false-negative rates; you understand and accept that classifier performance may vary across demographic, linguistic, stylistic, and content-type populations; and you assume the risk of probabilistic classifier outcomes. (m) Acknowledgment of DAG Immutability. You re-affirm Section 3.3: you understand and accept that validated DAG transactions cannot be deleted, modified, or retracted, and that this immutability persists notwithstanding termination of your account under Section 13 and notwithstanding any data-subject right under GDPR, CCPA, or analogous statute (subject to the §13.5 enumerated exceptions). (n) Acknowledgment of Bootstrap Period. You re-affirm Section 6.6: you understand and accept that during the Bootstrap Period the Company itself may act as the sole or primary Verification Provider; you waive any claim that this dual role is per se objectionable; and you understand that the §11 cap, §10 disclaimers, and §15.18 Protected Persons shield apply with full force to the Company's Bootstrap-Period conduct. (o) Acknowledgment of Disclaimers and Limitations. You re-affirm that you have read, understood, and accepted: the warranty disclaimers of Section 10 (including §10.9 Data Loss and Service Outage Disclaimer, §10.10 Mental Health and Self-Harm Disclaimer, §10.11 User-Caused Third-Party Harm, §10.12 Comprehensive Personal/Economic/Property/Status Harm Disclaimer, §10.13 No Consumer Reporting Agency Status, and §10.14 No Professional Advice); the liability cap of Section 11 with its catch-all extension and narrow §11 paragraph 3 carve-outs; the indemnification obligations of Section 12 (§12.1 through §12.10); the term-and-termination framework of Section 13 (§13.1 through §13.12); the arbitration agreement, class waiver, jury waiver, statute of limitations, mass-arbitration coordination, class-waiver-blow-up severance, and confidentiality regime of Section 14 (§14.1 through §14.10); and the Protected Persons shield, anti-assignment, anti-subrogation, anti-champerty, no-duty-to-monitor, Good Samaritan, vexatious-litigation protection, right-to-refuse-service, and First Amendment editorial discretion provisions of Section 15. (p) Continuing Re-Affirmation. You acknowledge and agree that each interaction with the Services (including every TIP-ID issuance, every TIP-CONTENT registration, every Trust Score event, every badge display, and every adjudication participation) constitutes a re-affirmation of the foregoing representations, warranties, and covenants on the date of the interaction; if any such representation, warranty, or covenant ceases to be true at any time during your use of the Services, you shall notify the Company within thirty (30) days at legal@theailab.org and shall cease use of the Services pending resolution. (q) Breach Consequences. Breach of any representation, warranty, or covenant in this Section 15.32 constitutes a material breach of these Terms giving rise to: (i) immediate termination under Section 13.2; (ii) the indemnification obligations of Section 12; (iii) the Company's reservation of remedies under Section 15.26; (iv) the Company's fee-shifting and individual-adversary recovery rights under Section 15.30; and (v) any other remedy available to the Company at law or in equity, all of which are cumulative and not exclusive. The Company's reliance on these representations, warranties, and covenants is presumed to be reasonable, and the Company need not separately verify them as a condition of enforcing them. (r) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.32 are severable across clauses, claim categories, Protected Person categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope.

15.33 AI-Specific Liability Defenses for Emerging Litigation Theories. The Company expressly reserves, and shall not be deemed to have waived by non-invocation or by the structure of the warranty disclaimers in Sections 10.3 (AI Classifier Accuracy) and 10.7 (No Bias Warranty), the following AI-specific liability defenses, supplemental and cumulative to all other defenses reserved in these Terms: (a) No Liability for AI-Generated Outputs as Statements of Fact. The AI Pre-Scan classifier, the Multi-Model Consensus Classification, and any other automated analysis system operated by or on behalf of the Company produce probabilistic outputs intended for internal routing and advisory display under Section 5.4, not as statements of fact about any User, content, or third party. No claim shall lie against the Company or any Protected Person under Section 15.18 for defamation, defamation per se, defamation by implication, false light, trade libel, business disparagement, slander of title, injurious falsehood, or analogous tort, premised on the theory that an AI Pre-Scan, classifier, or adjudication output constitutes a false statement of fact, including without limitation under Walters v. OpenAI, LLC, Civ. A. No. 23-A-04860-2 (Ga. Super. Ct. Gwinnett Cnty. 2023) and analogous "AI hallucination defamation" theories. Probabilistic classifier outputs are protected expressions of opinion and editorial judgment under the First Amendment editorial discretion of Section 15.31(c), the warranty disclaimers of Sections 10.2, 10.3, and 10.7, and the Good Samaritan protections of Section 15.29(b). (b) No Algorithmic Disgorgement. No User, regulator, or third party shall have standing to seek, and no court or arbitrator shall order, algorithmic disgorgement, model deletion, weight deletion, training-data deletion, model "unlearning," compelled retraining, or analogous remedies against the Company, its trained models, its classifier weights, its training corpora, its inference pipelines, or any other AI artifact of the Company, as a remedy for any claim arising under these Terms or in connection with the Services, except (i) where expressly mandated by a final, non-appealable order of a court of competent jurisdiction in an action against the Company by a federal or state regulator with statutory authority to order such remedy (including the FTC under Section 5 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45, where the FTC has invoked the algorithmic-disgorgement remedy used in In re Cambridge Analytica, FTC No. 1923087 (2019), In re Everalbum, FTC No. 1923172 (2021), and In re WW International (Kurbo), FTC No. 1923039 (2022), or analogous statutory authority of any state attorney general or analogous foreign regulator), and (ii) where the Company has exhausted or waived appeal. Any User-initiated claim seeking algorithmic disgorgement is barred by this Section 15.33(b), and the Company's reservation of remedies under Sections 15.26 and 15.30 applies to any such claim. (c) Training-Data Copyright Reservations. Without admission that any of the Company's AI training, fine-tuning, classification, or inference activities constitute infringement of any copyright, the Company expressly reserves all defenses available under the U.S. Copyright Act, including without limitation: (i) fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107 (transformative use, factual nature of provenance metadata, limited reproduction, no market substitution); (ii) the de minimis use doctrine; (iii) the implied license doctrine for publicly published content; (iv) the merger doctrine for hash-based content fingerprints; (v) the first-sale doctrine and § 117 computer-program reproduction exceptions where applicable; (vi) the no-substantial-similarity defense to compilation copyright claims; (vii) analogous defenses under EU Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/790) Article 4 (text and data mining exception) and Article 3 (research exception); (viii) analogous defenses under Japan's Copyright Act Article 30-4 (information analysis exception); (ix) analogous defenses under Singapore's Copyright Act 2021 §§ 243-244 (computational data analysis exception); (x) analogous defenses under U.K. Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 § 29A (text and data analysis for non-commercial research) and any expanded TDM exception that may be enacted; (xi) analogous defenses under Israeli copyright law and the Israel Ministry of Justice Opinion on the use of copyrighted materials for machine learning (December 18, 2022); (xii) analogous defenses in other jurisdictions; and (xiii) the right to challenge any contrary judicial determination (including without limitation The New York Times Co. v. Microsoft Corp., S.D.N.Y. Case No. 1:23-cv-11195 (filed 2023), Authors Guild v. OpenAI, Inc., S.D.N.Y. Case No. 1:23-cv-08292 (filed 2023), and analogous cases) as applied to the Company's AI Pre-Scan and Multi-Model Consensus Classification activities. The Company's AI training, fine-tuning, classification, and inference activities are conducted in a manner consistent with the Company's good-faith application of the foregoing defenses, and no claim premised on Company AI training-data conduct shall give rise to liability beyond the §11 cap, subject to the §11 paragraph 3 narrow carve-outs. (d) Right-to-Explanation Limitations. To the extent any applicable law (including without limitation GDPR Article 22(3), U.K. GDPR Article 22(3), the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act SB24-205, the California Consumer Privacy Act CPRA automated-decisionmaking regulations, NYC Local Law 144 of 2021, the EU AI Act Article 86, the Illinois HB 3773 (2024) AI in employment, or analogous statutes) requires the Company to provide explanation, transparency disclosure, decision logic, or human review of any AI-generated output, the Company shall comply with such law to the minimum extent required and shall reserve all defenses available under such law, including without limitation: (i) the trade-secret exception (where the explanation would compromise classifier weights, prompts, or other proprietary AI artifacts protected under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1836, and analogous statutes); (ii) the security exception (where the explanation would compromise classifier robustness against adversarial attack); (iii) the third-party-rights exception (where the explanation would disclose information about another User protected under Section 8 (Privacy)); (iv) the technical-infeasibility exception (where the explanation cannot be generated without undue computational burden); (v) the no-automated-decisionmaking defense (where the AI output is advisory rather than determinative under Section 5.4 Stage 1 routing, as already disclaimed in Section 10.13(g)); and (vi) any other applicable statutory or common-law defense. Explanations provided pursuant to applicable law are not warranties of accuracy, are not certifications of the underlying AI output, and do not create any heightened duty of care under Section 15.21 (No Fiduciary Duty). (e) Algorithmic-Discrimination Defenses. To the extent any User or third party asserts a claim against the Company premised on alleged algorithmic discrimination by the Company's AI Pre-Scan, Multi-Model Consensus Classification, or other automated analysis system, including without limitation claims under: (i) the EU AI Act Articles 5 (prohibited practices), 9 (risk-management system), 10 (data and data governance), 13 (transparency obligations), 14 (human oversight), 15 (accuracy, robustness, cybersecurity), 27 (fundamental rights impact assessment), and 50 (transparency obligations on certain AI systems); (ii) the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act, C.R.S. § 6-1-1701 et seq. (high-risk AI system duties); (iii) NYC Local Law 144 of 2021 (Automated Employment Decision Tools bias audit and notice requirements); (iv) the Illinois HB 3773 (2024) (AI in employment); (v) the California CPRA automated-decisionmaking regulations; (vi) the Texas SB 1827 (2025) (where enacted); (vii) Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e (disparate impact / disparate treatment), the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101, the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1691; (viii) the EU Equal Treatment Directive 2000/43/EC and analogous foreign anti-discrimination laws; or (ix) analogous AI-discrimination claims, the Company expressly reserves the defenses of Sections 10.7 (No Bias Warranty), 10.13 (No Automated-Decisionmaking Provider Status), 10.14 (No Professional Advice), and 15.31 (First Amendment Editorial Discretion); the absence of intentional discrimination; the business-necessity defense; the bona-fide-occupational-qualification defense (where applicable); the safe-harbor for advisory (non-determinative) AI outputs under §5.4 Stage 1 routing; the technical-infeasibility defense for any compelled bias-correction remedy that would compromise the protocol's core integrity; and any other applicable defense under the asserting law. (f) No Compelled Disclosure of Model Internals. Subject to compliance with valid legal process under Section 15.24, the Company reserves the right to resist any compelled disclosure, by court order, regulatory order, or any other process, of: classifier weights; training-data inventories; prompts and prompt templates; reinforcement-learning-from-human-feedback (RLHF) reward signals; constitutional-AI principle texts; system-prompt configurations; chain-of-thought traces; model architecture details; inference logs not specifically tied to a single claimant's content; routing-decision logic; jury-selection or expert-panel-selection algorithms; or any analogous AI internals, on grounds of: the trade-secret exception under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1836, and the Uniform Trade Secrets Act; the security exception (where disclosure would compromise classifier robustness against adversarial attack or facilitate Section 15.15 anti-reverse-engineering violations); the First Amendment editorial-discretion exception under Section 15.31(c); the journalist's-shield-law analog (where the Company's editorial classifier judgment is functionally analogous to a newsroom's protected editorial process under Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), and state shield laws); and any other applicable privilege or protection. Where compelled disclosure is unavoidable, the Company shall seek protective order, in-camera review, attorneys'-eyes-only designations, and other available restrictions consistent with Section 14.10 (Confidentiality of Arbitration). (g) No Liability for Inputs From Third-Party AI Models or Services. Where the Company's AI Pre-Scan, Multi-Model Consensus Classification, or other automated analysis system incorporates inputs from third-party AI models, services, APIs, foundation models, or open-source models (including without limitation OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, Mistral, Cohere, Stability AI, Hugging Face, and analogous providers), the Company is not liable for: (i) the accuracy, bias, or other characteristics of such third-party model outputs; (ii) the legality of the training data of such third-party models; (iii) any infringement allegedly committed by such third-party models; (iv) any rate-limit, outage, or service degradation by such third-party providers (governed by Sections 10.6 and 10.9); or (v) any other claim arising from the third-party model's conduct. The Company's role with respect to third-party AI inputs is integrative and supervisory, and the Company exercises commercially reasonable judgment in selecting and configuring such third-party models, but the Company makes no warranty regarding such third-party models and assumes no vicarious liability for their conduct beyond what is expressly imposed by these Terms. (h) No Liability for AI-Generated User Content. Where a User registers content under TIP-CONTENT and declares an Origin Code of AA (AI-Assisted), AG (AI-Generated), or MX (Mixed), the AI tools that generated, assisted, or mixed the content are operated by the User or by the User's chosen third-party providers, not by the Company. The Company makes no representation regarding the AI tools so used, assumes no liability for their training data, outputs, or accuracy, and disclaims any duty to monitor, audit, certify, or verify such third-party AI tools. The User's Origin Code declaration is the User's representation, not the Company's, and any claim premised on alleged inaccuracy of an AI-tool-generated User content is governed by the User's indemnification obligations under Section 12 (not by any direct liability of the Company). (i) Severability and Cumulative Application. The defenses of this Section 15.33 are cumulative with, and do not replace, the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the §11 cap, the §12 indemnification, the §14 dispute-resolution framework, the §15.18 Protected Persons shield, the §15.26 Reservation of Remedies, the §15.29 Good Samaritan protections, the §15.30 vexatious-litigation protections, the §15.31 First Amendment editorial discretion, and all other provisions of these Terms. The defenses of this Section 15.33 are severable across clauses, AI litigation theories, jurisdictions, and Protected Person categories; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope. Nothing in this Section 15.33 shall be construed as an admission of facts, an admission of liability, or a waiver of any defense not expressly reserved.

