Legal
Terms & conditions
What aptEDMS undertakes to do, what it does not, and who owns what. Written to be read rather than to be survived — if a clause here is unclear, that is a defect in the clause.
This document is issued at revision P01 for review. It has not been
settled by a lawyer and it is not a contract until it is. Three things
must be filled in before it can be: the contracting entity, its
registered address, and the governing jurisdiction. They appear below
as [LEGAL ENTITY], [REGISTERED ADDRESS] and
[JURISDICTION], deliberately left visible so nobody
mistakes a placeholder for a party.
1. Who these terms bind
These terms are between [LEGAL ENTITY], of
[REGISTERED ADDRESS] (“we”, “us”),
and the organisation that has agreed to them (“you”). Where
an individual uses aptEDMS on behalf of an organisation, they confirm
they are authorised to accept these terms for it.
Where a signed agreement exists between us and conflicts with anything here, the signed agreement governs.
2. The public demonstration
The demonstration at /app runs on sample data, requires no
sign-up, and is provided for evaluation only. It is not a production
environment, and no service commitment in these terms applies to it.
Do not put real project documents into the demonstration. Treat anything entered there as non-confidential and impermanent — it may be reset without notice.
3. The service
aptEDMS is a hosted electronic document management system. Subject to these terms and to any fees agreed, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use it for your own business purposes for as long as your subscription runs.
The capabilities described on this website are those the product has at the time of writing. Where a page says a capability is partial or not yet built, that statement is part of what you are agreeing to, not marketing hedging.
4. Your documents
You own your documents. We do not acquire any ownership of them. That includes documents, metadata, markup, comments, transmittals and the audit trail generated from your activity.
You grant us only the licence needed to run the service for you: to store, copy, transmit, render, index and back up your documents, and to generate derived material such as thumbnails, PDF renditions, extracted text and checksums. That licence exists to operate the system and ends when your data is deleted.
We do not use your documents to train machine-learning models, and we do not sell or disclose them to third parties except where you direct it or the law compels it.
5. What the system does with them
Some of the product's behaviour has contractual consequences, so it is stated here rather than left to the manual.
- Revisions are not overwritten. Issuing a document creates a new revision and the previous one is retained and marked superseded. You should expect superseded revisions to remain retrievable.
- The audit trail is append-only. Records of who did what cannot be edited or removed through the product, including by an administrator. This is deliberate and is not a defect.
- Deletion is recorded. Where a document is destroyed, the system requires a stated reason and records the deletion.
- Integrity is checked over time. A checksum is derived from the stored bytes and re-verified periodically.
- Retention and legal hold apply where configured. A document under legal hold will not be disposed of, including by you, until the hold is lifted.
6. Accounts and access
You are responsible for who you invite, what role you give them, and for keeping credentials secure. Access is enforced per project and per role. Where single sign-on or directory provisioning is configured, the accuracy of what your directory sends is yours to maintain.
Tell us promptly at security@aptedms.com if you believe an account has been compromised.
7. Acceptable use
You agree not to use aptEDMS to:
- store or distribute material that is unlawful, or that infringes someone else's rights;
- upload software intended to damage or gain unauthorised access to any system;
- attempt to access another customer's data, or to circumvent access controls, rate limits or audit logging;
- resell or provide the service to a third party except as agreed in writing.
Security testing is welcome by arrangement. Contact us before you start, and we will agree scope and timing.
8. Availability and support
We aim to keep the service available and to give reasonable notice of planned maintenance. Any specific availability target, support hours or response time applies only where stated in a signed order or service description — nothing on this page creates one.
9. Security and personal data
Documents are encrypted in transit and at rest. Access is enforced in the database itself rather than only in the interface. Our storage policy and risk assessment, and our clause-by-clause assessment against ISO 19475, are available on request — including the clauses we do not yet meet.
Where we process personal data on your behalf, we do so on your instructions and under a separate data processing agreement, which prevails over this section in the event of conflict.
10. Intellectual property
We own aptEDMS, its software, design and documentation. Nothing here transfers that to you, and nothing here transfers your documents to us.
Third-party components are used under their own licences, listed in full on the third-party notices page.
11. Liability
Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.
Subject to that, neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss, and each party's total liability is capped at the amount specified in the signed order — or, where none is specified, at the fees paid in the twelve months before the claim.
aptEDMS records what was issued, to whom and when. It cannot warrant that what you issued was correct. Responsibility for the content of a document remains with its originator and approver.
12. Termination and export
Either party may terminate as set out in the signed order. On termination you may export your documents and their metadata in a machine-readable form, and we will make a reasonable export window available before deletion.
We will not withhold your documents as leverage in a commercial dispute.
13. Changes to these terms
These terms are versioned like everything else here: each change issues a new revision with its own number and date, shown at the top of this page. Material changes will be notified before they take effect, and the superseded revision remains available on request.
14. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], and
the courts of [JURISDICTION] have exclusive jurisdiction.
Questions about anything on this page: hello@aptedms.com.