Terms of service

1. The agreement

These terms are between [LEGAL ENTITY NAME] (“Baton”, “we”) and the organization whose account uses the service (“you”). Creating an account, or using Baton on behalf of an organization, means the person doing so has authority to accept these terms for that organization and does accept them.

2. Who may use it

You must be at least 16 and capable of forming a binding contract. Accounts are for organizations; the nonprofit tier is described on the pricing page, and we do not ask for proof of registration before you can use it.

3. Accounts and access

• Sign-in is a code sent to your email address, so control of that mailbox is control of the account. Keep it secure and tell us promptly if it is compromised.
• Every organization has at least one owner. Owners and administrators can add, remove and change the role of anyone in the organization, and are responsible for who they let in.
• You are responsible for what the people in your organization do with it.

4. Your content is yours

You keep every right you have in the documents you upload. We claim no ownership of them. The licence you give us is the narrow one needed to run the service: to store your documents, transmit them to the recipients you name, extract their text so you can search them, render and stamp them so they can be signed, and produce the certificate that describes what happened.

We do not use your documents to train machine-learning models, we do not sell them, and nobody at Baton reads them. See the privacy policy for the detail.

5. What you must not do

• Break the law, or help anybody else break it.
• Send documents to people who have not agreed to hear from you. Baton sends email on your behalf, and using it for unsolicited mail is using it as a spam relay.
• Upload malware, or content that infringes somebody else’s rights.
• Forge a signature, impersonate anybody, or send a document you do not have the right to send.
• Attempt to reach another organization’s data, circumvent our rate limits, or probe the service other than through a good-faith security disclosure to us.
• Resell the service, or use it to provide a competing signing service, without our written agreement.

Where a rate limit or quota is published on the pricing page, staying within it is part of acceptable use. We will always rather talk to you than cut you off.

6. Electronic signatures, and read this one

Baton records that a person opened a document, what they saw, when they signed it, and from where, and it protects that record with a hash chain and a certificate attached to the signed file. That is strong evidence, and it is the honest description of what we provide.

It is not a legal opinion. Whether a particular electronic signature creates a binding obligation depends on the law that governs the agreement, on the type of agreement, and sometimes on formalities that no software can satisfy: wills, some property transfers, and certain court and immigration documents among them. Some jurisdictions also distinguish between a simple electronic signature and a qualified one issued under a specific regulatory scheme; Baton produces the former. If a document matters, take advice on the form it must take. We do not warrant enforceability, and no statement anywhere on this site should be read as doing so.

7. Availability

We work to keep Baton available and we will tell you about planned maintenance where we can. On the free tier there is no uptime commitment and no service credit; features may change, and some may be withdrawn. We will not remove a capability listed as included on the pricing page without telling account holders first.

8. Price

The nonprofit tier is free, with no per-document or per-signature charge and no card on file. If we ever introduce a charge for something you are using today, we will give you notice in advance and you will be able to decline it and leave with your documents. Capabilities that arrive later may be paid; the ones listed free today stay free.

9. Ending it

• You, at any time. Download your signed documents first, because each carries its own certificate, so the evidence leaves with the file.
• Us, with reasonable notice, or immediately where use breaches section 5 or exposes us or another customer to real risk.
• After termination we delete your data in line with the retention periods in the privacy policy. Audit tombstones may persist as described there.

10. Warranties

Baton is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we exclude all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free.

11. Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill. Our total liability arising out of these terms is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim (which, on the free tier, is nothing) and [LIABILITY FLOOR].

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

12. Data protection

Where we process personal data on your behalf, we do so as your processor on the terms of the privacy policy, which forms part of this agreement. A separate data processing agreement is available on request.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For a material change we will email account holders and update the date at the top; continuing to use Baton after that means accepting the new version. If you do not accept it, stop using the service and take your documents with you.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], and the courts of [JURISDICTION] have exclusive jurisdiction, without affecting any right you have to bring proceedings where you live.

15. Contact

[LEGAL ENTITY NAME], [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. Legal notices to [LEGAL CONTACT EMAIL]. Security disclosures to [SECURITY CONTACT EMAIL]. Tell us before you tell anybody else and we will not come after you for looking.