15.34 Conspicuous Notice, Knowing Assent, Read-and-Understood Acknowledgment, and Mutual Assent Recital; Defense Against Inquiry-Notice and Procedural-Unconscionability Challenges. As a material inducement to the Company's acceptance of these Terms and a foundation of the parties' mutual bargain, you and the Company affirm and recite the following: (a) Conspicuous Notice. The Company has presented these Terms to you in a conspicuous manner before you accepted them, including without limitation: the arbitration agreement of Section 14 and the class-action waiver of Section 14.3 are presented in capitalized, alert-formatted text reasonably calculated to draw your attention; the warranty disclaimers of Sections 10.1, 10.9, 10.10, 10.11, 10.12, 10.13, and 10.14 are presented under prominent subheadings and many in capitalized alert format; the liability cap of Section 11 is presented in capitalized alert text; the indemnification of Section 12 is presented under a prominent section heading; the termination terms of Section 13 are presented under a prominent section heading and with structured subsections §13.1 through §13.12; and these Terms are accessible at a stable URL on theailab.org/tip-terms-of-service throughout the Agreement's term. (b) Knowing and Affirmative Assent. Your acceptance of these Terms was made by an affirmative act on your part (including, depending on the registration flow, checkbox click acceptance, biometric authentication completion, DAG-transaction signature, or analogous affirmative manifestation of assent under the U.S. Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, 15 U.S.C. § 7001 et seq., the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act as adopted by the various U.S. states, the EU eIDAS Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 910/2014), the U.K. Electronic Communications Act 2000, Canada's PIPEDA Part 2, Australia's Electronic Transactions Act 1999, India's Information Technology Act 2000, and analogous statutes in other jurisdictions, all as further described in Section 15.13), and not by mere browsing of the Company's website, mere installation of any Service component, mere viewing of any badge, or any passive conduct. Your assent is "clickwrap" or its equivalent under the standards of Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp., 306 F.3d 17 (2d Cir. 2002), Berkson v. Gogo LLC, 97 F. Supp. 3d 359 (E.D.N.Y. 2015), and analogous authority, and is not "browsewrap" of the disfavored variety described in those cases. (c) Reasonable Inquiry Notice. The Company has provided reasonable inquiry notice of these Terms under the standards of Berman v. Freedom Financial Network, LLC, 30 F.4th 849 (9th Cir. 2022), Sellers v. JustAnswer LLC, 73 Cal. App. 5th 444 (Cal. Ct. App. 2021), Meyer v. Uber Technologies, Inc., 868 F.3d 66 (2d Cir. 2017), Cullinane v. Uber Technologies, Inc., 893 F.3d 53 (1st Cir. 2018), Nicosia v. Amazon.com, Inc., 834 F.3d 220 (2d Cir. 2016), and analogous authority. Specifically: (i) a reasonably prudent user in your position would have been on inquiry notice of these Terms before assenting, including the arbitration agreement of Section 14; (ii) hyperlinks to these Terms appear in reasonably prominent positions on the registration interface (color-contrasted, near the assent button, with underlining or analogous visual treatment); (iii) the language adjacent to the assent button is sufficiently clear that a reasonably prudent user would understand that clicking the button constitutes acceptance of these Terms; and (iv) the Company has not employed dark patterns, manipulative interfaces, hidden links, or analogous design elements that the cited cases identify as defeating reasonable inquiry notice. (d) Read-and-Understood Acknowledgment. You acknowledge that you have had a reasonable opportunity to read these Terms in their entirety, that you have read or had a reasonable opportunity to read these Terms, and that you understand or have had a reasonable opportunity to understand these Terms. You acknowledge that the length and complexity of these Terms reflect the technical complexity of the TIP Protocol and the diversity of legal regimes in which the Services operate, and that you have not been pressured, rushed, or otherwise denied a reasonable opportunity to read and understand the Terms before assenting. If at any time during your use of the Services you cease to understand any provision of these Terms, you may discontinue use, request clarification at legal@theailab.org, or seek independent legal counsel; your continued use of the Services after such a moment of confusion constitutes affirmation that you have obtained sufficient understanding to continue. (e) Mutual Assent and Consideration Recital. The parties acknowledge mutual assent to all terms of this Agreement and the existence of sufficient consideration to support the bargain: the Company's consideration consists of provision of the Services to you (including TIP-ID issuance, TIP-CONTENT registration capability, Trust Score computation, AI Trust Registry public lookup access, badge issuance and display, and adjudication participation rights), the value of the federated identity-and-provenance protocol, the post-quantum-secure infrastructure, the public-interest mission, and the absence of any fee for free-tier Users; your consideration consists of acceptance of these Terms (including the warranty disclaimers, the liability cap, the indemnification obligations, the dispute-resolution framework, and the survival framework), provision of accurate registration information, payment of any applicable Commercial License fees, and contribution of cryptographically signed Origin Code declarations to the federated DAG. The Agreement is supported by consideration on both sides; the consideration is not nominal or illusory; and the parties' bargain is not unconscionable as a matter of substantive law. (f) No Fraud in the Inducement; No Fraud in the Execution; No Mistake. You acknowledge and warrant that: (i) no representation, statement, promise, or undertaking has been made to you by the Company or any Protected Person under Section 15.18 that induced your acceptance of these Terms, other than the express representations of these Terms themselves; (ii) you are not entering this Agreement under fraud, duress, undue influence, misrepresentation, or unilateral mistake; (iii) the Company has not concealed any material fact concerning the Services or these Terms that would, if disclosed, have prevented your acceptance; (iv) you have not relied on any oral or extra-contractual statement, communication, marketing material, or representation in deciding to accept these Terms; and (v) you have had a reasonable opportunity to consult with independent legal counsel before accepting these Terms, regardless of whether you actually did so. Any claim premised on fraud in the inducement, fraud in the execution, or unilateral or mutual mistake is barred to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. (g) Procedural Unconscionability Rebuttal. The recitals of this Section 15.34 are intended to and do rebut any claim of procedural unconscionability that might otherwise apply to these Terms or any provision thereof, including without limitation any claim premised on: (i) inadequate notice; (ii) lack of opportunity to read; (iii) unequal bargaining power (Users acknowledge that the Services are made available on standardized terms to all Users of the same class, and that any take-it-or-leave-it character of these Terms is mitigated by the existence of competing identity-and-provenance protocols, the CC-BY 4.0 license of the Protocol Specification permitting forking under Section 15.23(a), and the TIPCL-1.0 license of the Reference Implementation permitting independent operation); (iv) hidden or buried terms (these Terms are presented in conspicuous, well-organized form with a table of contents and structured numbering); (v) lack of meaningful choice; (vi) surprise; or (vii) overreach. To the extent any provision is held substantively unconscionable, the provision shall be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to remove the substantive unconscionability while preserving the parties' bargain, consistent with the severability provisions of Sections 14.9, 15.2, and the individual section-specific severability clauses throughout these Terms. (h) Sophistication. Without representing that all Users are sophisticated parties, the Company expressly notes that: Commercial-tier Users are presumed to be sophisticated business entities or individuals operating businesses under the TIPCL-1.0 tier framework of Section 15.1 and the §15.23 reference to commercial revenue thresholds; Verification Providers are sophisticated organizations subject to accreditation under Section 6; and Stage 2 jurors and Stage 3 expert panelists are sophisticated participants by selection. For these categories of Users, the standards of arm's-length sophisticated commercial dealing apply. For consumer-tier free Users, the recitals of clauses (a) through (g) apply in their full strength to establish reasonable notice and knowing assent. (i) Continuing Effect; Updates. The recitals of this Section 15.34 apply to the version of these Terms in effect at the time of your original acceptance and to each subsequent version to which you continue to assent through your continued use of the Services after notice of update under Section 1 (which you re-affirm under Section 15.32(p) as a continuing re-affirmation on each interaction). Where the Company materially changes these Terms, the Company shall provide notice in accordance with Section 1 and Section 15.9, and your continued use after the effective date of the change constitutes renewed assent satisfying the recitals of this Section 15.34 with respect to the updated Terms. (j) Severability and Reformation. The recitals and reservations of this Section 15.34 are severable across clauses (a) through (i), claim categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to defeat any challenge to the arbitration agreement, class waiver, liability cap, warranty disclaimers, indemnification, or other risk-allocation provision premised on inadequate notice, lack of assent, procedural unconscionability, fraud in the inducement, or analogous doctrine. (k) Application to All Risk-Allocation Provisions. The notice, assent, and read-and-understood recitals of this Section 15.34 apply with full force to each of the following risk-allocation provisions, which are jointly intended to constitute the parties' integrated bargain: Section 10 (Disclaimer of Warranties) in its entirety; Section 11 (Limitation of Liability) including the cap and cap mechanics; Section 12 (Indemnification) §§ 12.1 through 12.10; Section 13 (Term and Termination) §§ 13.1 through 13.12; Section 14 (Dispute Resolution) §§ 14.1 through 14.10, with particular emphasis on the arbitration agreement of Section 14.2, the class waiver of Section 14.3, the jury waiver, the statute of limitations of Section 14.5, the mass-arbitration coordination of Section 14.8, the class-waiver-blow-up severance of Section 14.9, and the confidentiality regime of Section 14.10; and Section 15 (General Provisions) §§ 15.1 through 15.34, with particular emphasis on the §15.18 Protected Persons shield, the §15.28 anti-assignment provisions, the §15.30 vexatious-litigation protections, the §15.31 right-to-refuse-service, the §15.32 User Representations, and the §15.33 AI-specific defenses.

15.35 Equitable Remedies Comprehensive Reservation; Anti-Suit Injunction; Court-Concurrent Jurisdiction. The Company expressly reserves, and shall not be deemed to have waived by Section 14 (Dispute Resolution) or any other provision of these Terms, the right to seek and obtain in any court of competent jurisdiction any of the following equitable remedies against any User or third party in connection with these Terms or the Services, notwithstanding the §14 arbitration agreement and notwithstanding that any arbitration proceeding is pending: (a) Specific performance compelling the User to perform any obligation under these Terms, including without limitation the indemnification obligations of Section 12, the cooperation obligation of Section 12.4, the confidentiality obligation of Section 14.10, the anti-assignment, anti-subrogation, and anti-champerty obligations of Section 15.28, and the obligations under any Integrated Document under Section 15.1; (b) Preliminary, temporary, and permanent injunctive relief restraining the User from (or compelling the User to take) any action in violation of these Terms, including without limitation: (i) further breach of Sections 7 (Intellectual Property), 9 (Prohibited Conduct), 12.5 (No Settlement Without Consent), 12.6 (No Admission of Liability), 14.10 (Confidentiality of Arbitration), 15.6 (Export Controls and Sanctions), 15.12 (No Training Use of TIP Data), 15.15 (Anti-Reverse-Engineering), 15.28 (Anti-Assignment, Anti-Subrogation, Anti-Champerty), 15.30 (Vexatious Litigation Protection), or 15.31 (Right to Refuse Service); (ii) imminent dissipation, transfer, or concealment of assets that may satisfy a future judgment against the User; (iii) imminent destruction of evidence relevant to a pending or threatened claim against the User; (iv) imminent disclosure of the Company's trade secrets or confidential information; or (v) any other conduct causing or threatening to cause irreparable harm to the Company or any Protected Person under Section 15.18; (c) Declaratory judgment establishing the rights, obligations, defenses, and immunities of the parties under these Terms, including without limitation: (i) declaration that a particular User claim is barred by Section 14.5 (Statute of Limitations); (ii) declaration that a particular claim is subject to arbitration under Section 14.2; (iii) declaration that a particular settlement, assignment, subrogation, or champertous arrangement violates Section 12.5 or Section 15.28; (iv) declaration that a particular Service feature falls within the §15.31 right-to-refuse-service framework; (v) declaration that a particular AI-related claim falls within the §15.33 AI-specific defenses; or (vi) declaration regarding any other aspect of these Terms; (d) Rescission of these Terms or any provision thereof, on grounds available at law or in equity (including without limitation fraud in the inducement by the User notwithstanding Section 15.34(f), material misrepresentation by the User regarding identity or eligibility under Sections 4 and 15.32, illegality, or impossibility); (e) Reformation of these Terms or any provision thereof to conform to the parties' true mutual intent, where the Terms as written diverge from such intent due to mistake or scrivener's error; (f) Pre-judgment attachment, garnishment, levy, and analogous provisional remedies available under Delaware law, the law of the User's domicile, the law of the situs of the User's assets, or analogous foreign law, to preserve assets pending resolution of any claim by the Company against the User; (g) Replevin and analogous repossession remedies for any tangible or intangible property (including software, data, credentials, hardware tokens, or other property) wrongfully retained by the User in violation of these Terms; (h) Accounting of the User's profits, gains, savings, or other economic benefits attributable to any breach of these Terms, including without limitation breaches of Section 7 (Intellectual Property), Section 12 (Indemnification), Section 14.10 (Confidentiality), Section 15.12 (No Training Use), Section 15.15 (Anti-Reverse-Engineering), or Section 15.28 (Anti-Assignment); (i) Constructive trust and equitable lien imposed on any asset, property, or proceeds in the User's hands that, in equity and good conscience, belong to the Company or any Protected Person, including without limitation litigation proceeds wrongfully assigned in violation of Section 15.28(a), subrogation recoveries wrongfully retained in violation of Section 15.28(b), and unjust-enrichment proceeds derived from breach of any Section; (j) Anti-suit injunction compelling the User to discontinue any lawsuit, arbitration, regulatory proceeding, or other adverse action filed in any forum other than the §14.2 JAMS arbitration forum (or, where §14.9 class-waiver-blow-up severance applies, the New Castle County, Delaware court forum), where such other-forum proceeding violates these Terms or the parties' bargain; the Company may seek anti-suit injunction in (i) any state or federal court of competent jurisdiction in Delaware; (ii) the JAMS arbitration in the form of an arbitrator-issued anti-suit order; or (iii) any other court of competent jurisdiction with personal jurisdiction over the User, consistent with the doctrine of Quaak v. Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler Bedrijfsrevisoren, 361 F.3d 11 (1st Cir. 2004), China Trade & Development Corp. v. M.V. Choong Yong, 837 F.2d 33 (2d Cir. 1987), and analogous comity-respecting standards; (k) Preservation orders compelling the User and the User's agents to preserve documents, communications, metadata, devices, accounts, social-media content, and other evidence relevant to any pending or threatened claim involving the Company or any Protected Person; (l) Bond posting requirement for any User seeking provisional remedy (temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, attachment, replevin, or analogous remedy) against the Company or any Protected Person: such User must post a bond under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c) or analogous foreign and state procedural rule in an amount sufficient to cover the Company's anticipated costs of compliance with the requested remedy plus the Company's anticipated lost revenue and reputational damage during the period of the remedy, in the discretion of the issuing court but not less than such amount as is consistent with the §11 liability cap reciprocity and the public-interest framing of Section 15.23; (m) Specific enforcement of Section 12.4 cooperation obligation, including but not limited to motion to compel deposition, motion to compel document production, motion for protective order to enforce confidentiality, and other procedural remedies; (n) Enforcement of arbitration agreement under the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. §§ 3-4, by motion to compel arbitration or motion to stay proceedings; (o) Confirmation, vacatur, and modification of arbitration awards under 9 U.S.C. §§ 9-11; (p) Recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments and arbitration awards under the Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act as enacted by Delaware (10 Del. C. § 4801 et seq.) and analogous foreign reciprocal-enforcement regimes, including the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (1958) and the Hague Choice of Court Convention (2005) where applicable; and (q) Any other equitable remedy available at law or in equity, all of which are cumulative and not exclusive of any other remedy reserved under these Terms, including without limitation the remedies reserved under Sections 12 (Indemnification), 15.26 (Statutory and Equitable Remedies), 15.28 (Anti-Assignment), 15.30 (Vexatious Litigation Protection), and 15.31 (Right to Refuse Service). The Company's pursuit of equitable remedies under this Section 15.35 in a court of competent jurisdiction shall not constitute a waiver of the §14 arbitration agreement, an election of remedies, or a submission to a non-arbitration forum for any other claim; the §14 arbitration agreement continues to apply with full force to all claims not within the equitable-remedy carve-outs of this Section 15.35, Section 15.26, and Section 14.9. The provisions of this Section 15.35 are severable across clauses (a) through (q), claim categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope.

