Press Release Studio · Terms of service and payment

1. Parties and definitions

1.1 Publisher: WitUp Ltd, a company incorporated in England and Wales, Company No. 16572774, registered office 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom, publisher of The Patent, the international magazine published at thepatent.news ("the Publisher" or "The Patent").

1.2 Client: whoever activates Press Release Studio and buys credits. The Client may be: a) a professional client: a business, organisation, professional firm, self-employed professional or anyone acting for purposes relating to their trade, business or profession; b) a consumer: an individual acting for purposes wholly or mainly outside their trade, business or profession (for example a private independent inventor), resident in Italy, in the United Kingdom or in a country outside the European Union. The service is not available to consumers resident in other European Union countries.

1.3 Release: the text, with any images and links, written by the Client and published through Press Release Studio.

1.4 Credit: a prepaid unit giving the right to publish one Release.

1.5 Automatic checks: the technical checks run by the platform before publication (article 6).

2. The service

2.1 The Publisher provides the Client with a self-service panel to write and publish its own Releases in the Press releases section of The Patent.

2.2 Every published Release: a) has its own page on thepatent.news, with the site’s design; b) clearly shows the label "Press release" and the name of the publishing organisation; c) carries no editorial byline: the newsroom does not write, rewrite or sign it; d) has its outbound links marked as sponsored (rel="sponsored"); e) can be indexed by search engines and used by The Patent AI under article 9; f) stays separate from editorial content: it does not appear among the newsroom’s articles on the home page or in the editorial newsletter; g) is shared in a post on the magazine’s social channels, labelled "Press release" and marked as sponsored content. The post is published in the slots reserved for releases (at most three releases a day), in order of publication, so its date may follow that of the Release. The Publisher does not guarantee visibility, engagement or results of the post. The text of the post is written and approved by the Publisher; h) may be cited by The Patent AI when relevant to the question, always labelled "Press release" and linked to its page; it receives no priority over other sources.

2.3 The service does not include writing or editing the text, distribution to other publications or agencies, publication in newsletters, social posts beyond the one in article 2.2 g), or any result in traffic, ranking or contacts. Additional services, if any, are sold separately under their own terms.

2.4 The service is distinct from Partner Content (an article written by the newsroom at the Client’s request), from the Contributor programme (free article proposals to the newsroom) and from The Patent AI subscription, which have their own terms.

2.5 Company page. The Client may publish, from the panel, a page of its organisation on The Patent showing its name, logo, a short description written by the Client, its website, its press contact if the Client chooses to show it, and the list of its published Releases. The page is labelled as the Client’s own content. Articles 7 and 9 apply to it as to a Release; the Client may unpublish it at any time, and the Publisher may remove it under article 8.1 b). The page does not use Credits.

3. Account and activation

3.1 The Client uses its single The Patent account and activates Press Release Studio from it, stating whether it buys as a professional client or as a consumer.

3.2 The Client warrants that the information provided is true, complete and up to date and, when acting for an organisation, that it has the authority to bind it.

3.3 Login details are personal; the Client is responsible for the use of its account.

3.4 Team members. The Client may invite other people, each with their own The Patent account, to act on its Press Release Studio account with the role chosen by the Client: Editor (writes and submits Releases), Billing (buys Credits and sees orders and invoices). Each member accepts these Conditions before acting. The Client remains the only party to this contract and is responsible for what its members do; Credits stay with the Client’s account (article 5.4) and members may use them only within their role. The Client may remove a member at any time, and may transfer the account to a member, who then becomes the Client and accepts these Conditions as such.

4. Packages, prices and payment

4.1 Credits are bought in prepaid packages (1, 5 or 10 Credits) at the prices shown in the panel, after login, at the time of purchase, together with the price per Release of each package. The price paid is the one shown before payment and confirmed in the receipt; a later change of prices does not affect Credits already bought.

4.2 Taxes. Prices exclude VAT; the tax due is shown before payment: a) professional clients established in a European Union country with a valid VAT number (checked in the VIES system): invoice without VAT, reverse charge by the Client; b) professional clients and consumers established in the United Kingdom: UK VAT; c) consumers resident in Italy: Italian VAT; d) clients established outside the European Union and the United Kingdom: outside the scope of VAT. Billing details are requested at the first purchase. If the VAT number cannot be checked, the order waits until the check succeeds.

4.3 Payment is made through the provider shown in the panel. The order is complete, and Credits are added, only once the payment is confirmed.

4.4 The price pays for the publication service described in article 2, not for a result.

5. Credits

5.1 Each published Release uses one Credit.

5.2 When a Release is submitted, one Credit is reserved. The Credit is: a) used when the Release is published, immediately or at the scheduled time; b) returned to the balance if the Release is not published for a reason not attributable to the Client, or if the Client cancels the Release at any time before it is published; c) used, and not returned, if the Release is refused or removed for a breach attributable to the Client (article 8.3). The same Release can never use more than one Credit.

5.3 Credits are valid for 12 months from the date of payment. Credits not used by then expire without refund, subject to article 12 for consumers.

