IDEAS ARE ASSETS

Terms & Conditions

Last updated: 13 August 2026

1. About these terms

These Terms & Conditions (“Terms”) govern your use of qipvortex.com and the QIP Vortex service (the “Service”), operated by QIPVORTEX LIMITED (“we”, “us”, “our”), a company registered in England and Wales under company number 16238761, registered office 2 Beacon Close, Stone, Aylesbury, England, HP17 8YH.

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. Definitions

  • “Bind” — the deterministic 64-character cryptographic hash generated from your submitted content.
  • “Certificate” — the document (currently three pages) we generate recording the Bind, its metadata, and the details you provide.
  • “Content” — any file, text, idea or material you submit to be certified.
  • “Credits” / “Coins” — units within your account used to obtain certificates: Credits are purchased; Coins are earned under a subscription (section 8).

3. What the Service does — and what a Certificate provides

The Service generates a deterministic cryptographic hash — the Bind — from your Content, and issues a Certificate recording that Bind, the date and time, and the details you provide.

What a Certificate gives you:

  • Independent, verifiable evidence that your Content existed, in exactly that form, at the recorded date and time.
  • Tamper-evidence — any change to the Content, however small, produces a different Bind. Anyone holding the original file can re-generate the hash and confirm it matches your Certificate.
  • Priority evidence — because the record is fixed in time, a Certificate can support you in later questions about when your work existed, for example in authorship, originality or prior-art discussions.

In the UK, copyright arises automatically when a work is created — there is no official copyright register. A Certificate provides the kind of independent, dated evidence of your work’s existence that a register would otherwise give you.

What a Certificate does not do:

  • It records that Content existed at a point in time; it cannot verify who created it. It is not, by itself, proof of authorship or ownership.
  • It does not grant, register or guarantee any intellectual-property right. Where a right requires registration (patents, trade marks, registered designs), a Certificate is not a substitute for that registration.
  • It is not legal advice. You remain responsible for what you submit (section 13) and for obtaining professional advice where you need it.

4. Eligibility

You must be 18 or over and able to enter into a binding contract to use the Service.

5. Your account

  • You are responsible for keeping your login details secure and for all activity under your account.
  • You must provide accurate information and keep it up to date.
  • We may suspend or close your account if you seriously or repeatedly breach these Terms, if we are required to do so by law, or where necessary to protect the Service or other users. Where reasonably possible, we will notify you by email first.

6. Plans, credits and pricing

  • Pay-as-you-go: currently £0.09 per certificate — the same price for every account type. Certificates are paid for using prepaid credits (1 credit = 1 certificate), purchased at £0.09 per credit; available purchase quantities are shown at checkout.
  • Free allowance: your first 9 certificates created by email and your first 3 certificates created by web upload are free. The two allowances are separate — one route cannot use the other’s. There is no free allowance for API submissions.
  • Subscription: currently £36.90 per month, including your subscriber seat, the ability to earn coins on qualifying certificates (section 8), and cascade discounts.
  • Genesis (founding membership): a one-time fee of £3,690, limited to 369 numbered founding places. Genesis membership includes a free subscription for the life of the Service, with all subscriber benefits, together with other founder benefits. Genesis members pay the standard £0.09 per certificate — Genesis does not include free certificates.
  • All prices are shown in pounds sterling and are exclusive of VAT; where VAT applies, it is added at checkout.
  • We may change our prices. Changes will not affect certificates already purchased. For subscriptions, we will give you advance notice by email and the new price will apply from your next renewal; if you do not agree, you can cancel before it takes effect.

7. Payment

Payments are processed by Stripe. By paying, you authorise us (via Stripe) to charge your chosen payment method. We do not store your full card details — Stripe handles them and your payments will be subject to their terms and conditions. Genesis membership fees are paid by bank transfer as arranged with us and are not processed through Stripe.

Order of operations: we confirm your credit or payment, generate and record your Certificate, and only then take payment and email your Certificate to you.