15.36 Anti-Harassment, Anti-Doxxing, Anti-SWATting, and Personal-Safety Protection for Company Personnel. You expressly covenant, as a continuing condition of your use of the Services and a material term of these Terms, that you will not engage in, attempt to engage in, encourage, facilitate, conspire with others to engage in, finance, organize, or coordinate any of the following conduct directed at any Protected Person under Section 15.18 (collectively, "Personal-Targeting Conduct"): (a) Doxxing. Publishing, posting, sharing, distributing, or otherwise disseminating in any forum (including without limitation websites, blogs, social-media platforms, forums, podcasts, messaging applications, email lists, mailing lists, file-sharing sites, paste sites, and analogous channels) any of the following personal information of any Protected Person, except information that the Protected Person has voluntarily and publicly disclosed in their professional capacity: home address; private telephone number not used for Company business; private email address not used for Company business; family-member identities (including spouse, children, parents, siblings); children's school, daycare, or activity schedule; family-member home addresses or telephone numbers; precise geolocation data (GPS coordinates, beacon data, license-plate-reader data); travel itinerary; daily routine; private financial information (bank accounts, brokerage accounts, credit-card numbers, social-security number, taxpayer-identification number); private medical information; private legal information (unless filed in a public court proceeding to which the Protected Person is a party); private romantic, sexual, or relationship information; private religious, political, or ideological affiliations (unless publicly disclosed); immigration status; or analogous personal information; (b) SWATting and False Police/Emergency Reports. Making, causing to be made, or facilitating any false report to law enforcement, emergency services, fire department, child protective services, animal control, immigration enforcement, code enforcement, tax authority, or analogous governmental authority alleging conduct by any Protected Person, where the report is known to be false or made with reckless disregard for truth, including without limitation false reports of: violent crime in progress; hostage situation; bomb threat; weapons offense; domestic violence; child abuse or neglect; animal abuse; immigration violations; tax fraud; building or code violations; or any analogous false emergency or compliance report. The Company expressly notes that SWATting is a felony under 47 U.S.C. § 223, 18 U.S.C. § 875, and analogous state and foreign statutes, and that the Company shall report all credible suspected SWATting to law enforcement and shall fully cooperate with prosecution; (c) Threats and Intimidation. Threats of violence, death, kidnapping, sexual assault, bodily harm, property destruction, professional retaliation, family harm, or analogous harms against any Protected Person, whether direct, implied, conditional, or coded, and whether communicated by social media, email, telephone, voicemail, text message, in-person communication, third-party intermediary, AI-generated content, or any other channel; (d) Stalking and Surveillance. Following, surveilling, monitoring, tracking, photographing, recording, intercepting communications of, or otherwise unlawfully observing any Protected Person, in person or through electronic means, including without limitation: physical following; aerial drone observation; vehicle tracking; smartphone or device location tracking through unauthorized means; spyware or stalkerware installation; eavesdropping; voicemail-hacking; email-account intrusion; or any conduct that would constitute stalking under 18 U.S.C. § 2261A, state anti-stalking statutes (including California Penal Code § 646.9, New York Penal Law §§ 120.45-120.60, Texas Penal Code § 42.072, Illinois 720 ILCS 5/12-7.3, Florida § 784.048, and analogous statutes of other U.S. states), the U.K. Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the EU Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention) where applicable, the Canadian Criminal Code § 264, Australia's analogous state-level stalking statutes, and analogous foreign anti-stalking regimes; (e) Harassment and Personal Attacks. Coordinated or repeated harassment of any Protected Person, including without limitation: brigading, dogpiling, or coordinated mass-messaging attacks; deepfake or synthetic-media impersonation of the Protected Person; AI-generated defamatory content depicting the Protected Person; non-consensual intimate imagery (real or synthetic); fake reviews, fake testimonials, or fake professional-network endorsements (positive or negative); manipulation of search results to defame the Protected Person; mass false reporting to social-media platforms; targeted advertising calculated to humiliate; impersonation of the Protected Person in any forum; or analogous coordinated personal attacks; (f) Personal-Residence Targeting. Picketing, protesting, gathering, demonstrating, or assembling at or in close proximity to the personal residence of any Protected Person, where such activity is targeted at the Protected Person personally rather than at a public or quasi-public Company premises, in violation of Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474 (1988) and analogous authority recognizing the privacy of the home, and in violation of state and local anti-residential-picketing statutes; this clause shall not be construed to prohibit constitutionally protected expressive activity in public fora not constituting personal-residence targeting; (g) Family-Member Targeting. Any Personal-Targeting Conduct directed at the spouse, domestic partner, immediate family member, child, parent, sibling, or estate of any Protected Person, including without limitation: targeting the children of personnel (regardless of whether the children themselves use the Services); contacting family members at their workplaces or schools; communicating with family members about the Protected Person's Company role; or any analogous conduct intended to harm or intimidate the Protected Person through their family relationships; (h) Defamation of Protected Persons Personally. Publishing, posting, or otherwise disseminating any defamatory statement, false statement of fact, false-light statement, trade libel, or analogous publication concerning any Protected Person in such Protected Person's individual capacity (as distinct from the Protected Person's Company role, which is governed by Section 15.31(c) First Amendment editorial discretion); (i) Coordinated-Harassment Networks. Participation in or coordination with any organized harassment campaign, "raid," "review-bombing" operation, sustained anti-Company campaign, or analogous coordinated effort the purpose of which includes harm to any Protected Person; (j) Misuse of TIP Protocol to Facilitate Personal-Targeting Conduct. Use of any Service feature, including without limitation Origin Code declarations, TIP-CONTENT registration, Trust Score signals, AI Trust ID Seal display, or AI Trust Registry public lookup, to identify, locate, harass, dox, or otherwise target any Protected Person. Remedies for Breach of This Section 15.36. Breach of any covenant in this Section 15.36 is a material breach of these Terms giving rise to all of the following remedies, individually or in combination: (1) immediate termination of the offending User's TIP-ID under Section 13.2 without notice or right to cure, with permanent exclusion from re-registration; (2) Trust Score reduction to the floor and permanent registry notation of the §15.36 violation, consistent with §15.31(g) First Amendment editorial discretion; (3) indemnification of the affected Protected Person under Section 12, including defense costs and any settlement or judgment in the affected Protected Person's individual capacity (the Company shall advance such defense costs consistent with the certificate of incorporation, bylaws, and any indemnification agreement); (4) equitable relief under Section 15.35, including without limitation injunctive relief, anti-stalking restraining orders, accounting of any economic gain attributable to the Personal-Targeting Conduct, and constructive trust on proceeds; (5) fee-shifting and individual-adversary recovery under Section 15.30 against the User, the User's counsel (if any), any third-party litigation funder, claims aggregator, or coordinating party; (6) referral to law enforcement under Section 15.24 for criminal investigation and prosecution of any conduct constituting a violation of 47 U.S.C. § 223, 18 U.S.C. § 875, 18 U.S.C. § 2261A, applicable state stalking statutes, applicable foreign anti-harassment statutes, or any analogous statute; (7) civil claims by the Company and any Protected Person under: federal anti-stalking and anti-cyberstalking statutes; the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (where the conduct involves unauthorized computer access); state common-law claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, false-light publicity, defamation, trade libel, tortious interference, and analogous causes of action; foreign analogs under the U.K. Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the German Allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht, the French Loi sur la presse, and analogous foreign regimes; and any other applicable statutory or common-law remedy; and (8) any other remedy reserved under Section 15.26 (Reservation of Company Remedies). Company Notification and Cooperation. The Company encourages any Protected Person who is subject to Personal-Targeting Conduct to report the conduct to the Company at safety@theailab.org and to law enforcement. The Company shall cooperate with law-enforcement investigations of such conduct and shall produce records under Section 15.24 in response to valid legal process. Liquidated Damages Acknowledgment. The parties acknowledge that actual damages from Personal-Targeting Conduct are difficult to quantify (including reputational damage, emotional distress, lost productivity, personal-security upgrades, family-relocation costs, and analogous harms), and the parties agree that, to the extent permitted by applicable law and as a reasonable estimate of anticipated damages, the Company may seek liquidated damages of not less than five thousand United States dollars (USD $5,000) per incident of doxxing, ten thousand United States dollars (USD $10,000) per incident of SWATting or false-emergency report, and twenty-five thousand United States dollars (USD $25,000) per incident of credible threat of violence against any Protected Person, in addition to (and not in lieu of) any actual damages, punitive damages where available under applicable law, attorneys' fees, costs, and other remedies. Liquidated-damages amounts are subject to reformation by the arbitrator or court if held to constitute a penalty rather than a reasonable estimate of damages under Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 356; in that event, the Company may recover actual damages and all other remedies. Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.36 are severable across clauses (a) through (j), remedies (1) through (8), Protected Person categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope. Nothing in this Section 15.36 shall be construed to limit any User's good-faith, lawful, non-targeted criticism of the Company's policies, products, or public-facing conduct, which remains protected speech subject to Section 15.31(c) First Amendment editorial discretion and applicable law; this Section 15.36 prohibits only the categories of Personal-Targeting Conduct enumerated in clauses (a) through (j), which by their nature exceed protected criticism. Application to Past, Present, and Future Personnel. The protections of this Section 15.36 apply to all current Protected Persons, all former Protected Persons in respect of their service to the Company, and all future Protected Persons in respect of their service to the Company; Personal-Targeting Conduct directed at a former Protected Person in respect of conduct or events occurring during their service is fully within the scope of this Section.

15.37 Antitrust, Competition Law, and Pro-Competitive Features Reservation. The Company expressly reserves, and shall not be deemed to have waived by non-invocation or by the public-interest framing of Section 15.23, all defenses available under United States and foreign antitrust and competition law to any claim that the Company has engaged in monopolization, attempted monopolization, conspiracy to monopolize, restraint of trade, tying, exclusive dealing, refusal to deal, group boycott, price fixing, predatory pricing, abuse of dominant position, abuse of market power, or analogous anti-competitive conduct in connection with the Services. (a) Statutes Specifically Implicated and Defenses Reserved. The Company reserves all defenses under: (i) the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1-2; (ii) the Clayton Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 12-27, including § 7 (mergers and acquisitions) and § 3 (tying and exclusive dealing); (iii) the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45 (unfair methods of competition); (iv) the Robinson-Patman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 13 (price discrimination); (v) the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, 15 U.S.C. § 18a, and any pre-merger notification requirements; (vi) state antitrust statutes (Cartwright Act in California, Donnelly Act in New York, Texas Free Enterprise and Antitrust Act, Illinois Antitrust Act, and analogous state statutes); (vii) the EU Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) Articles 101 (anti-competitive agreements) and 102 (abuse of dominance), EU Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 and EU Commission Notices; (viii) the U.K. Competition Act 1998 Chapter I (anti-competitive agreements) and Chapter II (abuse of dominance), and the U.K. Enterprise Act 2002; (ix) the German Act Against Restraints of Competition (GWB); (x) the French Code de Commerce competition provisions; (xi) Japan's Antimonopoly Act (Act No. 54 of 1947) and Japan Fair Trade Commission jurisdiction; (xii) Korea's Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act; (xiii) China's Anti-Monopoly Law (2008, amended 2022); (xiv) India's Competition Act 2002; (xv) Brazil's Lei Antitruste (Law 12,529/2011); (xvi) Canada's Competition Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-34; (xvii) Australia's Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (formerly Trade Practices Act 1974); and (xviii) analogous antitrust, competition, and unfair-competition statutes of other jurisdictions. (b) Pro-Competitive Features of the Services. The TIP Protocol, the Reference Implementation, the AI Trust Registry, and the broader Service ecosystem incorporate the following pro-competitive features, which establish the Company's pro-competitive intent and limit any anti-competitive characterization: (i) the Protocol Specification is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (§7.1), which permits any party in the world to read, implement, fork, modify, teach from, and publish the specification without payment or permission, subject only to attribution requirements; (ii) the Reference Implementation is licensed under TIPCL-1.0 (§7.2) with a free tier for individuals, small businesses, nonprofits, educational institutions, government entities, and journalism organizations under specified revenue thresholds, and a transparent tiered fee schedule (§7.3) for commercial users; (iii) TIPCL-1.0 conversion to Apache License 2.0 on January 1, 2031 (§15.23(c)) ensures the implementation becomes fully open-source within five years; (iv) the Verification Provider role (§6) is open to accreditation by independent organizations subject to published criteria, and the Company has stated intent under §6.6.5 to transition issuance to a federated VP network of independent providers; (v) any party may compete with the Company by forking the Protocol Specification under §7.1 CC-BY 4.0, operating a competing Verification Provider after accreditation, or building competing services on top of the Reference Implementation; (vi) the Company's operation during the Bootstrap Period as initial VP under §6.6 is bootstrap-necessitated and time-limited, not exclusionary; (vii) the public-interest framing of §15.23 reflects the Company's stated mission to provide open infrastructure rather than to monopolize any market; (viii) the federated DAG architecture is technically designed to support multiple competing Verification Providers and node operators without privileging the Company; and (ix) the AI Trust Registry's public-lookup surface (§3.5) is available to all parties without authentication, gating, or rent. The pro-competitive features of the Services rebut any claim that the Services are anti-competitive by design. (c) Noerr-Pennington Doctrine Reservation. The Company expressly reserves the immunity available under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, as established by Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc., 365 U.S. 127 (1961), United Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381 U.S. 657 (1965), California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508 (1972), and analogous foreign petition-clause and good-faith-litigation immunity doctrines, for any conduct involving petitioning of government (legislatures, agencies, courts) for action favorable to the Company, including without limitation: (i) the Company's prosecution of patent applications under §7.6 and any patent enforcement litigation thereafter; (ii) the Company's participation in standards-development organizations and policy advocacy; (iii) the Company's participation in regulatory comment processes; and (iv) the Company's good-faith litigation activity, including litigation under §15.30 (Vexatious Litigation Protection) and §15.35 (Equitable Remedies Comprehensive Reservation). (d) Single-Entity Defense. Pursuant to Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 467 U.S. 752 (1984), and analogous foreign doctrines, the Company, its officers, directors, employees, parent entities, subsidiaries, sister companies, affiliates under common control, and successors are deemed a single economic entity for Sherman Act § 1 purposes and cannot conspire with themselves to restrain trade. No Sherman Act § 1 claim shall lie based on coordination among the Company and its affiliates as defined in Section 11 paragraph 5 clause (c) (Common Control), or among the Company and its Protected Persons under Section 15.18. (e) Ancillary Restraints Doctrine. Any restraint on User conduct in these Terms (including the prohibitions of Section 9, the User license-grant scope of Section 7.7, the no-training-use of Section 15.12, the anti-reverse-engineering of Section 15.15, the confidentiality of Section 14.10, the anti-assignment provisions of Section 15.28, the anti-harassment provisions of Section 15.36, and analogous restrictions) is an ancillary restraint reasonably necessary to the legitimate business purpose of operating the federated identity-and-provenance protocol, protecting the integrity of the DAG and Trust Score, preventing fraud and abuse, complying with privacy and biometric data laws, protecting Company personnel, and providing the Services consistent with the public-interest mission of Section 15.23. Ancillary restraints are not subject to per se condemnation under the Sherman Act and are evaluated under the rule of reason. (f) Intellectual Property Defenses. The Company's enforcement of intellectual property rights (copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets) under Sections 7.5 (Trademarks), 7.6 (Patent Pending), 15.12 (No Training Use), 15.15 (Anti-Reverse-Engineering), and 15.26 (Reservation of Statutory and Equitable Remedies) is protected by the Patent Misuse Doctrine, the IP-Antitrust Guidelines issued by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (most recently 2017), the patent-misuse safe harbors of Princo Corp. v. International Trade Commission, 616 F.3d 1318 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (en banc), and analogous foreign doctrines. Intellectual property enforcement is presumptively pro-competitive and shall not be characterized as anti-competitive absent specific bad-faith showing under Walker Process Equipment, Inc. v. Food Machinery & Chemical Corp., 382 U.S. 172 (1965), or Handgards, Inc. v. Ethicon, Inc., 743 F.2d 1282 (9th Cir. 1984). (g) Standards-Essential Patent Disclaimer. The Company has not committed any patent in the §7.6 portfolio to a standards-development organization on Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms, and is not bound by any FRAND obligation in connection with such patents. The federated nature of the TIP Protocol does not impose FRAND obligations on the Company in the absence of an express FRAND commitment. (h) Statutory Exemptions Reserved. Where applicable, the Company reserves the benefit of statutory antitrust exemptions, including without limitation: (i) the Capper-Volstead Act (7 U.S.C. § 291) where applicable; (ii) the McCarran-Ferguson Act (15 U.S.C. § 1011 et seq.) where insurance-related activities are involved; (iii) the Newspaper Preservation Act (15 U.S.C. § 1801 et seq.) where journalism-related activities are involved; (iv) the National Cooperative Research and Production Act (15 U.S.C. § 4301 et seq.) for joint research and development activities; (v) the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 (15 U.S.C. § 1291 et seq.) where any broadcast-related conduct is involved; (vi) the implied immunity for state regulatory regimes under California Retail Liquor Dealers Association v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc., 445 U.S. 97 (1980); and (vii) any other applicable statutory exemption. (i) Market Definition Defenses. The Company reserves all defenses available with respect to relevant-market definition, including: (i) the relevant product market is identity-and-provenance protocols broadly construed, not narrowly defined; (ii) the relevant geographic market is global; (iii) the Company faces effective competition from forking under §7.1 CC-BY 4.0, from federated VPs, from competing identity-verification services, from competing content-provenance systems (including C2PA, JPEG Trust, and analogous initiatives), and from in-house alternatives; and (iv) the Company has not achieved a dominant position in any properly defined market. The Company expressly reserves the right to introduce evidence rebutting any alleged market definition. (j) State Action Immunity. Where the Company acts pursuant to or in compliance with state, federal, or foreign government regulation, the Company reserves state-action immunity under Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341 (1943), and the active-supervision and clear-articulation requirements of California Retail Liquor Dealers Association v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc., 445 U.S. 97 (1980), and FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc., 568 U.S. 216 (2013). (k) No Admission of Market Power. Nothing in these Terms, including the public-interest mission framing of Section 15.23, shall be construed as an admission by the Company of market power, dominant position, monopoly status, or any analogous concept under U.S., EU, U.K., or foreign competition law. The Company's stated mission reflects its operational posture and aspirations, not a representation of market position. (l) Severability and Reformation. The reservations of this Section 15.37 are severable across clauses (a) through (k), antitrust claim categories, jurisdictions, and statutes; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to preserve all antitrust defenses available to the Company.

