Visual Paradigm Terms of Service

Last Updated: August 28, 2023

Welcome to Visual Paradigm! These terms of service (the "Terms") govern your access to and use of Visual Paradigm International Ltd. ("we" or "our") websites and services (the "Services"). By using the Services you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you are using the Services on behalf of an organization, you are agreeing to these Terms for that organization and promising that you have the authority to bind that organization to these terms. In that case, "you" and "your" will refer to that organization.

You may use the Services only in compliance with these Terms. The Services may continue to change over time as we refine and add more features. We may stop, suspend, or modify the Services at any time without prior notice to you. We may also remove any content from our Services at our discretion.

Visual Paradigm offers a number of ways to share, or not share, your Visual Paradigm diagrams, models and charts with others.

Description of Visual Paradigm Online Accounts

An online account with Visual Paradigm enables you to access the Services offered by Visual Paradigm's online products. The availability of features may vary based on the license you possess and its activation status.

About Free Edition

The Free Edition of Visual Paradigm's online products is available for personal and non-commercial use only.


About Paid Editions

If you are using the Service for private and commercial purposes, you are required to have a paid license for creating, editing, or displaying content.


Your Responsibilities

Files and other content in the Services may be protected by intellectual property rights of others. Please do not copy, upload, download, or share files unless you have the right to do so. You, not Visual Paradigm International Ltd., will be fully responsible and liable for what you copy, share, upload, download or otherwise use while using the Services. You must not upload spyware or any other malicious software to the Service.

You, and not Visual Paradigm International Ltd., are responsible for maintaining and protecting all of your stuff. Visual Paradigm International Ltd. will not be liable for any loss or corruption of your content, or for any costs or expenses associated with backing up or restoring any of your content.

If your contact information, or other information related to your account, changes, you must notify us promptly and keep your information current. The Services are not intended for use by you if you are under 13 years of age. By agreeing to these Terms, you are representing to us that you are over 13.


Account Security

You are responsible for safeguarding the password that you use to access the Services and you agree not to disclose your password to any third party. You are responsible for any activity using your account, whether or not you authorized that activity. You should immediately notify Visual Paradigm International Ltd. of any unauthorized use of your account. You acknowledge that if you wish to protect your transmission of data or files to Visual Paradigm International Ltd., it is your responsibility to use a secure encrypted connection to communicate with the Services.


Software and Updates

Some use of our Service requires you to download a client software package ("Software"). Visual Paradigm International Ltd. hereby grants you a limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable, revocable license to use the Software, solely to access the Services. Your license to use the Software is automatically revoked if you violate these Terms in a manner that implicates our intellectual property rights. We hereby reserve all rights not expressly granted in these Terms. You must not reverse engineer or decompile the Software, nor attempt to do so, nor assist anyone else to do so. Our Services may update the Software on your device automatically when a new version is available.


Visual Paradigm International Ltd. Intellectual Property right and Feedback

These terms do not grant you any right, title, or interest in the Services, Software, or the content in the Services. While we appreciate it when users send us feedback, please be aware that we may use any feedback, comments, or suggestions you send us or post in our forums without any obligation to you. The Software and other technology we use to provide the Services are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws of both Hong Kong and foreign countries. These Terms do not grant you any rights to use the trademarks, logos, domain names, or other brand features of Visual Paradigm, Visual Paradigm Online and Visual Paradigm Smart Board.


User Submissions and Conduct

Any Material you post publicly on Visual Paradigm's website is accessible to all users of the site. You acknowledge that any unauthorized use of the Services is prohibited. You agree to comply with all applicable local, state, national, and international laws and regulations and are solely responsible for all acts or omissions that occur under your user ID or password, including the content of the materials you post on Visual Paradigm's website.