5.4 Credits belong to the account and cannot be transferred or exchanged for money, except with the account under article 3.4 and for the refunds provided for in these Conditions or by law.

6. Publishing rules and automatic checks

6.1 Every Release must follow the publishing rules shown on the service page, including: a) a text of 2,000 to 10,000 characters, spaces included; b) real news relevant to patents, inventions, research or innovation; c) at most one link every 600 characters, secure and working links only, no artificial commercial anchor text; d) a contact of the organisation that can be verified; e) no more than one Release every 24 hours per account; f) no full patent document: the application or patent number is enough.

6.2 Releases about the following are not accepted: gambling, payday loans, weapons, tobacco, supplements and health or sexual products, get-rich schemes, investment advice, forex, cryptocurrencies, NFTs and cloud mining, unfair SEO or academic writing services, sexually explicit content, advertising with no news value, duplicates, defamatory content, content meant to influence share prices, and any unlawful content. The updated list is on the service page.

6.2-bis Specific rules on patents and third parties: a Release may not call a product or an invention "patented" without giving the patent number and office, nor present a filed application as a granted patent; it may not use names, trade marks or logos of partners, clients or organisations without their permission, which the Publisher may ask the Client to document.

6.3 Before publication every Release goes through automatic checks on safety, spam, relevance, prohibited content, search engine abuse and links, also run with artificial intelligence tools.

6.4 If the checks are passed, the Release is published without human intervention, immediately or at the scheduled time. If a check reports an anomaly or cannot be completed, the Release is not published and is examined by the Publisher; the Client sees the reason in the panel.

6.5 The automatic checks are a technical safeguard for the platform. They are not an editorial approval, a fact check or a statement of truthfulness, and they do not reduce the Client’s responsibilities.

6.6 Requests for changes. For a Release stopped by the checks, instead of refusing it the Publisher may ask the Client for changes, stating the reason. The Credit stays reserved; the Client may edit and resubmit the same Release, which goes through the checks and the Publisher’s review again without using a new Credit, or cancel it under article 5.2 b). A Release left unchanged for 30 days after a request is cancelled and its Credit returned, even if its validity under article 5.3 has expired in the meantime.

7. Client content: responsibility and warranties

7.1 The Client is the author of the Release and solely responsible for it and for the materials provided (texts, images, trade marks, data, statements about products, prices and results).

7.2 The Client represents and warrants that the Release: a) is true, not misleading and not defamatory; b) does not infringe third-party rights, including copyright, trade marks, patents, trade secrets, personality and image rights; c) complies with data protection law and, if it contains data of identifiable people, is supported by a proper legal basis and notice; d) complies with the rules on advertising, competition, consumer protection, financial markets and regulated sectors; e) contains no malware and no links to unlawful content; f) if text or images are substantially generated with artificial intelligence, says so in the panel so that the Release shows it.

7.3 Indemnity: the professional client indemnifies the Publisher, its directors and collaborators against any claim, loss, penalty and expense, including reasonable legal costs, arising from a breach of the warranties in article 7.2 or from the publication of the Release. For consumers, liability for their own acts remains as provided by law.

7.4 Handling of claims: if the Publisher receives a claim about a Release, it informs the Client without delay. The Publisher conducts the defence with lawyers of its choice; the Client cooperates by providing information and documents and, if a professional client, reimburses the reasonable legal costs incurred. The Client may not settle any claim in a way that binds the Publisher without its written consent.

8. Powers of the Publisher

8.1 The Publisher may, without this being a breach: a) not publish a Release stopped by the checks; b) remove or suspend a published Release that breaches these Conditions, the publishing rules or the law, or following a well-founded third-party report or an order of an authority; c) suspend the account while a report or a breach is examined.

8.2 The Publisher may only make technical changes of form (layout, link format, structured data, code fixes) without changing the meaning of the text.

8.3 Where a Release is refused or removed for a breach attributable to the Client, the Credit used is not returned. If the Publisher refuses a Release for reasons not attributable to the Client, the Credit becomes available again.

8.4 The Publisher may show next to a Release official data from public patent registers (for example the EPO) about the patent numbers the Release mentions. These data are identified as such and are not part of the Release.

9. Licence

9.1 The Client keeps its rights in the Release and grants the Publisher a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence, for as long as the Release is online, to publish, reproduce, adapt to the technical format, archive and index it.

9.2 The licence includes the use of the Release as a source by The Patent AI, the magazine’s research assistant, which may quote, summarise and point to it in its answers with a link to the original page and a note that it is a press release.

9.3 The Client authorises the use of its trade marks and logos as far as needed to publish the Release and warrants that it is entitled to them.

9.4 After a Release is removed, the licence ends for new uses but remains valid for technical copies that already exist (backups, internal archives, caches) and for answers of The Patent AI already generated. The Publisher may also use aggregated, anonymous data about Releases (for example the number of releases per sector) and entrust the technical processing of content to its providers.

10. How long a Release stays online

10.1 A Release stays online with no end date. The Client may ask at any time, by writing to editorialstaff@thepatent.news, for it to be corrected or removed; removal does not give the right to have the Credit returned.