15.38 Node Operators as Independent Contractors; Accreditation, Operational Obligations, and Liability Allocation. This Section 15.38 is parallel to and consistent with Section 15.17 (Independent Verification Providers as Independent Contractors), and applies to Node Operators in the same manner that Section 15.17 applies to independent Verification Providers. (a) Definition. "Node Operator" means any independent legal entity that, pursuant to written accreditation by the Company, operates one or more DAG ledger nodes, validators, indexers, public-lookup mirrors, content-addressable storage replicas, or analogous federated-infrastructure components in connection with the TIP Protocol, but excludes (i) the Company itself when operating any such component in furtherance of the Bootstrap Period or otherwise, and (ii) independent Verification Providers governed by Section 6 and Section 15.17. (b) Independent Contractor Status. Each Node Operator is an independent legal entity, separately incorporated, separately staffed, separately capitalized, and separately operated. No Node Operator is an agent, employee, partner, joint venturer, franchisee, or representative of the Company. The Company exercises no day-to-day operational control over any Node Operator beyond enforcement of the accreditation standards, the Protocol Specification (subject to its CC-BY 4.0 license under Section 7.1), the technical conformance requirements published by the Company from time to time, and any analogous standards the Company may publish. No conduct of the Company shall be construed as creating apparent authority for any Node Operator to act on the Company's behalf, and no conduct of any Node Operator shall be construed as creating apparent authority for the Company to act on the Node Operator's behalf. (c) No Vicarious Liability for Node Operator Conduct. The Company is not liable for the acts or omissions of any Node Operator under any theory of respondeat superior, agency, joint venture, vicarious liability, apparent authority, ostensible authority, joint and several liability, or analogous theory. Claims against any Node Operator arising from DAG ledger operation, validator misconduct, indexer error, public-lookup mirror unavailability, content-addressable storage failure, downtime, latency, data integrity, security incident, or analogous Node Operator conduct shall be brought solely against that Node Operator, not against the Company. The Company's only obligation with respect to Node Operator misconduct is to apply the accreditation revocation procedures described in clause (g) below where the facts warrant, consistent with the Company's reasonable discretion. (d) Accreditation Requirements. Accreditation of a Node Operator by the Company is contingent on, without limitation: (i) execution of a written Node Operator Accreditation Agreement specifying technical, operational, security, and compliance obligations; (ii) demonstration of technical capability to operate DAG infrastructure in conformance with the Protocol Specification; (iii) demonstration of financial capability to maintain operations consistent with the published service-level expectations; (iv) compliance with all applicable laws of the Node Operator's jurisdiction; (v) compliance with the Company's published security, redundancy, uptime, and operational-resilience standards; (vi) acceptance of the Node Operator Code of Conduct (which may be published by the Company from time to time and is incorporated by reference into the Accreditation Agreement); (vii) compliance with applicable export controls and sanctions consistent with Section 15.6; (viii) execution of a Data Processing Agreement under Section 15.1(h) where the Node Operator processes personal data; and (ix) any other condition the Company in its discretion considers appropriate. The Company may decline accreditation in its discretion under Section 15.31. (e) Operational Obligations. Without limitation, each accredited Node Operator shall: (i) operate the accredited node or component in conformance with the Protocol Specification and any technical requirements published by the Company; (ii) maintain commercially reasonable uptime, security, redundancy, and operational-resilience consistent with the published standards; (iii) implement and maintain a written information-security program addressing access controls, encryption, vulnerability management, incident response, and analogous controls; (iv) cooperate with the Company's reasonable security audits, conformance tests, and compliance reviews; (v) preserve the integrity of validated DAG transactions under Section 3.3 and refrain from any conduct that would impair such integrity; (vi) preserve the immutability of the AI Trust Registry public-lookup surface (Section 3.5); (vii) cooperate with law-enforcement requests served on the Node Operator consistent with Section 15.24 and applicable law in the Node Operator's jurisdiction, while preserving any lawful objections; (viii) comply with applicable privacy and data-protection laws in the Node Operator's jurisdiction, including GDPR Article 28 controller-processor obligations where applicable; (ix) refrain from operating any competing identity-and-provenance protocol in a manner that exploits Confidential Information of the Company; (x) refrain from using the Company's trademarks under Section 7.5 in any manner other than as expressly permitted; and (xi) honor the Node Operator's confidentiality obligations to the Company. (f) Indemnification by Node Operator. Each accredited Node Operator shall indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the Company and each Protected Person under Section 15.18, on terms substantially parallel to the indemnification obligations of Users under Section 12, with respect to: (i) the Node Operator's breach of the Accreditation Agreement, the Node Operator Code of Conduct, or these Terms; (ii) the Node Operator's violation of applicable law in any jurisdiction; (iii) the Node Operator's unauthorized use of any Company Mark; (iv) any third-party claim premised on the Node Operator's operational conduct; (v) any third-party claim premised on the Node Operator's data-handling conduct; (vi) any third-party claim premised on the Node Operator's security incident or data breach; and (vii) any other third-party claim arising from or related to the Node Operator's status as a Node Operator. The procedural mechanics of Section 12 (including §12.2 Notice, §12.3 Counsel Selection, §12.4 Cooperation, §12.5 No Settlement Without Consent, §12.6 No Admission of Liability, §12.7 Mitigation, §12.8 Defense Costs and Judgment Allocation, §12.9 Subrogation, and §12.10 Joint and Several Liability) apply to Node Operator indemnification by analogy and as may be further specified in the Accreditation Agreement. (g) Accreditation Revocation. The Company may suspend, restrict, condition, or revoke a Node Operator's accreditation at any time, with or without cause, in the Company's sole discretion under Section 15.31. Grounds for revocation include without limitation: (i) breach of any provision of clause (d) or (e); (ii) the conduct described in Section 6.5 to the extent applicable to Node Operators (REVOKE_NODE cascade); (iii) regulatory or sanctions noncompliance under Section 15.6 and Section 15.20; (iv) failure to maintain accreditation prerequisites; (v) insolvency, bankruptcy, or dissolution of the Node Operator (subject to applicable bankruptcy law parallels to Section 4.8(e) as applied to Node Operators); (vi) misappropriation of Company Confidential Information; (vii) infringement of Company intellectual property under Section 7; (viii) participation in any conduct prohibited under Section 9; (ix) breach of the §15.36 anti-harassment covenants directed at any Protected Person; or (x) any other ground the Company in its discretion considers appropriate. Accreditation revocation is not a waiver of any claim by the Company against the revoked Node Operator. (h) Node Operator Limited Liability to Users. The Company's Section 11 cap, Section 10 disclaimers, Section 15.18 Protected Persons shield, and Section 15.28 anti-assignment provisions apply to claims by Users or third parties against Node Operators in their capacity as Node Operators, to the extent the Node Operator's Accreditation Agreement expressly so provides or as may be required by applicable law. Each Node Operator's own liability to Users for the Node Operator's independent conduct is governed by the Node Operator's own terms of service or analogous instrument with the User and by the law of the Node Operator's jurisdiction, not by these Terms. (i) Confidentiality of Node Operator Information. Node Operators are subject to confidentiality obligations regarding Company Confidential Information (including classifier weights, Trust Score algorithm parameters, training data, security architecture, accreditation criteria, audit findings, and analogous information) under the Accreditation Agreement, and the Company expressly reserves the protections of Section 14.10 (Confidentiality of Arbitration), Section 14.12 (Settlement Negotiation Confidentiality), Section 15.15 (Anti-Reverse-Engineering), and Section 15.33(f) (No Compelled Disclosure of Model Internals) with respect to information shared with Node Operators. (j) Protected Person Status Within §15.18. Node Operators and their officers, directors, board members, board observers, employees, former employees, interns, trainees, apprentices, fellows, volunteers, secondees, contractors, subcontractors, consultants, advisors (formal or informal), agents, founders, co-founders, and representatives are within the §15.18 Protected Persons shield with respect to claims arising from their service as Node Operators, parallel to the treatment of Verification Provider staff in §15.18 clause (1) and §15.17. The Company indemnifies Node Operator personnel under the standards of §15.18 only to the extent expressly provided in the Accreditation Agreement; absent such express provision, indemnification of Node Operator personnel is the responsibility of the Node Operator entity. (k) Effect of Node Operator Termination on the DAG and Federated Network. Termination of any Node Operator's accreditation does not unwind or invalidate any validated DAG transaction that was committed during the Node Operator's accredited period. The DAG's federated architecture is designed to tolerate individual Node Operator departure without loss of validated records, consistent with Section 3.3 (Immutability). Other accredited Node Operators, the Company, or successor Node Operators may assume custody of the DAG segments previously hosted by the terminated Node Operator. (l) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.38 are severable across clauses (a) through (k), Node Operator categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to preserve independent-contractor status, accreditation discretion, and liability limitation with respect to Node Operators.

15.39 Company Insolvency, Bankruptcy, Receivership, and Successor Obligations. The following provisions govern the effect of insolvency, bankruptcy, receivership, dissolution, or analogous proceedings affecting the Company on Users and these Terms. These provisions are supplemental to and not in derogation of Section 4.8 (which governs analogous proceedings affecting Users) and Section 15.4 (Assignment, which governs Company successor obligations generally). (a) Continuation of Terms by Successor. These Terms, including without limitation the Section 11 cap, Section 10 disclaimers, Section 12 indemnification framework (including §12.1-§12.10), Section 13 termination framework (including §13.1-§13.12), Section 14 dispute resolution framework (including §14.1-§14.12), Section 15.18 Protected Persons shield, Section 15.26 reservation of remedies, Section 15.28 anti-assignment provisions, Section 15.30 vexatious-litigation protections, and all other risk-allocation provisions, continue to bind any successor entity to the Company by reason of merger, consolidation, sale of substantially all assets, statutory reorganization, assignment for the benefit of creditors, court-appointed receivership, debtor-in-possession status under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, trustee under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, foreign insolvency-proceeding administrator, or analogous successor (collectively, "Successor"). Each Successor succeeds to all rights, defenses, immunities, protections, and reservations of the Company under these Terms, and to all obligations of Users to the Company, including continuing indemnification, defense, cooperation, confidentiality, and analogous obligations. Users have no right to terminate, repudiate, or modify these Terms by reason of any insolvency proceeding affecting the Company. (b) Preservation of the DAG. The immutable DAG records validated under Section 3.3 are not extinguished, voided, or subject to deletion by any Company insolvency proceeding. The federated architecture of the Protocol is designed to preserve the public utility of validated DAG records notwithstanding Company financial distress, and Successor obligations include reasonable efforts to ensure continued operation of the AI Trust Registry public-lookup surface (Section 3.5) and the validated DAG ledger consistent with the public-interest mission of Section 15.23, subject to the Successor's commercially reasonable judgment. To the extent technically necessary, validated DAG segments may be migrated to other accredited Node Operators under Section 15.38 or to qualified third-party successors. (c) Bankruptcy-Code Treatment. If the Company commences a case under Title 11 of the United States Code (the U.S. Bankruptcy Code), or analogous foreign insolvency statute: (i) these Terms are an "executory contract" within the meaning of 11 U.S.C. § 365 and analogous foreign provisions, and the trustee, debtor-in-possession, or analogous representative may assume these Terms (in which case the Successor is bound on the same terms as the Company) but shall not reject these Terms in a manner that purports to extinguish User obligations under Section 12 (Indemnification), Section 14.10 (Confidentiality), Section 15.28 (Anti-Assignment), Section 15.36 (Anti-Harassment), or other surviving obligations; (ii) the Company reserves all defenses against §365(a) rejection that would impair User obligations, including the public-interest exception, the executory-contract test of Mission Product Holdings, Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC, 587 U.S. 370 (2019), and the post-rejection survival of intellectual-property licenses under 11 U.S.C. § 365(n) (which the Company may invoke for the benefit of TIPCL-1.0 licensees and CC-BY 4.0 specification users to preserve their continued license under §7.1 and §7.2); (iii) the Company's Section 14.2 arbitration agreement and Section 14 framework continue to apply during bankruptcy proceedings, subject to the automatic stay of 11 U.S.C. § 362 and the Company's right to seek relief from stay under §362(d), consistent with Wellness Int'l Network, Ltd. v. Sharif, 575 U.S. 665 (2015), Stern v. Marshall, 564 U.S. 462 (2011), and analogous authority; (iv) User indemnification obligations under Section 12 are not discharged by Company bankruptcy and are pre-petition or post-petition obligations of the User to be enforced consistent with applicable bankruptcy law; (v) where the Company is a debtor, the Company's right to pursue patent enforcement under §7.6 and §15.26, anti-assignment claims under §15.28, anti-harassment claims under §15.36, and other §15.30/§15.35 affirmative remedies are property of the estate to be administered by the debtor-in-possession or trustee for the benefit of creditors; (vi) the §15.18 Protected Persons shield is preserved through bankruptcy; (vii) where any User asserts that any element of these Terms is unenforceable in bankruptcy, such User shall bear the burden of demonstrating unenforceability under specific bankruptcy-law provision; and (viii) all Section 15.28 anti-assignment provisions apply to bankruptcy-trustee transfers of claims, consistent with §4.8(e). (d) Receivership. If the Company is placed in state-court receivership, federal-court receivership under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 66, regulatory receivership (such as Federal Trade Commission redress receivership), or analogous proceeding, the receiver is a Successor under clause (a) and is bound by these Terms. The receiver may continue, modify, or terminate the Services consistent with the receiver's court-approved authority, and Users have no claim against the receiver for any such action beyond the §11 cap. (e) Dissolution. If the Company is dissolved (voluntarily or involuntarily) under Delaware General Corporation Law § 275 et seq. or analogous foreign law, the dissolved Company continues to exist for purposes of winding up under 8 Del. C. § 278, the Section 11 cap and Section 10 disclaimers continue to apply to claims against the dissolved Company, and User claims against the dissolved Company are subject to the bar dates and statutory-notice procedures of 8 Del. C. §§ 280-282 and analogous foreign procedures. The §15.18 Protected Persons shield continues through dissolution and winding up. (f) Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors. The Company may make an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors (ABC) under Delaware law or analogous state and foreign law. The assignee is a Successor under clause (a) and is bound by these Terms. Users have no priority claim over other creditors of the Company by reason of these Terms. (g) No User Priority Claim; No Acceleration of Service Use; No Sunk-Cost Recovery. Users have no priority claim against the Company or its estate by reason of these Terms; have no right to compel continuation of the Services; have no right to accelerated use of any pre-paid Commercial License under §7.3; and have no right to recover sunk costs, lost opportunity, or analogous expectation damages from the Company estate by reason of insolvency. Pre-petition unpaid Commercial License fees under §7.3 may be allowable claims against the estate consistent with applicable bankruptcy law, but post-petition Service use does not entitle the User to claim damages beyond the §11 cap. (h) Substantive Consolidation Defense. The Company reserves all defenses to substantive consolidation under Eastgroup Properties v. Southern Motel Ass'n, Ltd., 935 F.2d 245 (11th Cir. 1991), In re Owens Corning, 419 F.3d 195 (3d Cir. 2005), and analogous authority, including the corporate separateness of the Company and its affiliates, the absence of cross-corporate-veil piercing factors, and the §15.18 Protected Persons shield, which preserves the corporate separateness of the Company from its officers, directors, employees, and equity holders. Substantive consolidation shall not be ordered absent a specific demonstration meeting the applicable test in the bankruptcy court of competent jurisdiction. (i) Foreign Insolvency Proceedings; Cross-Border Insolvency. Where the Company's insolvency proceeding is commenced in a foreign jurisdiction or involves cross-border issues, the parties acknowledge the application of: (i) Chapter 15 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code (Ancillary and Other Cross-Border Cases); (ii) the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency (1997, revised 2018); (iii) the EU Insolvency Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2015/848 recast); (iv) the U.K. Cross-Border Insolvency Regulations 2006 (S.I. 2006 No. 1030); (v) the Singapore Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018; (vi) the Canadian Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-36; (vii) the Australian Cross-Border Insolvency Act 2008; and (viii) analogous foreign cross-border insolvency regimes. The Company expressly reserves all comity-based defenses, recognition arguments, and substantive defenses available under such regimes. (j) Effect on Pending Arbitrations and Litigation. Pending arbitrations under Section 14.2 and pending court proceedings (including without limitation §14.9 severed proceedings, §15.26 IP enforcement, §15.30 vexatious-litigation actions, and §15.35 equitable-remedy actions) are not abated by Company insolvency proceedings, subject only to the automatic stay of 11 U.S.C. § 362 and analogous foreign provisions. The Company reserves the right to seek stay relief under §362(d) to continue arbitration or court proceedings, and the §11 cap, §10 disclaimers, §14.10 confidentiality, §14.12 settlement confidentiality, and all other risk-allocation provisions continue to apply. (k) Continuing User Obligations Post-Insolvency. The User's obligations under these Terms continue notwithstanding Company insolvency, including without limitation: (i) Section 9 prohibited conduct obligations; (ii) Section 12 indemnification of Successor and Protected Persons; (iii) Section 14.10 confidentiality of arbitration; (iv) Section 14.12 settlement-negotiation confidentiality; (v) Section 15.12 no-training-use of TIP data; (vi) Section 15.15 anti-reverse-engineering; (vii) Section 15.28 anti-assignment of claims; (viii) Section 15.36 anti-harassment of Protected Persons (including post-insolvency-displacement personnel); and (ix) all other surviving obligations under Section 13.10. (l) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.39 are severable across clauses (a) through (k), claim categories, insolvency-proceeding types, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to preserve continuing risk-allocation through any Company insolvency, dissolution, or successor event.