As a User of the Service or visitor of the Site, where applicable, you agree not to do any of the following:

  1. upload, post or otherwise transmit any content that is adult in nature, such as any nudity in a sexual context, any content revealing exposed genitalia, or any content with adult themes;
  2. harm minors in any way;
  3. upload, post or otherwise transmit any material that promotes hatred towards groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, and sexual orientation/gender identity;
  4. upload, post or otherwise transmit any material that defames, abuses, harasses, stalks, threatens or otherwise violates the legal rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others;
  5. upload, post or otherwise transmit any material that constitutes a direct threat of violence against any person or group of people;
  6. impersonate another person or entity, including, but not limited to, a Member or Visual Paradigm official, to falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
  7. upload files for the sole purpose of having them hosted by us and for use outside of a web site created using the Service;
  8. promote or provide instructional information about illegal activities, promote physical harm or injury against any group or individual, or promote any act of cruelty to animals. This may include, without limitation, providing instructions on how to assemble bombs, grenades and other weapons or incendiary devices; harvest or otherwise collect information about others, including e-mail addresses, without their consent;
  9. create User Content with horrible user experience, such as extreme flashing banners, excessive animated movement, or other types of content that could provoke seizures in unsuspecting viewers;
  10. use the Service in connection with chain letters, junk e-mail, spamming, link spam or any duplicative or unsolicited messages (commercial or otherwise);
  11. create a false identity or forged e-mail address or header, or otherwise attempt to mislead others as to the identity of the sender or the origin of the message;
  12. transmit through the Service any materials that are unlawful, harassing, libelous, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature;
  13. transmit any material that may infringe the intellectual property rights or other rights of third parties, including trademark, copyright, or right of publicity;
  14. transmit any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, trap doors, back doors, Easter eggs, time bombs, cancelbots, netbots, or any other harmful or deleterious programs or scripts;
  15. violate any U.S. law regarding the transmission of technical data or software exported from the United States through the Service;
  16. interfere with or disrupt networks connected to the Service or violate the regulations, policies or procedures of such networks;
  17. attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service, other accounts, computer systems or networks connected to the Service, through password mining or any other means;
  18. interfere with another User’s use and enjoyment of the Service.

Visual Paradigm reserves the right to suspend and/or terminate any account or user who has violated of the above prohibitions.


Free and Premium Content

At Visual Paradigm, we offer an extensive library of content for use in your projects, ranging from photos, artwork, and illustrations to videos, audio, and templates. Our content is categorized as either Free or Premium. Free content can be utilized at no cost. Below, we provide a detailed explanation of the usage terms for both Free and Premium Content.

Video and Audio

The license applicable to Free Video and Audio is as follows:

  • If the Free Video or Audio comes from Pixabay please refer to the Pixabay License.
  • If the Free Video or Audio comes from Pexels, please refer to the Pexels License.
  • If the Free Video or Audio comes from Visual Paradigm or an unspecified source, it's covered by the Free license.

Under the terms of this Agreement, we grant to you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Free Content for the Permitted Uses defined in this document.

Other Content

Free content can be utilized at no cost for solely non-commercial purposes.

For users with a free account, Premium content will display a watermark. The appearance of this watermark varies according to different features and may include a patterned text imprint, an overlay indicating the utilization of Premium content, or other variations.

You can remove the watermark by subscribing to Visual Paradigm Online Combo Edition. For documents created with Animation Maker, you can remove the watermark by subscribing to Visual Paradigm Online Deluxe Edition.

Copyright

Visual Paradigm International Ltd. respects others' intellectual property and asks that you do too. We will respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement if they comply with the law and are properly provided to us. We reserve the right to delete or disable content alleged to be infringing and to terminate repeat infringers. Please send us email to [email protected] for notice of alleged copyright infringement on the Services.


Other Content

The Services may contain links to third-party websites or resources. Visual Paradigm International Ltd. does not endorse and is not responsible or liable for their availability, accuracy, the related content, products, or services. You are solely responsible for your use of any such websites or resources. Also, if we provide you with any software under an open source license, there may be provisions in those licenses that expressly conflict with these Terms, in which case the open source provisions will apply.