10.2 Corrections: within 7 days of publication the Client may ask, free of charge and by writing to editorialstaff@thepatent.news, for factual errors to be corrected (dates, names, figures, typos). After that, or for substantial changes to the content, the new text is published as a new Release and uses a new Credit. The Publisher decides whether a change is a correction or a substantial change.

10.3 Removal concerns only the pages of thepatent.news. The Publisher does not control and cannot remove copies, quotations or indexing of the Release made by third parties, search engines, aggregators or external artificial intelligence systems.

10.4 The cases of removal under article 8 and under the law remain unaffected.

11. Personal data

11.1 The Publisher processes account and billing data as controller, as described in the Privacy notice. For any request about personal data the contact is privacy@witup.ai.

11.2 If a Release contains personal data of third parties, the Client is an independent controller of that data and warrants that its processing is lawful.

11.3 The providers processing data on the Publisher’s behalf are listed in the Privacy notice. The representative in the European Union under article 27 GDPR is being appointed; until then, people in the European Union can write to privacy@witup.ai.

12. Consumers: right of withdrawal

12.1 A consumer may withdraw from the contract within 14 days of the purchase, without giving any reason, by sending a notice from the panel or by email to editorialstaff@thepatent.news. The consumer may use the model withdrawal form in the Annex, but does not have to: any clear statement is enough.

12.2 Unless the consumer expressly asks otherwise, the Credits become usable when the withdrawal period ends.

12.3 The consumer may expressly ask, with a separate statement in the panel, for the service to start at once. In that case, if the consumer withdraws, they pay only for the Releases already published, at the unit price of the package, and are refunded for the unused Credits.

12.4 The refund is due only if the right of withdrawal is exercised within the 14 days. After that, article 5.3 applies: Credits not used within 12 months expire without refund, for consumers too.

12.5 The refund is made within 14 days of the withdrawal notice, using the same means of payment.

12.6 All the rights a consumer has under the law of their country of residence remain unaffected and are not limited by these Conditions.

13. Limitation of liability

13.1 The Publisher does not guarantee results in visibility, traffic or sales, nor the absolute continuity of the service.

13.2 Towards professional clients, except for wilful misconduct, gross negligence and liability that cannot be excluded by law, the Publisher is not liable for indirect loss, loss of profit or loss of opportunity, and its total liability is limited to the greater of the amounts paid by the Client in the 12 months before the event and €100. No limitation applies to liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or to any other liability that the law does not allow to be limited.

13.2-bis A professional client must bring any claim against the Publisher within 12 months of the event giving rise to it.

13.3 Towards consumers, the Publisher’s liability is that provided by law.

14. Suspension and termination

14.1 The Client may stop using the service at any time; remaining Credits stay usable until they expire.

14.2 The Publisher may end the relationship for serious or repeated breaches, fraud or non-payment, notifying the Client. If it ends for reasons not attributable to the Client, unused Credits are refunded.

14.3 If the Publisher permanently discontinues the service, it gives at least 30 days’ notice and refunds unused Credits.

15. Force majeure

15.1 Neither party is liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including network failures, outages of providers and orders of authorities.

16. Changes

16.1 The Publisher may update these Conditions by notifying the changes by email at least 30 days before they take effect. Changes are not retroactive: Credits already bought remain governed by the version accepted at the time of purchase, unless the law requires otherwise. A Client who does not accept the changes may withdraw before they take effect and obtain a refund of unused Credits.

17. Separate confirmation of the essential terms (professional clients only)

17.1 Before the first purchase, a professional client confirms, by an act separate from the general acceptance, that it has read and accepts the following terms, highlighted in the panel: 5.2 c) and 5.3 (use of the Credit in case of breach and expiry of Credits), 7.3 (indemnity), 8 (refusal, removal and suspension without return of the Credit), 10.1 (removal on request without return of the Credit), 13.2 (limitation of liability), 18.2 (jurisdiction).

17.2 The confirmation is given in the panel with a code sent to the Client’s email and is recorded with date, time, version of the Conditions and account.

18. Governing law, jurisdiction, language

18.1 These Conditions and any relationship arising from them are governed by the law of England and Wales.

18.2 The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes with professional clients.

18.3 A consumer keeps the mandatory protections of the law of the country where they live and may bring proceedings before the courts of that country; proceedings against a consumer are brought before the courts of the country where they live.

18.4 These Conditions are available in English; any translation published later is for convenience only and the English version prevails.

18.5 If a clause is ineffective, the others remain valid. These Conditions, together with the publishing rules and the Privacy notice, are the entire agreement on their subject.

Annex. Model withdrawal form

(Complete and return this form only if you wish to withdraw from the contract. You can also withdraw from your panel or by any other clear statement.)

To: WitUp Ltd, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom, editorialstaff@thepatent.news

I/We (*) hereby give notice that I/We (*) withdraw from my/our (*) contract for the provision of the following service: Press Release Studio credits, order reference …

Ordered on …

Name of consumer(s): …

Address of consumer(s): …

Signature of consumer(s) (only if this form is notified on paper): …

Date: …

(*) Delete as appropriate.