15.40 Insurance, Self-Insurance, and No Proof-of-Insurance Required. The Company expressly reserves the following provisions concerning insurance and risk-funding: (a) No Insurance Obligation. The Company is not required by these Terms, by any Integrated Document under Section 15.1, or by any other agreement with any User to maintain commercial general liability insurance, professional liability insurance, technology errors and omissions insurance, cyber liability insurance, directors and officers insurance, employment practices liability insurance, media liability insurance, products liability insurance, or any other line of insurance coverage. The Company may, in its sole discretion and from time to time, elect to maintain or not maintain any line of insurance, in any amount, with any carrier, on any terms, for any duration, without notice to or consent of any User. (b) Self-Insurance and Captive-Insurance Reservation. The Company may, in its sole discretion, satisfy any apparent insurance need through self-insurance (the absence of third-party insurance and the Company's reliance on its own balance sheet for risk funding), captive insurance (an insurance subsidiary of the Company or its affiliates), risk-retention groups, mutual insurance arrangements, alternative risk-transfer instruments (including catastrophe bonds and parametric insurance products), or any combination thereof. No User is entitled to claim that the Company's self-insurance posture is insufficient, inadequate, or commercially unreasonable. (c) No Proof-of-Insurance Required. No User may demand from the Company, and the Company is not obligated to provide to any User: (i) certificates of insurance; (ii) insurance binders; (iii) declarations pages; (iv) policy documents or excerpts; (v) carrier identification; (vi) coverage-limit disclosures; (vii) deductible or self-insured-retention disclosures; (viii) claims-history disclosures; (ix) loss-runs; or (x) analogous insurance documentation. A User's purported election to use the Services conditional on Company insurance disclosure is unauthorized and creates no obligation on the Company. (d) No Additional-Insured Status. No User, Verification Provider, Node Operator, third party, beneficiary, or other person is or shall become an "additional insured," "additional named insured," "loss payee," "mortgagee," "lienholder," or analogous insurance-policy beneficiary under any insurance policy the Company may maintain. Where any Commercial License agreement under Section 7.3 expressly requires the Company to add a specific party as additional insured, that requirement is governed solely by the Commercial License agreement and does not affect any other User. (e) No Third-Party Beneficiary of Company Insurance. No User, Verification Provider, Node Operator, or other third party is a third-party beneficiary of any insurance policy the Company may maintain. Where the Company carries insurance, the policy is for the Company's own benefit and the benefit of any persons expressly named in the policy by the carrier. No User may bring a direct action against any Company insurance carrier, claim insurance proceeds as a User asset, or claim insurance proceeds as a substitute for the Section 11 cap. The §15.28(b) Anti-Subrogation provision applies in full force to any insurer that pays a User on a claim that could otherwise be brought against the Company. (f) Carrier Selection in Company's Discretion. Where the Company elects to maintain insurance, the choice of carrier, broker, policy form, coverage limits, deductibles, self-insured retentions, sublimits, exclusions, conditions, endorsements, premium-payment structure, and analogous terms is in the Company's sole discretion. The Company may add or remove insurance at any time without notice to or consent of any User. The Company may use surplus-lines insurance, non-admitted insurance, foreign-domiciled insurance, or analogous non-standard arrangements consistent with applicable insurance law. (g) Cyber Insurance, Tech E&O, and Specialty Lines. The Company makes no representation regarding the existence, scope, or limits of any cyber insurance, technology errors and omissions insurance, professional liability insurance, or other specialty-line coverage that the Company may or may not maintain. The Company's potential maintenance of such coverage is not a representation regarding (i) the Company's risk-management practices, (ii) the adequacy of the Company's security or operational controls, (iii) the likelihood of any particular Service outcome, or (iv) any analogous representation. The §10.1 General Warranty Disclaimer, §10.6 No Guarantee of Continuous Service, §10.7 No Bias Warranty, §10.8 No Content Evaluation, and §10.9 Data Loss and Service Outage Disclaimer apply with full force regardless of any Company insurance arrangements. (h) Application to Successor Insurance. Where the Company is succeeded by any Successor under Section 15.39, no User has any right to demand that the Successor maintain insurance, demand insurance certificates from the Successor, or claim third-party-beneficiary status under any Successor insurance policy. The Successor is bound by these Terms (including this Section 15.40) on the same basis as the Company. (i) User Insurance Obligations Reserved. The Company expressly reserves the right to require any User (in any Commercial License agreement under Section 7.3, in any Verification Provider Accreditation Agreement under Section 6, in any Node Operator Accreditation Agreement under Section 15.38, or in any other specific agreement with a User or operator) to maintain insurance for the benefit of the Company, including without limitation general liability insurance, cyber insurance, professional liability insurance, and errors and omissions insurance, with specified coverage limits, specified carriers, additional-insured endorsements in favor of the Company, waiver-of-subrogation endorsements, primary-and-non-contributory endorsements, and analogous insurance protections. The asymmetry between the Company's lack of insurance obligation and the Company's reservation of right to require User insurance is a material term of the parties' bargain and is fair consideration for the limited Service availability the Company offers. (j) Statutory Insurance Reservations. Where applicable law requires the Company to maintain specific insurance coverage (such as workers' compensation insurance under state employment law, where the Company employs personnel; or automotive liability insurance where the Company owns or operates vehicles), the Company shall maintain the minimum required coverage and reserves all defenses and exemptions available under such law. (k) No Implied Insurance Warranty. Nothing in any Company communication, marketing material, due-diligence response, audit-questionnaire response, press release, public statement, or analogous communication shall be construed as a warranty, representation, or commitment regarding the Company's insurance arrangements, except where expressly set forth in writing signed by an authorized officer of the Company. (l) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.40 are severable across clauses (a) through (k), claim categories, insurance lines, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to preserve the Company's discretion over its insurance arrangements and to limit User rights with respect to Company insurance.

15.41 Quasi-Contract, Unjust Enrichment, and Equitable-Theory Defenses Reservation. The Company expressly reserves the defenses, exclusions, and reservations of this Section 15.41 against any User claim asserting unjust enrichment, quantum meruit, quasi-contract, promissory estoppel, detrimental reliance, constructive trust, equitable lien, money had and received, contract implied in law, contract implied in fact, account stated, or any analogous equitable or quasi-contractual theory: (a) Contract Governs; Quasi-Contract Inapplicable. These Terms constitute an express, written, integrated contract between you and the Company governing the entire subject matter of your use of the Services. Where an express contract governs, quasi-contract and contract-implied-in-law theories are inapplicable and barred under the well-established rule of U.S. ex rel. Bartec Industries, Inc. v. United Pacific Co., 976 F.2d 1274 (9th Cir. 1992), Hedging Concepts, Inc. v. First Alliance Mortgage Co., 41 Cal. App. 4th 1410 (1996), Restatement (Third) of Restitution and Unjust Enrichment § 2(2), and analogous authority. You expressly waive any claim for recovery in quasi-contract, unjust enrichment, quantum meruit, or contract implied in law to the extent the subject matter is governed by these Terms, which is presumed to be the case for every aspect of your interaction with the Services. (b) No Unjust Enrichment Claim. No claim may be brought against the Company or any Protected Person under Section 15.18 on the theory that the Company has been unjustly enriched at your expense by reason of: (i) the operation of the Services; (ii) the registration of your TIP-ID, content, or attestations; (iii) the computation or display of any Trust Score, badge, or AI Trust ID™ Seal; (iv) the Company's preservation of validated DAG records under Section 3.3 and Section 13.5 notwithstanding revocation or termination; (v) the Company's continued use of any User Submitted Materials under the license granted in Section 7.7; (vi) the Company's continued use of any Feedback under the license granted in Section 7.8; (vii) the Company's continued operation of the Services for the benefit of other Users after your departure; (viii) the Company's commercialization of any Service feature; or (ix) any other circumstance arising from your use of the Services. The Company's receipt of value from your use of the Services is consideration for the Section 11 cap, the warranty disclaimers of Section 10, the indemnification obligations of Section 12, and all other risk-allocation provisions of these Terms, and is not unjust enrichment. (c) No Quantum Meruit Claim. No claim may be brought against the Company or any Protected Person on the theory of quantum meruit, recovery for value of services rendered, recovery for value of materials provided, or recovery for any other value supplied to the Company by you, except to the extent expressly provided in these Terms or in a Commercial License agreement under Section 7.3. Your provision of registration data, biometric data, content, attestations, classifier-improvement signals, jury or panel participation under Section 5.4, feedback under Section 7.8, or any other Service-related activity is performed in consideration of the Services made available to you under these Terms, and is not separately compensable. (d) Promissory Estoppel Only for Express Written Promises. No claim may be brought against the Company or any Protected Person on the theory of promissory estoppel, except where: (i) the Company has made an express, unambiguous, written promise to you, signed by an authorized officer of the Company, that is sufficiently definite to support estoppel under Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 90; (ii) you reasonably relied on the express written promise; (iii) your reliance was foreseeable to the Company; and (iv) injustice can be avoided only by enforcement of the promise. No claim of promissory estoppel may be premised on: oral statements; statements in marketing materials, advertisements, white papers, public presentations, blog posts, press releases, or social-media posts; pre-Effective-Date drafts of these Terms; any statement by any Protected Person in such Protected Person's individual capacity rather than as an authorized representative of the Company; or any statement reasonably interpretable as aspirational, exploratory, or non-binding. (e) Detrimental Reliance Only Where Express and Reasonable. No claim of detrimental reliance, equitable estoppel, or analogous theory may be brought against the Company except where the User can demonstrate, by clear and convincing evidence: (i) an express written representation by the Company; (ii) reasonable reliance by the User; (iii) detriment specifically traceable to the reliance; and (iv) absence of any contradictory representation in these Terms or any Integrated Document under Section 15.1. Where any User claim of detrimental reliance contradicts these Terms, the express terms of these Terms govern and the reliance is unreasonable as a matter of law. (f) No Constructive Trust or Equitable Lien Against Company. No claim may be brought against the Company or any Protected Person for imposition of a constructive trust, equitable lien, equitable mortgage, equitable subrogation, or analogous equitable remedy on the Company's assets, proceeds, classifier weights, trained models, intellectual property, customer data, infrastructure, or analogous assets, on grounds of unjust enrichment, wrongful retention, or analogous theory. The Section 15.35 equitable remedies (which run in the Company's direction against the User) are not reciprocal: the Company has affirmative equitable rights against the User; the User does not have analogous affirmative equitable rights against the Company beyond those expressly provided in these Terms or required by mandatory applicable law. (g) No Account Stated or Open-Book Account Claim. No claim may be brought against the Company on the theory of account stated, open-book account, settled account, or analogous theory premised on the Company's invoicing, billing, statement issuance, transaction confirmation, badge display, or analogous Service activity. The Company's records of any User interaction with the Services are evidence of that interaction but are not "accounts" for purposes of common-law account-stated claims. (h) No Implied-in-Fact Contract Inconsistent With Express Terms. The parties' conduct, course of dealing, course of performance, custom, usage, and any analogous extrinsic context are not to be construed as creating any contract implied in fact that is inconsistent with these express Terms. Where any extrinsic context appears to conflict with these Terms, these Terms govern, subject only to the integration recitals of Section 15.1 (Entire Agreement), the no-oral-modification rule of Section 15.3 (Waiver), and the Section 15.34 (Conspicuous Notice, Knowing Assent) recitals. (i) Merger Doctrine Reserved. Under the merger doctrine and Section 15.1 (Entire Agreement), all prior agreements, understandings, representations, and warranties between the parties concerning the subject matter of these Terms are merged into these Terms and superseded. No claim may be brought premised on any pre-Effective-Date promise, representation, or understanding not embodied in these Terms or in an Integrated Document under Section 15.1. The Company expressly reserves all defenses available under the parol evidence rule and analogous extrinsic-evidence-exclusion rules. (j) Statute of Frauds Reserved. Where any User claim against the Company would, if asserted as a contract claim, be barred by the Statute of Frauds (6 Del. C. § 2701 et seq. and analogous state statutes), the User cannot circumvent the Statute of Frauds bar by asserting the claim in quasi-contract, unjust enrichment, promissory estoppel, or analogous equitable theory. The Statute of Frauds bar applies equally to the equitable theories. (k) Equitable Defenses to Equitable Claims. Where any equitable claim survives the prior clauses of this Section 15.41 and reaches the merits, the Company reserves all equitable defenses, including without limitation: (i) unclean hands (the User has acted inequitably with respect to the subject matter of the claim, including by violating Section 9, Section 15.28, Section 15.36, or analogous obligations); (ii) laches (the User has delayed unreasonably in asserting the equitable claim); (iii) waiver (the User has waived the equitable claim by conduct inconsistent with assertion); (iv) ratification (the User has ratified the conduct giving rise to the alleged inequity); (v) estoppel (the User is estopped from asserting the equitable claim by prior representations); (vi) in pari delicto (the User is equally at fault with the Company in any alleged wrongdoing); and (vii) any other applicable equitable defense. (l) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.41 are severable across clauses (a) through (k), theories of recovery, claim categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to channel all disputes into the contract-and-arbitration framework of these Terms and to prevent equitable-theory pivots from circumventing the §11 cap, the §10 disclaimers, the §12 indemnification obligations, the §14 dispute-resolution framework, and the other risk-allocation provisions of these Terms.