Open Source Software Notice

Open-Source Software Uses. Some of the AI-generated artifacts are produced based on software release under a CreativeML Open RAIL-M license. You may access a copy of the SD License at: https://huggingface.co/spaces/CompVis/stable-diffusion-license.


Suspension of Inactive Account

A Visual Paradigm online account is considered to be inactive if there is no change (i.e. commit project from Visual Paradigm) of projects or no login in 90 days. An email will be sent to you for warning of inactivity when your Visual Paradigm online account has no changes of projects or no login in 60 days. We will suspend an inactive Visual Paradigm online account immediately and an email will be sent to you for notification. You will not be able to retrieve your content once your Visual Paradigm online account is suspended. Within 15 days after your account has been suspended, you may send us request by email to [email protected] to reactivate your suspended account; otherwise your content will be deleted in Visual Paradigm permanently.


Termination

You can stop using our Services any time. We also reserve the right to suspend or end the Services at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice. For example, we may suspend or terminate your use if you are not complying with these Terms, or use the Services in any way that would cause us legal liability or disrupt others' use of the Services. If we suspend or terminate your use, we will try to let you know in advance and help you retrieve data, though there may be some cases (for example, repeatedly or flagrantly violating these Terms, a court order, or danger to other users) where we may suspend immediately.


Visual Paradigm's Online Services are Available "AS-IS"

Though we want to provide a great service, there are certain things about the Services we cannot promise. For example, THE SERVICES AND SOFTWARE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", AT YOUR OWN RISK, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF ANY KIND. WE ALSO DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. Visual Paradigm International Ltd. will have no responsibility for any harm to your computer system, loss or corruption of data, or other harm that results from your access to or use of the Services or Software. Some states do not allow the types of disclaimers in this paragraph, so they may not apply to you.


Limitation of Liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL VISUAL PARADIGM INTERNATIONAL LTD., ITS AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, SUPPLIERS OR LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR (A) ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, EXEMPLARY OR CONSEQUENTIAL (INCLUDING LOSS OF USE, DATA, BUSINESS, OR PROFITS) DAMAGES, REGARDLESS OF LEGAL THEORY, WHETHER OR NOT VISUAL PARADIGM INTERNATIONAL LTD. HAS BEEN WARNED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, AND EVEN IF A REMEDY FAILS OF ITS ESSENTIAL PURPOSE; (B) AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICES MORE THAN THE GREATER OF $20 OR THE AMOUNTS PAID BY YOU TO VISUAL PARADIGM INTERNATIONAL LTD. FOR THE PAST THREE MONTHS OF THE SERVICES IN QUESTION. Some states do not allow the types of limitations in this paragraph, so they may not apply to you.


Modifications

We may revise these Terms from time to time and the most current version will always be posted on our website. If a revision, in our sole discretion, is material we will notify you (for example via email to the email address associated with your account). Other changes may be posted to our terms page, so please check those pages regularly. By continuing to access or use the Services after revisions become effective, you agree to be bound by the revised Terms. If you do not agree to the new terms, please stop using the Services.


Miscellaneous Legal Terms

These Terms constitute the entire and exclusive agreement between you and Visual Paradigm International Ltd. with respect to the Services, and supersede and replace any other agreements, terms and conditions applicable to the Services. These Terms create no third party beneficiary rights. Visual Paradigm International Ltd.'s failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of its right to do so later. If a provision is found unenforceable the remaining provisions of the Agreement will remain in full effect and an enforceable term will be substituted reflecting our intent as closely as possible. You may not assign any of your rights in these Terms, and any such attempt is void, but Visual Paradigm International Ltd. may assign its rights to any of its affiliates or subsidiaries, or to any successor in interest of any business associated with the Services. Visual Paradigm International Ltd. and you are not legal partners or agents; instead, our relationship is that of independent contractors.