Terms of Use
These Terms govern access to and use of Probe Software Assistant.
1. Agreement and eligibility
These Terms of Use, together with the Privacy Notice and any additional terms presented with a feature, form a binding agreement between you and Probe Software, Inc. ("Probe Software," "we," "us," or "our"). They apply to the Probe Software Assistant website, accounts, content, and related services (the "Service").
By creating an account, clicking "Accept and continue," or using the Service after the Terms are presented, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. You must be at least 18 and legally able to enter this agreement. If you use the Service for an employer, laboratory, university, government body, or other organization, you represent that you have authority to accept these Terms for that organization.
2. Accounts
You must provide accurate information, protect your credentials, and promptly notify us at support@probesoftware.com if you suspect unauthorized access. You are responsible for activity through your account unless applicable law provides otherwise. We may require email verification or other reasonable security measures and may reject or suspend an account to protect users, the Service, our systems, or third parties.
3. What the Service does
The Service is an AI-assisted information and workflow support tool for electron probe microanalysis (EPMA), Probe for EPMA, CalcZAF, and related analytical topics. It may retrieve and summarize sources, explain software navigation, and suggest analytical approaches, analytes, X-ray lines, crystals, spectrometer assignments, standards, backgrounds, count-time classes, validation steps, or troubleshooting procedures.
The Service is an assistive tool. It is not an autonomous instrument operator, an official manufacturer instruction, an accredited laboratory procedure, or a guarantee that a method or result is valid.
4. AI and technical limitations
The Service uses probabilistic artificial intelligence and automated retrieval. Outputs may be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, internally inconsistent, outdated, or inappropriate for a particular instrument, sample, phase, objective, or software version. The Service may misunderstand a question, lose context, infer the wrong material, confuse similarly named controls, or provide a citation, forum link, or video timestamp that only partially supports an answer.
A confident tone, detailed procedure, saved instrument configuration, calculation, or source link does not establish that an Output is correct. You must review original sources and independently verify all information before relying on it.
Where relevant, validation includes standards and unknowns; beam conditions and dose; element, line, diffraction order, crystal, and spectrometer choices; limits and positions; peaks, backgrounds, interferences, PHA, dead time, drift, wavescans, blanks, reference materials, detection limits, precision, accuracy, totals, corrections, uncertainty, geometry, interaction volume, beam damage, contamination, and time-dependent intensity effects. Spectrometer schedules and recipes are provisional until empirically confirmed on the intended instrument.
5. Safety and professional responsibility
EPMA and laboratory systems may involve high voltage, vacuum, radiation controls, compressed gases, moving components, hazardous materials, hot surfaces, delicate samples, and expensive equipment. The Service does not replace training, manufacturer instructions, laboratory procedures, supervision, radiation safety, chemical hygiene, or professional judgment.
Do not use an Output to bypass an interlock, safety system, access control, maintenance requirement, or required approval. A qualified person must review an Output before it is applied to operate, modify, maintain, or repair equipment. You are responsible for the final design, authorization, execution, validation, interpretation, and reporting of your work.
The Service is not intended to diagnose or treat a medical condition, provide legal or financial advice, certify regulatory compliance, or serve as the sole basis for a safety-critical or other high-consequence decision.
6. Permission and acceptable use
Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable, nonsublicensable, and revocable right to use the Service for lawful professional, research, educational, training, and evaluation purposes.
You may not use the Service unlawfully or deceptively; infringe rights; access another account or nonpublic system; bypass authentication, usage limits, or safeguards; introduce harmful code; disrupt the Service; perform unauthorized security or load testing; systematically scrape the Service or knowledge base; use prompt injection or social engineering to obtain confidential information or system instructions; reverse engineer nonpublic components except where law expressly permits; impersonate another person; or falsely present an Output as verified, certified, human-authored, or endorsed.
You also may not use the Service or systematically collected Outputs to build a competing AI service or commercial dataset without our written permission, or use an Output in a way that could foreseeably cause physical injury, instrument damage, loss of irreplaceable samples, unlawful discrimination, or other serious harm without qualified review and controls.
7. Your content
You may submit questions, files, images, feedback, instrument configurations, and other material ("User Content"). You retain any ownership rights you have in User Content. You grant us a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to host, copy, transmit, format, display, analyze, and process User Content as reasonably needed to provide, maintain, secure, troubleshoot, evaluate, and improve the Service, enforce these Terms, and comply with law.
You represent that you have the rights and permissions required to submit User Content. You are responsible for deciding whether disclosure to the Service and its providers is permitted by your organization, contracts, confidentiality obligations, export controls, and applicable law. Data practices are described further in the Privacy Notice and AI disclosure.
8. Feedback
If you voluntarily provide ratings, corrections, flags, comments, suggestions, or test cases, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free right to use and incorporate that feedback to operate and improve our products and services without compensation. Do not include information you are not authorized to share.
9. Third-party services, content, and links
We may use third-party hosting, email, security, and AI providers. User Content may be transmitted to and processed by those providers as described in the Privacy Notice. The Service may also retrieve, summarize, quote, or link to third-party manuals, forums, videos, transcripts, publications, and software. Those materials are controlled by their owners and may have separate terms and privacy practices.