15.42 Anti-Tortious-Interference With Company Contracts and Business Relationships. As a continuing condition of your use of the Services and a material term of these Terms, you covenant that you shall not, and shall not permit, encourage, facilitate, finance, organize, conspire with others to commit, or aid and abet, any of the following conduct (collectively, "Interference Conduct"): (a) Tortious Interference With Company Contracts. Tortious interference with any contractual relationship of the Company, including without limitation: the Company's Verification Provider Accreditation Agreements with independent VPs under Section 6 and Section 15.17; the Company's Node Operator Accreditation Agreements under Section 15.38; the Company's Commercial License agreements with other Users under Section 7.3; the Company's contracts with suppliers, contractors, consultants, advisors, lenders, investors, insurers, banks, payment processors, hosting providers, infrastructure providers, and other commercial counterparties; the Company's employment, independent-contractor, advisor, intern, and volunteer relationships with Protected Persons under Section 15.18; the Company's relationships with regulators, government agencies, and law-enforcement bodies; and the Company's relationships with standards-development organizations, industry consortia, and academic institutions. (b) Tortious Interference With Prospective Economic Advantage. Tortious interference with any reasonably anticipated business relationship of the Company that has not yet ripened into a contract, including without limitation: prospective Verification Provider applicants; prospective Node Operator applicants; prospective Commercial License customers; prospective acquirers, merger partners, joint-venture partners, or strategic investors; prospective standards-development collaborations; and any other reasonably anticipated business relationship of which you have knowledge. (c) Inducement of Breach by Other Users, VPs, Node Operators, or Counterparties. Inducement, solicitation, or encouragement of any User, Verification Provider, Node Operator, employee of the Company, contractor of the Company, advisor of the Company, supplier of the Company, or other commercial counterparty of the Company to: (i) breach these Terms, the applicable Accreditation Agreement, the applicable Commercial License agreement, the applicable employment contract, or any other agreement with the Company; (ii) refuse to perform such party's obligations to the Company; (iii) terminate such party's relationship with the Company without cause; or (iv) disclose Company Confidential Information in violation of confidentiality obligations to the Company. (d) Disparagement of Company Commercial Relationships. False, misleading, or unprivileged statements concerning the Company, its products, its operations, its financial condition, its leadership, its compliance posture, or its commercial counterparties, communicated to the Company's actual or prospective commercial counterparties, in the context of disrupting the Company's commercial relationships. This clause shall not be construed to prohibit good-faith, accurate criticism in public-facing fora protected by First Amendment editorial discretion under Section 15.31(c) and the Section 15.36 personnel-protection carve-out for non-targeted criticism; this clause prohibits only false or unprivileged statements communicated for the purpose of disrupting specific commercial relationships. (e) Use of Service-Derived Information to Compete Unfairly. Use of any information obtained through your use of the Services (including Company Confidential Information learned in the course of being a User, classifier-output observations, technical-implementation observations, or analogous information) to: (i) compete unfairly with the Company; (ii) approach the Company's customers, Verification Providers, or Node Operators with competing offerings using non-public Company information; (iii) reverse-engineer the Company's commercial structure or pricing in violation of Section 15.15; (iv) misappropriate the Company's trade secrets under Section 7.5 and Section 15.26(a); or (v) violate any other Section of these Terms. (f) Coordination With Company Competitors. Coordinated action with any competitor of the Company (or any party affiliated with a competitor) directed at harming the Company's commercial relationships, including without limitation: providing competitors with non-public Company information; participating in competitor-led smear campaigns against the Company; participating in competitor-led regulatory complaints against the Company that are not supported by good-faith factual basis; or participating in any analogous coordinated competitive action. (g) Civil Conspiracy and Aiding and Abetting. Civil conspiracy with any third party (whether or not also a User) to engage in any Interference Conduct under clauses (a) through (f). The Company reserves all common-law and statutory civil-conspiracy theories under Halberstam v. Welch, 705 F.2d 472 (D.C. Cir. 1983), Beck v. Prupis, 529 U.S. 494 (2000), and analogous foreign authority. Aiding and abetting any Interference Conduct, whether or not the aider is itself a User, is itself Interference Conduct sanctionable under this Section 15.42. Remedies for Interference Conduct. Breach of any covenant in this Section 15.42 is a material breach of these Terms giving rise to all of the following remedies, individually or in combination: (1) immediate termination of the offending User's TIP-ID under Section 13.2 without notice or right to cure, with permanent exclusion from re-registration; (2) indemnification of the Company and any Protected Person under Section 12 (including §12.1-§12.10), with the Company controlling defense under §12.3 and the offending User funding defense costs and judgment costs under §12.8; (3) equitable relief under Section 15.35, including without limitation injunctive relief restraining further Interference Conduct, specific performance compelling the offending User to honor non-interference, declaratory judgment, anti-suit injunction under §15.35(j), preservation orders, constructive trust on any profits derived from Interference Conduct, and any other equitable remedy; (4) fee-shifting and individual-adversary recovery under Section 15.30 against the offending User, the User's counsel (if any), any third-party litigation funder, claims aggregator, or coordinating party; (5) direct civil-tort claims by the Company against the offending User for tortious interference with contract, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, civil conspiracy, aiding and abetting, defamation, trade libel, unfair competition under state common law and the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. § 1051 et seq.), violation of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (18 U.S.C. § 1836), violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030) where applicable, and analogous foreign causes of action including the U.K. Defamation Act 2013, the German Allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht as applied to commercial reputation, the French Loi Toubon and unfair-competition law, and analogous foreign regimes; (6) punitive and exemplary damages where available under applicable law; (7) any other remedy reserved under Section 15.26 (Reservation of Company Remedies); and (8) the §11 cap by its terms applies only to the Company's liability TO Users, not the Company's recovery FROM Users, and accordingly the Company's recovery against the offending User under this Section 15.42 is not capped by the §11 cap, consistent with the §11 cap-mechanics paragraph and Sections 15.26, 15.30, and 15.35. Carve-Out for Protected Speech. Nothing in this Section 15.42 shall be construed to prohibit good-faith, accurate, publicly-stated criticism of the Company's policies, products, or public-facing conduct, which remains protected speech under Section 15.31(c) and applicable law. The prohibition is limited to (i) Interference Conduct as enumerated in clauses (a) through (g), which by its nature exceeds protected criticism, and (ii) statements communicated to specific commercial counterparties of the Company for the purpose of disrupting specific commercial relationships, as distinct from public-facing criticism. Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.42 are severable across clauses (a) through (g), remedies (1) through (8), Protected Person categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope. Application to Past, Present, and Future Relationships. The protections of this Section 15.42 apply to all current, former, and future contractual and business relationships of the Company; Interference Conduct directed at a former relationship of the Company in respect of conduct or events occurring during the relationship is fully within the scope of this Section.

15.43 Regulatory Investigation, Consent Decree, and No-Admission Reservation. The Company expressly reserves the defenses, exclusions, and no-admission protections of this Section 15.43 with respect to any regulatory investigation, enforcement action, consent decree, settlement order, no-action letter, advisory opinion, or analogous regulatory event affecting the Company. (a) Cooperation Is Not Admission. The Company's voluntary cooperation with any federal, state, or foreign regulator (including without limitation the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, state attorneys general, state UDAP regulators, the European Commission, EU Member State Data Protection Authorities, the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office, the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, the Canadian Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the Brazilian National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), the EU AI Office and Member State AI authorities under the EU AI Act, the Colorado AI Act enforcement authority, and analogous foreign and state regulators) shall not constitute: (i) an admission by the Company of any fact alleged or implied by the regulator; (ii) an admission by the Company of any breach of these Terms or applicable law; (iii) a waiver by the Company of any defense available in subsequent User litigation or arbitration; (iv) a representation by the Company regarding the merits of any underlying regulator allegation; or (v) an acknowledgment by the Company that the regulator's characterization of the Company's conduct is accurate. (b) No-Admission Framework in Consent Decrees and Settlements. Where the Company enters into a consent decree, stipulated judgment, settlement agreement, undertaking, no-prosecution agreement, deferred-prosecution agreement, non-prosecution agreement, or analogous resolution of a regulatory matter, the Company expressly reserves: (i) the standard "no admission of fault or liability" recital customary in such resolutions; (ii) the right to disclaim any factual finding made by the regulator that the Company has not expressly agreed to in writing; (iii) the right to defend against any subsequent private User claim premised on the regulator's allegations, factual findings, or remedial orders, including by introducing evidence rebutting the underlying allegations; and (iv) the right to challenge any application of the regulator's findings as preclusive against the Company in subsequent litigation, on grounds including without limitation the absence of identical-issue preclusion under Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90 (1980), the absence of full and fair opportunity to litigate, and the absence of mutuality of parties. (c) No Third-Party Beneficiary of Regulatory Action. No User, Verification Provider, Node Operator, or other third party is a third-party beneficiary of any regulatory action, investigation, consent decree, settlement, or analogous matter involving the Company. No User has standing to sue the Company premised on the regulator's allegations or findings; the User must independently plead and prove an actionable claim under these Terms and applicable law. Any private claim against the Company that piggybacks on a regulator's allegations without independent factual and legal basis is subject to dismissal under Section 15.30 (Vexatious Litigation Protection) and the §15.41 (Quasi-Contract Defenses) framework. (d) No Expansion of Private Rights of Action. Regulatory authority over the Company under any applicable statute does not create or expand any private right of action against the Company by any User, except to the extent the applicable statute expressly creates a private right of action available to the specific User. The mere existence of a regulator's enforcement authority does not authorize User litigation; the User must demonstrate that the applicable statute expressly authorizes the User's private action. Where a statute does not expressly authorize private action, no implied private right of action shall be inferred under Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275 (2001), and analogous authority. (e) Preclusive Use of Regulator Findings by the Company. Conversely, where a regulator's findings, consent decree, or final order favorably resolves any issue in the Company's favor (including without limitation findings that the Company has complied with applicable law, that no violation occurred, or that the Company's defenses are well-taken), the Company expressly reserves the right to introduce such findings as preclusive in subsequent User litigation under: (i) collateral estoppel where applicable; (ii) judicial-estoppel principles preventing the User from taking positions inconsistent with positions previously taken by the regulator in a forum in which the User had opportunity to participate; (iii) Park Lake Resources LLC v. United States Dep't of Agriculture, 378 F.3d 1132 (10th Cir. 2004), and analogous authority regarding administrative-record preclusion; and (iv) any other applicable preclusion or estoppel doctrine. (f) Right to Modify or Vacate Consent Decrees. The Company reserves the right to seek modification, vacatur, or termination of any consent decree, settlement, or analogous instrument under Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367 (1992), Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), the inherent equitable jurisdiction of the issuing court, and analogous foreign and state procedural rules, on grounds of changed circumstances, factual or legal error, or any other applicable ground. (g) Right to Refuse Follow-On Mass Arbitration Tied to Regulatory Action. Where any plaintiff-bar coordination of mass arbitration or class-action filings against the Company appears to piggyback on or follow from a regulatory investigation or action against the Company, the Company expressly reserves: (i) the §14.8 Mass Arbitration Coordination Protocol defenses; (ii) the §14.11 Bellwether Arbitration Procedure for Mass-Filing Defense; (iii) the §15.30 Vexatious Litigation Protection (including fee-shifting against piggyback counsel); (iv) the §15.42 Anti-Tortious-Interference covenants (where piggyback counsel coordinate with regulator-action complainants to interfere with Company commercial relationships); and (v) the §15.41 Quasi-Contract Defenses (where piggyback claims pivot to equitable theories upon failing on contract claims). The Company may seek bellwether-procedure imposition and other defenses tailored to the piggyback nature of the litigation. (h) Compelled Disclosure in Regulatory Proceedings. Where the Company is compelled to disclose information in a regulatory proceeding (including trade secrets, classifier weights, biometric processing details, financial information, or analogous Company Confidential Information), the Company shall seek and the User shall not oppose: (i) protective orders limiting disclosure; (ii) in-camera review; (iii) attorneys'-eyes-only designations; (iv) sealing of materials; (v) confidential-treatment under U.S. and foreign FOIA/SAR analogs; (vi) confidential-treatment under Trade Secrets Act 18 USC § 1905 and analogous foreign statutes; and (vii) analogous procedural protections. The Company's compelled disclosure does not waive trade-secret protection under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (18 USC § 1836), §15.15 (Anti-Reverse-Engineering), §15.33(f) (No Compelled Disclosure of Model Internals), or analogous protections. (i) Regulator-Imposed Service Modifications. Where a regulator requires the Company to modify the Services (including without limitation by imposing accessibility standards, disclosure requirements, age-verification requirements, content-moderation requirements, classifier-bias-correction requirements, or analogous modifications), the Company shall implement such modifications consistent with §15.20 (Right to Suspend or Modify for Regulatory Compliance) and shall not be liable to any User for any change in the Services resulting from such modification. Users have no right to demand pre-regulator-action Service functionality, no claim for breach of contract premised on Company compliance with regulator requirements, and no expectation interest in any specific Service feature that is subject to regulator modification. (j) Statute-Specific Reservations. The Company reserves all defenses available under each statute under which the Company may be investigated, including without limitation: (i) the FTC Act 15 USC § 45 (substantive prudence in unfair-method-of-competition definition, statutory and judicial limits on FTC remedies, defenses including FTC v. AMG Capital Management, LLC, 593 U.S. ___ (2021) constraints on monetary recovery); (ii) the Securities Exchange Act 15 USC § 78a et seq. and SEC enforcement standards; (iii) the Dodd-Frank Act consumer-protection provisions where applicable; (iv) state UDAP statutes and the substantive defenses available thereunder; (v) GDPR enforcement standards including the proportionality requirement of Art. 83 and lawful-basis defenses; (vi) UK GDPR analogous standards; (vii) EU AI Act enforcement standards including the proportionality requirement and the operator-specific compliance framework; (viii) foreign analog enforcement standards. (k) Severability and Reformation. The reservations of this Section 15.43 are severable across clauses (a) through (j), regulatory matter types, statutes, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to prevent regulatory action against the Company from being weaponized in private litigation against the Company.