8. Credits and coins

  • Credits are added to your account when you purchase them. Coins are earned by subscribers and Genesis members when qualifying certificates are created; each coin can be used in place of one £0.09 certificate fee.
  • Coins do not expire.
  • Credits and coins have no cash value and are non-refundable and non-transferable, except where the law requires otherwise.

9. Subscriptions and cancellation

  • Subscriptions renew automatically each month until cancelled.
  • You can cancel at any time from your account settings, or by contacting us at support@qipvortex.com. Your subscription will remain active until the end of the current billing period.
  • The “cascade” benefit associated with subscriptions is a discount applied to future bills only. It is never a cash payment or payout to you or any other user.

10. Your right to cancel (consumers)

If you are a consumer in the UK, you normally have 14 days to cancel a purchase of digital services under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. Because Certificates are delivered immediately, at checkout you will be asked to expressly agree that we begin providing the Service (and generate your Certificate) straight away, and to acknowledge that you lose the 14-day cancellation right once your Certificate has been generated. You may however cancel before your Certificate is generated.

11. Refunds

  • Certificates. Your Certificate is generated and delivered immediately. Once your Certificate has been generated, the fee for it is non-refundable, except where the law provides otherwise (see “Your statutory rights” below). If you cancel before your Certificate is generated, we will refund you in full.
  • Credits and coins. Credits and coins have no cash value and are non-refundable and non-transferable, except where required by law.
  • Subscriptions. You may cancel at any time; your plan remains active until the end of the current billing period, and we do not give pro-rata refunds for the remainder of that period. If you cancel within 14 days of first subscribing, we will refund your first payment less an amount reflecting the service already supplied in that period.
  • Genesis. You may cancel your Genesis membership within 14 days of purchase for a full refund, less the standard price of any certificates already issued to you in that period. After 14 days, the Genesis fee is non-refundable, except where the law provides otherwise.
  • Your statutory rights. Nothing in this section affects your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 — including where a service is not performed with reasonable care and skill, or digital content is faulty — or any other rights that cannot lawfully be excluded.

12. Intellectual property and ownership

  • Your Content. As between us and you, you retain all intellectual-property rights in the Content you submit. We claim no ownership of it.
  • Licence to us. You grant us a limited, non-exclusive licence to process your Content solely to generate the Bind and your Certificate and to deliver the Service. As described in our Privacy Policy, we do not retain the content of your uploaded file after processing.
  • Your Certificate. Your Certificate is issued to you for your use — you may store, share, print and rely on it freely. We keep the underlying Bind record and certificate details so that we can support verification and re-issue your Certificate.
  • Our platform. We (and our licensors) own all rights in the Service itself — the software, website, design, documentation, branding and the QIP® Vortex name and marks. You may not copy, modify or reuse them without our permission.

13. Acceptable use

You must not submit Content that:

  • you do not have the right to submit;
  • is unlawful, infringing, defamatory, or harmful; or
  • contains malware or is intended to disrupt the Service.

You must not misuse, attack, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service. We enforce technical limits, including maximum file sizes and rate limits, which we may update from time to time; current limits are shown in the Service.

14. Availability

We aim to keep the Service available but do not guarantee uninterrupted access. We may suspend the Service for maintenance or for reasons outside our control.

15. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

  • The Service is provided “as is”. To the extent permitted by law, we exclude implied warranties.
  • We are not liable for any decision you make in reliance on a Certificate, nor for any dispute about authorship, ownership or originality of Content (see section 3).
  • Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability where it would be unlawful to do so — including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for any rights you have as a consumer that cannot lawfully be excluded (Consumer Rights Act 2015).
  • Subject to the above, our total liability to you is limited at our discretion to resupplying the Service to you within a reasonable period of time or to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

16. Data protection

We handle your personal data in accordance with our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. The current version will always be on this page, with the “Last updated” date. Material changes will be highlighted on the site and, where appropriate, notified to you by email with reasonable notice.

18. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have non-exclusive jurisdiction. Your statutory rights as a consumer are not affected.

19. Contact us

QIPVORTEX LIMITED · Email: support@qipvortex.com