Links and timestamps are for convenience. We do not guarantee that a link is safe, current, available, or the best support for an Output. Product names and marks belong to their respective owners; their appearance does not imply sponsorship or endorsement.
10. Fees
The Service may offer free, pilot, trial, sponsored, promotional, or paid access. Free access may have limits and may be changed or ended. If a paid feature is offered, price, included usage, billing period, renewal, tax, and cancellation details will be disclosed before purchase. A separate signed institutional agreement or order form controls where it expressly conflicts with this section.
11. Intellectual property and Outputs
The Service, including its software, interface, design, branding, documentation, curated structure, and nonpublic components, is owned by us or our licensors. Subject to these Terms and applicable law, we do not restrict your use of an Output generated for you for internal research, educational, professional, or business purposes. This does not grant rights in third-party content or override confidentiality, attribution, publication, or other obligations.
Similar Outputs may be generated for other users. Outputs may not qualify for intellectual-property protection, and we do not promise exclusive rights or noninfringement.
12. Availability, suspension, and termination
We may add, change, limit, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service. We do not guarantee continuous access, a particular AI model, a particular knowledge base, preservation of a conversation, compatibility with a particular instrument, or a service level unless separately agreed in writing.
We may suspend or terminate access if we reasonably believe you violated these Terms, created security or legal risk, failed to pay an amount due, or used the Service in a way likely to cause serious harm. You may stop using the Service at any time and may request account closure by contacting support.
13. Disclaimers
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE, OUTPUTS, SOURCES, LINKS, AND RELATED MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." YOU USE THEM AT YOUR OWN RISK.
WE AND OUR LICENSORS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS DISCLAIM ALL EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, CURRENCY, RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY, SECURITY, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND WARRANTIES ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE OF TRADE.
WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT AN OUTPUT, CITATION, SOFTWARE PATH, MATERIAL IDENTIFICATION, ANALYTICAL RECIPE, SPECTROMETER ASSIGNMENT, CALCULATION, OR RECOMMENDATION IS CORRECT, SAFE, SCIENTIFICALLY DEFENSIBLE, OR SUITABLE FOR PUBLICATION, QUALITY, CONTRACTUAL, REGULATORY, OR ACCREDITATION PURPOSES.
14. Limitation of liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, PROBE SOFTWARE AND ITS OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS, LICENSORS, AND SERVICE PROVIDERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, GOODWILL, USE, DATA, RESEARCH, PUBLICATION OPPORTUNITY, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION.
THIS INCLUDES COSTS OR LOSSES ARISING FROM INCORRECT ANALYTICAL RESULTS, REANALYSIS, LOSS OF SAMPLES OR STANDARDS, INSTRUMENT DAMAGE OR DOWNTIME, LABORATORY DELAY, DATA CORRUPTION, MISIDENTIFIED MATERIALS OR PHASES, INCORRECT SETTINGS, RELIANCE ON AN OUTPUT, OR INABILITY TO ACCESS THE SERVICE.
OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING FROM THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT YOU PAID FOR THE SERVICE DURING THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM OR US$100. THESE LIMITS DO NOT APPLY WHERE LIABILITY CANNOT LAWFULLY BE EXCLUDED OR LIMITED.
15. Business-user indemnification
To the extent permitted by law, if you use the Service for an organization, that organization will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Probe Software and its officers, directors, employees, and contractors from third-party claims arising from its User Content, unlawful or unauthorized use, violation of these Terms, or infringement of third-party rights. This does not apply to the extent a claim results from our breach, gross negligence, willful misconduct, or conduct for which indemnification cannot lawfully be required.
16. Export controls
You must comply with applicable export-control, import, sanctions, and trade laws. Do not submit export-controlled technical data unless we have expressly agreed in writing that the Service is authorized and configured to receive it.
17. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms to reflect changes in the Service, law, risk, or business practices. We will display an effective date and version. For material changes, we will provide appropriate notice and may require renewed acceptance before continued use.
18. Governing law and disputes
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Oregon, without regard to conflict-of-law principles, except where federal or other applicable law requires otherwise. The state and federal courts located in Lane County, Oregon have exclusive jurisdiction, and each party consents to venue there.
Before filing a claim, each party agrees to provide written notice describing the dispute and make a good-faith effort for 30 days to resolve it informally. This does not prevent urgent injunctive relief or a filing needed to preserve a legal deadline. Nothing limits nonwaivable rights under applicable law.
19. General terms
These Terms are the entire agreement about the Service except for a separate written agreement that expressly applies. If a provision is unenforceable, it will be enforced to the maximum lawful extent and the rest remains effective. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, asset sale, or affiliate transfer.
We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control. These Terms do not create an employment, agency, partnership, joint venture, fiduciary, or franchise relationship. Provisions that should survive termination will survive, including ownership, feedback, disclaimers, liability limitations, indemnification, and disputes.
20. Contact
Probe Software, Inc.
885 Crest Drive
Eugene, Oregon 97405
United States