15.44 Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing · Scope, Limitations, and Specific Waivers. The parties acknowledge that most jurisdictions imply a covenant of good faith and fair dealing ("Implied Covenant") into every contract. The Implied Covenant is a recognized contract-law doctrine, but its scope is limited as set forth in this Section 15.44. (a) Limited to Reasonable Performance of Express Terms. The Implied Covenant under Delaware law (governing these Terms under Section 14.1), as articulated by Dunlap v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co., 878 A.2d 434 (Del. 2005), Nemec v. Shrader, 991 A.2d 1120 (Del. 2010), Allied Capital Corp. v. GC-Sun Holdings, L.P., 910 A.2d 1020 (Del. Ch. 2006), and the established Delaware line of cases, is limited to (i) ensuring that neither party acts arbitrarily or unreasonably so as to prevent the other from receiving the express benefit of the bargain, and (ii) supplying terms that the parties would have agreed to had they thought to bargain about a contingency they did not anticipate. The Implied Covenant cannot be used to (A) override express terms of these Terms; (B) create new obligations not contemplated in these Terms; (C) limit the Company's express discretion under any provision of these Terms; (D) expand User remedies beyond those expressly provided; (E) reduce the Section 11 cap; (F) override the Section 10 warranty disclaimers; or (G) override the Section 14 dispute-resolution framework. (b) Not a Stand-Alone Cause of Action. The Implied Covenant does not give rise to a stand-alone tort cause of action under Delaware law. Any breach-of-Implied-Covenant claim must be pleaded as breach of contract and is subject to the Section 11 cap, the Section 10 disclaimers, the Section 14 dispute-resolution framework, the Section 14.5 statute of limitations, and the Section 15.18 Protected Persons shield. The Implied Covenant does not create a stand-alone tort liability for breach, and any User claim premised on the Implied Covenant as a tort theory is barred. (c) Express Discretion Conclusively Excludes Implied Constraint. Where these Terms expressly grant the Company discretion (including without limitation: Section 15.20 Right to Suspend or Modify for Regulatory Compliance; Section 15.31 Right to Refuse Service and First Amendment Editorial Discretion; Section 13.2 Termination by Company; Section 15.9 Right to Modify Operational Parameters; Section 5.4 Stage 1/Stage 2/Stage 3 adjudication routing; Section 5.5 Trust Score adjustment; Section 6.5 REVOKE_VP cascade; Section 15.31(b) Discretionary Continuation; Section 15.32 User Representations enforcement; Section 13.11 Reinstatement; Section 14.11 Bellwether Election; and Section 15.42 Anti-Tortious-Interference enforcement), the exercise of that discretion by the Company in good faith is conclusively presumed to satisfy the Implied Covenant, and the Implied Covenant does not constrain or qualify the Company's exercise of express discretion. A User may not assert an Implied-Covenant claim premised on the Company's exercise of any expressly granted discretion. (d) Business-Judgment Rule Deference. Where the Company's exercise of discretion involves operational, business, technical, financial, or strategic judgment (including without limitation classifier calibration under Section 5.6, jurisdiction-tier classification under Section 6.2, accreditation decisions under Sections 6 and 15.38, fee structure under Section 7.3, security architecture, infrastructure choices, and analogous matters), the business-judgment rule and analogous deference doctrines apply to the Company's good-faith exercise of such discretion. The Implied Covenant does not authorize judicial or arbitral second-guessing of the Company's business judgment absent specific demonstration of bad faith, self-dealing, or analogous breach of the express trust the parties have established in these Terms. (e) Specific Waiver Where Waivable. Notwithstanding any contrary common-law rule, you expressly waive any claim against the Company or any Protected Person under Section 15.18 premised on breach of the Implied Covenant, to the maximum extent such waiver is permitted under: (i) Delaware law (under which the Implied Covenant can be limited but not entirely waived in some categories of contracts); (ii) any other state law that may apply (under which the Implied Covenant's waivability varies); and (iii) any foreign law that may apply (under which the analog doctrines may be waivable or non-waivable depending on jurisdiction and category). The waiver in this clause (e) is intended to take effect to the maximum extent permitted and to be reformed under clause (k) to the maximum enforceable scope. (f) Foreign Analog Doctrines. Foreign jurisdictions may apply analog doctrines including: (i) the "good faith" requirement of the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB) § 242 (Treu und Glauben); (ii) the French bonne foi requirement of Code civil articles 1104 and 1112-1; (iii) the Italian buona fede requirement of Codice civile articles 1175 and 1375; (iv) the Japanese shingi-soku good faith requirement of Civil Code article 1; (v) the U.K. equitable estoppel and developing "good faith in contractual performance" doctrines per Yam Seng Pte Ltd v. International Trade Corp. [2013] EWHC 111 (QB) and progeny; (vi) the Australian doctrine of good faith in commercial contracts (in development); and (vii) analogous foreign doctrines. The Company reserves the right to assert that no such doctrine applies to these Terms (which are governed by Delaware law under Section 14.1), and where any such doctrine is held to apply, the Company reserves the same scope-limiting reservations of clauses (a) through (e) as applied through the lens of the relevant foreign doctrine. (g) Implied Covenant Does Not Override Anti-Discrimination Carve-Outs. Nothing in the Implied Covenant authorizes a User to assert a discrimination claim against the Company premised on the Company's exercise of Section 15.31 right-to-refuse-service or Section 15.31(d) public-accommodation-status disclaimer; such claims must satisfy the burden-of-proof and articulable-non-discriminatory-reason framework of Section 15.31(e), and the Implied Covenant does not relax that framework. (h) Implied Covenant Does Not Override AI-Specific Defenses. Nothing in the Implied Covenant authorizes a User to assert claims against the Company premised on AI Pre-Scan, Multi-Model Consensus Classification, or other automated analysis system outputs that are otherwise barred or limited by Section 10.3 (AI Classifier Accuracy), Section 10.7 (No Bias Warranty), Section 10.13 (No Consumer Reporting Agency Status), Section 10.14 (No Professional Advice), Section 15.33 (AI-Specific Liability Defenses), and Section 15.33(g) (No Liability for Third-Party AI Inputs); the Implied Covenant cannot be used to circumvent these defenses. (i) Implied Covenant Does Not Override Mass-Action Limitations. Nothing in the Implied Covenant authorizes a User to circumvent Section 14.3 (Class Action Waiver), Section 14.8 (Mass Arbitration Coordination), Section 14.9 (Class-Waiver Blow-Up Severance), Section 14.11 (Bellwether Procedure), Section 15.28 (Anti-Assignment), or Section 15.30 (Vexatious Litigation Protection). (j) Burden of Proof. Where a User asserts breach of the Implied Covenant, the User bears the burden of pleading and proving by clear and convincing evidence: (i) the specific contractual provision the Company has allegedly violated; (ii) the specific manner in which the Company's conduct prevented the User from receiving the express benefit of the bargain; (iii) the specific damages caused by the alleged breach; and (iv) that no express provision of these Terms (including without limitation Sections 10, 11, 13, 14, 15.18, 15.20, 15.31, 15.32, 15.34) defeats the claim. (k) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.44 are severable across clauses (a) through (j), claim categories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to limit the Implied Covenant to its narrow Delaware-law scope and to prevent expansion of contract claims through Implied-Covenant pleading.

15.45 Cybersecurity Incident Notification and Response Framework. The Company processes personal data, biometric data, and other sensitive information that may be subject to cybersecurity incidents requiring notification under various statutes. This Section 15.45 establishes the framework governing such incidents and notifications. (a) Statutory Compliance. The Company shall comply with applicable cybersecurity incident notification laws of jurisdictions in which it operates and in which affected Users reside, including without limitation: (i) all U.S. state data-breach-notification statutes (currently in effect in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam, with the New York SHIELD Act, California Civ. Code § 1798.82 (and its CCPA/CPRA analog at § 1798.150 for private right of action), Massachusetts Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93H, Texas Bus. & Com. Code Ch. 521, Illinois Personal Information Protection Act 815 ILCS 530, and analogous state statutes); (ii) GDPR Article 33 (personal data breach notification to supervisory authority within 72 hours) and Article 34 (notification to data subjects without undue delay where high risk to rights and freedoms); (iii) U.K. GDPR Articles 33 and 34 analogous notification requirements; (iv) the EU NIS2 Directive (Directive (EU) 2022/2555) for essential and important entities; (v) the U.S. Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (CIRCIA), 6 U.S.C. § 681 et seq., where applicable; (vi) the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b-5 cyber-incident-disclosure requirements for SEC-registrants, where applicable; (vii) the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and HITECH Act breach-notification requirements, where applicable to any healthcare-related processing; (viii) the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) breach-notification requirements, where applicable to financial-services-related processing; (ix) the EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA, Regulation (EU) 2022/2554) for financial-sector incidents, where applicable; (x) India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (DPDPA) Section 8(6) data-breach-notification requirements; (xi) Brazil's Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) Article 48 breach-notification requirements; (xii) Australia's Notifiable Data Breaches scheme under the Privacy Act 1988; (xiii) Canada's PIPEDA Section 10.1 and Quebec Law 25 breach-notification requirements; (xiv) Singapore's PDPA Section 26D breach-notification requirements; (xv) the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) and analogous biometric-incident provisions; and (xvi) analogous foreign and state cybersecurity-incident-notification regimes. (b) Notification Timing in Company's Reasonable Discretion Within Statutory Limits. The timing, content, recipients, and form of notification are governed by the applicable statute, but where multiple statutes apply or where statutory standards permit Company discretion, the Company shall determine the appropriate timing and form in its reasonable discretion. The Company is entitled to: (i) the statutory grace period under each applicable statute (e.g., GDPR Art. 33's 72-hour deadline from awareness; California's "most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay" standard); (ii) the law-enforcement-delay exception under applicable statutes (where law-enforcement officials request delay in notification to protect investigation); (iii) the technical-feasibility consideration in determining notification content; and (iv) the risk-assessment standard under GDPR Art. 33 (where breach is "unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons," supervisory-authority notification is not required). (c) Notification Is Not Admission of Fault or Breach. Any notification, disclosure, regulatory filing, or analogous communication concerning a cybersecurity incident, whether made pursuant to statutory obligation or voluntarily, shall not constitute: (i) an admission by the Company that any breach of these Terms or applicable law has occurred; (ii) an admission of any fact alleged or implied by the incident or by any third party concerning the incident; (iii) an admission of negligence, gross negligence, willful misconduct, or fraud; (iv) a waiver by the Company of any defense available in subsequent User litigation or arbitration, including without limitation the §10.9 Data Loss and Service Outage Disclaimer, the §10.12 Comprehensive Personal/Economic/Property/Status Harm Disclaimer, the §11 cap, the §12 indemnification framework, the §15.18 Protected Persons shield, the §15.40 Insurance reservations, and the §15.43 Regulatory No-Admission Framework; or (v) a representation by the Company regarding the cause, scope, or remedial status of the incident. The Company's good-faith compliance with cybersecurity-incident notification statutes shall be construed favorably to the Company in any subsequent claim. (d) No Expansion of Private Rights of Action. Compliance with cybersecurity-incident notification statutes does not create or expand any private right of action against the Company by any User, except to the extent the applicable statute expressly creates a private right of action available to the specific User. Where a statute creates a private right of action (such as California CCPA Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.150 for specified categories of breaches and statutory damages in the range of $100-$750 per consumer per incident), such private right is subject to: (i) the statutory definition of qualifying breach (which may exclude many incidents the User considers actionable); (ii) the statutory limitation period; (iii) the §14 arbitration agreement, §14.3 class waiver, §14.5 statute of limitations, §14.8 mass-arbitration coordination, §14.11 bellwether procedure, and §14.13 arbitrator authority limitations; (iv) the §11 cap as applied to the statutory damages amount; (v) the §10 disclaimers (including §10.9 Data Loss and Service Outage Disclaimer); and (vi) all other applicable provisions of these Terms. Where a statute does not expressly authorize private action for cybersecurity incidents, no implied private right of action shall be inferred under Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275 (2001), and analogous authority. (e) Cooperation With Regulators and Law Enforcement. The Company shall cooperate with cybersecurity-incident regulators and law-enforcement authorities consistent with Section 15.24 (Law Enforcement Cooperation) and Section 15.43 (Regulatory No-Admission Framework). Such cooperation, including responses to regulatory inquiries, voluntary information sharing, and participation in industry information-sharing organizations (such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Act, Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs), and analogous foreign frameworks), shall not constitute admission consistent with clause (c) above. (f) Trade-Secret, Security, and §15.33(f) Protections in Notification Content. Cybersecurity-incident notifications shall be limited to the statutorily-required content and shall not include: (i) classifier weights, training-data inventories, prompts, RLHF reward signals, or other AI-internal information protected under §15.33(f); (ii) Company trade secrets protected under the Defend Trade Secrets Act 18 U.S.C. § 1836 and §15.15 Anti-Reverse-Engineering; (iii) security architecture details that, if disclosed, would compromise future incident response under the security exception; (iv) information about other Users protected under §8 Privacy; or (v) information subject to law-enforcement-delay or analogous protection. Where statutory notification content would otherwise require such disclosures, the Company shall seek the narrowest interpretation of statutory requirements and shall claim applicable trade-secret, security, and confidential-information protections. (g) User Obligations Concerning Incidents. If the User becomes aware of any actual or suspected cybersecurity incident affecting the Services, the User shall: (i) promptly notify the Company at security@theailab.org; (ii) cooperate with the Company's investigation; (iii) refrain from independent public disclosure of the incident that would compromise the Company's incident-response, regulatory-notification obligations, or law-enforcement cooperation, except where mandated by applicable law; (iv) refrain from publishing or analyzing classifier weights, security architecture details, or analogous Company Confidential Information obtained in connection with the incident under §15.15 and §15.33(f); and (v) honor the §14.10 Confidentiality and §14.12 Settlement Negotiation Confidentiality provisions to the extent the incident gives rise to any settlement discussion. (h) Right to Modify or Suspend Services in Response to Incident. The Company may, in its reasonable discretion under Section 15.20 (Right to Suspend or Modify for Regulatory Compliance) and Section 15.31 (Right to Refuse Service), modify, suspend, restrict, geofence, or discontinue any Service feature in response to a cybersecurity incident, including without limitation: (i) suspending registrations from affected regions; (ii) requiring re-verification of affected Users under Section 6.6 or analogous re-verification procedure; (iii) revoking specific TIP-IDs or content registrations under §13.2; (iv) issuing security advisories under §4.9 Communications Consent; and (v) any other commercially reasonable response. The §11 cap and §10 disclaimers apply with full force to any User claim premised on Service modification, suspension, or discontinuance in response to a cybersecurity incident, consistent with §10.6 No Guarantee of Continuous Service and §10.9 Data Loss and Service Outage Disclaimer. (i) Defense Against Cybersecurity-Incident Class Actions. Where a cybersecurity incident gives rise to actual or threatened class-action litigation against the Company (whether under California CCPA private right of action, federal common-law theories, or analogous statutes), the Company expressly reserves all defenses under: (i) the §14.3 Class Action Waiver; (ii) the §14.8 Mass Arbitration Coordination Protocol; (iii) the §14.9 Class-Waiver Blow-Up Severance; (iv) the §14.11 Bellwether Arbitration Procedure; (v) the §15.28 Anti-Assignment and Anti-Subrogation Provisions; (vi) the §15.30 Vexatious Litigation Protection; (vii) the §15.43 Regulatory No-Admission Framework; and (viii) all other applicable defenses. The §11 cap, with its §11-mechanics aggregate-cap, common-control-aggregation, rolling-period, and pro-rata-allocation provisions, applies with full force. (j) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.45 are severable across clauses (a) through (i), incident categories, statutes, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to (1) preserve Company discretion within statutory limits regarding incident notification and response, (2) prevent notification compliance from being treated as admission, and (3) limit private-right-of-action expansion through cybersecurity-incident pleading.

15.46 Performance Standards Disclaimer; Narrow Definitions of Gross Negligence and Willful Misconduct. The Section 10.1 General Warranty Disclaimer waives implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for particular purpose, and non-infringement under UCC § 2-316. This Section 15.46 supplements that disclaimer by addressing implied performance-standard theories that plaintiff's counsel may otherwise invoke to circumvent the warranty disclaimers and the §11 cap. (a) No Implied Standard of Care. The Company makes no representation, warranty, or covenant, express or implied, that the Services will be operated in accordance with any particular standard of care, including without limitation: ordinary care, reasonable care, due care, professional care, fiduciary care, the care of a reasonably prudent operator in the same circumstances, the care of a reasonably prudent person, or any analogous standard. The Company's operational decisions are governed by these Terms, by applicable law, and by the Company's reasonable business judgment under the Section 15.44(d) business-judgment-rule deference, and not by any externally imposed standard of care. (b) No Industry-Standard or Best-Practice Warranty. The Company makes no representation, warranty, or covenant that the Services conform to any particular industry standard, best practice, framework, code, guideline, methodology, certification, or analogous external benchmark, including without limitation: (i) NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0 and subsequent versions); (ii) NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF 2.0 and subsequent versions); (iii) NIST SP 800 series special publications; (iv) ISO/IEC 27001 information security management; (v) ISO/IEC 42001 AI management systems; (vi) ISO/IEC 22989 AI concepts and terminology; (vii) the EU AI Act conformity-assessment framework for non-high-risk systems; (viii) IEEE 7000-series AI ethics standards; (ix) the OWASP Top 10 web-application security risks; (x) the SOC 2 trust-services criteria; (xi) the PCI-DSS payment-card industry data security standard; (xii) any industry-association best-practices document; (xiii) any academic-research best practices; (xiv) any third-party assessment-organization standard; (xv) any voluntary-standards-development-organization output; or (xvi) any analogous standard or best practice. The Company's voluntary participation in any standards-development organization, the Company's voluntary alignment with any framework, or the Company's reference to any standard in marketing or technical materials does not constitute a warranty of compliance with that standard. Where the Company has expressly stated, in writing signed by an authorized officer of the Company, that the Services comply with a specific identified standard, such compliance is limited to the narrow scope of the express statement and is subject to all other provisions of these Terms. (c) Standards-Development Organization (SDO) Participation Is Not a Warranty. The Company's voluntary participation in standards-development organizations (including without limitation IEEE, ISO/IEC, W3C, OASIS, IETF, ITU-T, NIST workshops, the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), the JPEG Trust working group, the Partnership on AI, and analogous bodies) and contribution to industry standards does not constitute: (i) a warranty by the Company that the Services comply with any standard developed by such SDO; (ii) a commitment by the Company to maintain compliance with future versions of such standards; (iii) a representation that the Company has implemented any specific standard; or (iv) an obligation to license any Company intellectual property to other SDO participants except under express written terms (consistent with §15.37(g) No FRAND Obligation). (d) NIST AI RMF Specific Disclaimer. The Company's voluntary reference to or alignment with the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (which is itself a voluntary framework, not a mandatory standard) does not constitute: (i) a warranty of NIST AI RMF compliance; (ii) a covenant to maintain alignment with future NIST AI RMF revisions; (iii) an admission that NIST AI RMF principles legally apply to the Services; or (iv) a representation that the Company's classifier outputs, training, evaluation, or operations satisfy any specific NIST AI RMF function (Govern, Map, Measure, Manage) or category. The NIST AI RMF is an aspirational framework, not a regulatory mandate, and the Company's alignment with it is a matter of voluntary good practice, not contractual or legal obligation. (e) EU AI Act, Colorado AI Act, and Analogous Regimes: Limited Scope. The Company's compliance with the EU AI Act, the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act SB24-205, NYC Local Law 144, the Illinois Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act, and analogous AI-specific regulatory regimes is limited to the express statutory requirements of those regimes as applied to the specific risk categories the Services fall within (which the Company in good faith interprets and reserves the right to assert in any proceeding). Compliance is not (i) a representation that the Services fall within any specific risk category if not statutorily required; (ii) a waiver of arguments that the Services do not fall within high-risk or prohibited categories; (iii) an admission that the Services constitute regulated AI systems under any specific provision; or (iv) a commitment to maintain compliance with future regulatory revisions. (f) Narrow Definition of "Gross Negligence" for §11 Paragraph 3 Carve-Out. The §11 paragraph 3 carve-out for "death or personal injury caused by the Company's gross negligence or willful misconduct" applies the following narrow definition of "gross negligence": gross negligence means conduct that is so reckless or wanting in care that it constitutes a conscious disregard or indifference to the life, safety, or rights of persons exposed to its dangerous effects, consistent with the Delaware Supreme Court's definition in Browne v. Robb, 583 A.2d 949 (Del. 1990), and analogous Delaware authority. Gross negligence is NOT (i) ordinary negligence; (ii) simple inadvertence; (iii) momentary inattention; (iv) honest mistake of judgment; (v) error of judgment in good faith; (vi) noncompliance with any non-mandatory standard or best practice; (vii) deviation from any standard-development-organization output; (viii) failure to adopt every available security control; (ix) failure to implement every conceivable redundancy; (x) any conduct meeting only the ordinary-negligence standard; or (xi) any conduct that is colorably explainable by good-faith business judgment under Section 15.44(d). (g) Narrow Definition of "Willful Misconduct" for §11 Paragraph 3 Carve-Out. The §11 paragraph 3 carve-out for "willful misconduct" applies the following narrow definition: willful misconduct means conduct undertaken with specific intent to cause the harm complained of, or with knowledge that the harm was substantially certain to result and conscious disregard of that knowledge, consistent with Delaware authority and Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 8A, 500 (intent and recklessness). Willful misconduct is NOT (i) negligence of any degree; (ii) gross negligence; (iii) wanton or reckless conduct that does not meet the specific-intent or substantial-certainty standard; (iv) violation of any standard or best practice; (v) knowing failure to adopt any specific control or remediation; (vi) good-faith business judgment under Section 15.44(d) even where the outcome is unfortunate; (vii) post-hoc-foreseeable but not specifically-known consequences; or (viii) any conduct lacking the specific subjective intent required. (h) Narrow Definition of "Fraud" and "Fraudulent Misrepresentation" for §11 Paragraph 3 Carve-Out. The §11 paragraph 3 carve-out for "fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation" applies the common-law definition of fraud, requiring all of: (i) a representation by the Company; (ii) that the representation was false at the time made; (iii) that the Company knew the representation was false or made it with reckless disregard for its truth; (iv) that the Company intended to induce reliance; (v) that the User justifiably relied; and (vi) that the User suffered damages caused by the reliance, consistent with Stephenson v. Capano Development, Inc., 462 A.2d 1069 (Del. 1983), and Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 525, 526. Fraud is NOT (i) negligent misrepresentation; (ii) good-faith mistake; (iii) puffery, optimistic statements, or aspirational language; (iv) statements of opinion, prediction, or future intent without specific present-knowledge falsity; (v) statements protected by the §15.34(f) no-fraud-in-inducement recital; (vi) marketing language interpreted by a reasonably prudent person as aspirational; or (vii) any communication lacking the specific scienter element. (i) Burden of Proof. Any User asserting that the Company's conduct meets the §11 paragraph 3 carve-out standards bears the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence (or the higher standard required by applicable law) that the conduct meets the narrow definitions of clauses (f), (g), or (h). Mere allegations are insufficient; specific factual showing is required. (j) No Reliance on Public Statements as Performance Warranties. Any statement by the Company in marketing materials, white papers, public presentations, blog posts, social-media posts, press releases, technical documentation, audit-questionnaire responses, due-diligence responses, regulatory filings, or analogous communications regarding the Services is presumed to be aspirational, descriptive, or general informational rather than a warranty of performance, unless the statement is (i) expressly designated as a warranty in writing signed by an authorized officer of the Company, and (ii) limited to a specific identified Service feature, time period, and standard. Where statements differ between channels, these Terms govern; reliance on extra-contractual communications is unreasonable as a matter of law under Section 15.34(f) and Section 15.41(d). (k) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.46 are severable across clauses (a) through (j), standards, theories, and jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to limit the §11 paragraph 3 carve-outs to their narrow common-law definitions and to prevent expansion of liability through standard-of-care, industry-standard, or best-practice pleading.

15.47 Personal Jurisdiction, Service of Process, Forum Non Conveniens, and Anti-Forum-Shopping Defenses. This Section 15.47 supplements Section 14.1 (Delaware Governing Law), Section 14.9 (Class-Waiver Blow-Up Severance to New Castle County, Delaware), Section 15.7 (Notices to Newark, Delaware address), Section 15.35(j) (Anti-Suit Injunction), and Section 15.35(p) (Foreign Judgment Recognition) with respect to jurisdictional and procedural defenses available to the Company. (a) User Submission to Delaware Personal Jurisdiction. By accepting these Terms, you irrevocably submit to the personal jurisdiction of: (i) the state and federal courts located in New Castle County, Delaware, for any claim that under Section 14.9 proceeds in court rather than in arbitration (class-waiver-blow-up severance); (ii) the JAMS arbitration forum specified in Section 14.2 for arbitrable claims; and (iii) any court of competent jurisdiction with personal jurisdiction over you for the Company's enforcement of intellectual property rights, equitable remedies under Section 15.35, vexatious-litigation recovery under Section 15.30, anti-tortious-interference recovery under Section 15.42, anti-harassment recovery under Section 15.36, and analogous Company-initiated proceedings. You waive any objection to personal jurisdiction, venue, or forum non conveniens in the foregoing fora for claims that fall within the foregoing categories, provided that this waiver is severable under clause (k) where applicable mandatory consumer law in your jurisdiction prohibits such waiver. (b) Limited Personal Jurisdiction Over the Company. The Company's amenability to suit by Users is limited as follows: (i) for arbitrable claims, in the JAMS arbitration forum specified in Section 14.2; (ii) for §14.9 severed claims, in the state and federal courts located in New Castle County, Delaware; and (iii) for claims that mandatory applicable law requires to be brought in another forum (such as small-claims court actions for consumer-protected-tier disputes, where the consumer-protection law of the User's domicile so requires under §14.2's "small claims court actions" carve-out), in such other forum. Users shall not initiate suit against the Company in any other forum without violating the §14 framework. The Company reserves all personal-jurisdiction defenses, including but not limited to: (i) the constitutional minimum-contacts standard of International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945), and progeny; (ii) the "purposeful availment" requirement of Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235 (1958); (iii) the "stream of commerce" doctrine and its limits under Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court, 480 U.S. 102 (1987), and J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro, 564 U.S. 873 (2011); (iv) the "specific jurisdiction" / "general jurisdiction" framework of Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117 (2014), Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915 (2011), and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 582 U.S. 255 (2017); and (v) analogous personal-jurisdiction standards under foreign law. (c) Service of Process. Service of process on the Company shall be effected only in accordance with Section 15.7 (Notices), the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP 4 for U.S. court proceedings), the JAMS Commercial Arbitration Rules for arbitration proceedings, and applicable cross-border service mechanisms. For service originating outside the United States, service on the Company shall be effected through: (i) the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters (1965) for service from contracting states; (ii) the Inter-American Convention on Letters Rogatory (1975) and its Additional Protocol for service from contracting states; (iii) the bilateral judicial-assistance treaty in effect between the United States and the originating jurisdiction; or (iv) the procedure prescribed by Delaware court rule for service on foreign defendants. Improper service is grounds for dismissal under FRCP 12(b)(5) and analogous state and foreign procedural rules. The Company expressly reserves all defenses based on improper service of process. (d) Forum Non Conveniens. The Company expressly reserves the right to seek dismissal or stay of any User-initiated suit on grounds of forum non conveniens under Piper Aircraft Co. v. Reyno, 454 U.S. 235 (1981), Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert, 330 U.S. 501 (1947), analogous state and federal forum non conveniens authority, and analogous foreign doctrines (including the U.K. Spiliada Maritime Corp. v. Cansulex Ltd. [1987] AC 460 standard and analogous Commonwealth standards). The Company may argue that Delaware (the §14 forum) or another forum is more convenient. The User's choice of forum is entitled to less deference where the User has chosen a forum other than the User's home or the §14 designated forum, and the Company's forum non conveniens motion shall be evaluated under the public-interest factors of access to evidence, availability of witnesses, application of local law, and analogous factors. (e) Lis Alibi Pendens. Where the same dispute is already pending in another forum (whether the JAMS arbitration under §14.2, a Delaware court under §14.9, or any other forum), the Company reserves the right to seek dismissal or stay of any duplicative proceeding on grounds of lis alibi pendens, abstention doctrines (including the Colorado River abstention doctrine of Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States, 424 U.S. 800 (1976)), prior-pending-action defenses, and analogous procedural defenses. Users shall not initiate duplicative or parallel proceedings in violation of the §14 framework and §15.28 anti-assignment provisions. (f) Anti-Forum-Shopping. The Company expressly reserves the right to defeat User attempts to forum-shop, including without limitation: (i) plaintiff selection of a forum with statute-of-limitations more favorable to the User than the §14.5 one-year limitations period; (ii) plaintiff selection of a forum with substantive law more favorable to the User than Delaware law (the §14.1 chosen law); (iii) plaintiff initiation of suit in a forum where the Company has incidental contacts but no substantial nexus to the dispute; (iv) plaintiff coordination across multiple fora to maximize Company filing-fee and defense-cost exposure (subject to §14.8 Mass Arbitration Coordination); (v) plaintiff filing in foreign courts whose decisions may be difficult or impossible to challenge under the §15.35(p) foreign-judgment-recognition framework; and (vi) analogous forum-shopping tactics. The Company may seek transfer under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) (convenience), § 1406(a) (improper venue), § 1407 (MDL consolidation), or analogous state and foreign procedural mechanisms, and may seek anti-suit injunction under §15.35(j) to compel User to litigate in the §14 designated forum. (g) Hague Choice of Court Convention. Where applicable, the parties' designation of New Castle County, Delaware under §14.9 as the forum for §14.9-severed claims is a "choice of court agreement" within the meaning of the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements (2005, in force for the EU, Mexico, Singapore, and other contracting parties). The choice of court is exclusive and may be enforced through the foreign-judgment-recognition mechanism of §15.35(p). (h) No Implied Submission to Foreign Jurisdiction. The Company's incidental operational contacts with any foreign jurisdiction (including the Company's operation of the AI Trust Registry public lookup surface, the Company's accreditation of foreign Verification Providers under §6, the Company's accreditation of foreign Node Operators under §15.38, the Company's hosting of Users from foreign jurisdictions, the Company's compliance with foreign privacy and AI-regulation regimes, and analogous incidental contacts) shall not be construed as: (i) implied consent to personal jurisdiction in such foreign jurisdiction; (ii) implied submission to foreign substantive law beyond the express provisions of §15.11; (iii) appointment of any foreign agent for service of process; or (iv) waiver of any §15.47 defense. The Company's appointment of a Data Protection Officer under §8.2, an EU Representative under GDPR Article 27, and analogous designated agents for statutory compliance purposes is limited to the scope of the relevant statute and does not constitute general consent to foreign personal jurisdiction. (i) Specific Reservation Against Multi-Jurisdiction Class Actions. The Company reserves all defenses against any attempt by Users to assert claims in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously, including without limitation: (i) the §14.3 Class Action Waiver; (ii) the §14.8 Mass Arbitration Coordination Protocol; (iii) the §14.11 Bellwether Procedure; (iv) the §15.28 Anti-Assignment provisions; (v) the §15.30 Vexatious Litigation Protection (against forum-shopping counsel); and (vi) the §15.42 Anti-Tortious-Interference (where coordinated multi-jurisdiction filings interfere with Company commercial relationships). (j) Anti-Suit Injunction Re-Affirmed. The Section 15.35(j) Anti-Suit Injunction reservation applies with full force to any User attempt to litigate in a forum other than the §14 designated forum, subject to the comity-respecting standards of Quaak v. Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler Bedrijfsrevisoren, 361 F.3d 11 (1st Cir. 2004), China Trade & Development Corp. v. M.V. Choong Yong, 837 F.2d 33 (2d Cir. 1987), and analogous authority. (k) Severability and Reformation. The provisions of this Section 15.47 are severable across clauses (a) through (j), jurisdictional theories, and applicable jurisdictions; invalidity of any portion shall not invalidate any other portion; any unenforceable portion shall be reformed by the arbitrator or court to the broadest enforceable scope, consistent with the parties' clearly expressed intent to channel disputes into the §14 designated forum and to defeat forum-shopping tactics. Where applicable mandatory consumer-protection law in a User's home jurisdiction prohibits the User's waiver of personal-jurisdiction defenses in clause (a), the waiver shall be reformed to the maximum enforceable scope and shall not invalidate the remainder of this Section 15.47.