Terms of Service

§ 1 Scope and contracting parties

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern all agreements between Sebastian Nuss, Am Hochgericht 15, 55126 Mainz, Germany ("Provider") and the user regarding the online service The Pitch Doctor ("Service"), available at thepitchdoctor.io.

The Service is offered exclusively to business users (entrepreneurs within the meaning of § 14 of the German Civil Code) — natural or legal persons or legal partnerships acting in the course of their commercial or self-employed professional activity when concluding the contract. Consumers within the meaning of § 13 of the German Civil Code are excluded from use. By registering, the user confirms that they will use the Service exclusively for business purposes.

Conflicting terms of the user do not apply unless the Provider expressly agrees in writing.

§ 2 Description of service

The Service is an AI-assisted tool for creating exposés for journalistic and documentary moving-image formats. It ingests topic ideas supplied by the user and generates a text exposé in German or English using a large language model (LLM) and proprietary format profiles.

Outputs of the Service are produced by an automated machine-learning system. They may contain factual errors, fabrications, outdated information, or misattributed sources. The Provider gives no warranty as to the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of generated content. The user bears sole responsibility for reviewing the content, its legal admissibility, and its actual use.

Generated texts are drafts. They do not replace editorial review, legal advice, or the user's own independent research.

Exposés created with the Service are not an assurance of any commission, award, production deal, or funding decision by broadcasters, streaming platforms, production companies, funding institutions, or any other third party. The Service makes no statement about the likelihood of success of any exposé produced with it.

The exact scope of the service (number of exposés per month, available broadcaster profiles, pipeline coverage) is defined by the respective tariff as displayed on the website at the time of conclusion of the contract.

§ 3 Conclusion of contract, prices and payment

A paid subscription is concluded by clicking the button labelled "Pay now" (or equivalent wording) on the order confirmation page and by successful payment via Stripe. The prices displayed on the website at the time of the order apply.

All prices are in euros and include statutory VAT. Payment is processed by Stripe; accepted methods are credit cards and any further methods shown in the checkout. Invoices are provided electronically by email or in the user account.

Subscriptions renew automatically for the agreed billing period unless terminated by the end of the current billing period in accordance with § 7. The ordinary notice period follows from § 7.

The Provider may adjust prices with at least 30 days' notice. The user may terminate before the change takes effect; failing termination, the change is deemed accepted.

§ 4 Usage rights

The user receives a simple, territorially and materially unrestricted, transferable right of use to the exposés they generate, for the duration of copyright. The generated content may in particular be used for commercial pitches, submissions to broadcasters and platforms, production documents, and in the user's own publications.

To the extent that copyright or other protective rights in the generated results accrue to the Provider, the Provider hereby assigns such rights to the user upon creation — unrestricted in time and territory, and for all known and future forms of use. No further warranty is given as to the copyright protectability of the generated results.

The user is responsible for clearing the copyright on cited sources (e.g., Wikipedia passages, web quotes). The Service provides source attributions; verifying the legal admissibility of further use is up to the user.

If the user names real persons (protagonists, experts) in their topic inputs, they warrant that they have obtained the necessary consents for further processing and publication.

§ 5 User obligations

The user undertakes not to use the Service to:

• generate unlawful, offensive, discriminatory or seditious content;
• infringe third-party rights, in particular copyright, personality or trademark rights;
• access the Service in an automated manner or at unreasonable frequency (scraping, DoS-like access);
• compromise the infrastructure of the Provider or its processors;
• share credentials with third parties or access third-party accounts in parallel.

In the event of a breach, the Provider may suspend or permanently block access and terminate the contract for cause without notice.

§ 6 Liability

The Provider is liable under statutory provisions in cases of intent and gross negligence. In cases of simple negligence, the Provider is liable only for damages arising from breach of material contractual duties (cardinal obligations); in such cases liability is limited to typical, foreseeable damages.

To the extent that the Provider's liability is not excluded under these Terms or by law, it is limited, per incident and in aggregate, to the amount the user has paid to the Provider as consideration during the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim. If the contract began less than twelve months before that event, twelve times the agreed monthly fee applies in place of the amount actually paid.

Liability for lost commissions, lost profits, lost funding, consequential damages, or other indirect damages arising from the use of generated exposés or from any commission, award, production deal, or funding decision not being granted is excluded. The Provider gives no warranty that an exposé produced with the Service will lead to any commission, award, or funding decision.

The above limitations, including the liability cap in paragraph 2, do not apply to damages arising from injury to life, body, or health, nor to claims under the German Product Liability Act.

§ 7 Term and termination

Subscriptions run indefinitely with a monthly billing period, unless otherwise agreed in the specific tariff. They may be terminated at any time with effect from the end of the current billing period.

Termination is effected via the account settings or by notice in text form (e.g., email) to support@thepitchdoctor.io.

The right to extraordinary termination for good cause remains unaffected on both sides.

§ 8 Founding pricing

Users who join via an approved beta-cohort invitation may receive Founding Pricing: a 12-month price-lock for their Producer or Studio tariff at the price in effect at the time of the contract.

After the 12-month period, renewals move to the then- current standard price; information on this is provided by email with at least 30 days' lead time.

If the user terminates their subscription during the Founding-Pricing lock period, the price lock lapses permanently. A later re-subscription is at the then-current standard price.

An upgrade to a higher tier during the Founding-Pricing period also secures today's price for the new tier for the remaining period of the 12 months.

Founding Pricing is a time-limited contractual assurance and is legally binding for the defined term.

§ 9 Data protection and data processing

The processing of personal data by the Provider is described in our Privacy Policy. It is part of the contractual information but does not itself form part of the contract.

Where the user enters or has processed, in the course of using the Service, personal data of third parties — including names, professional information, or other details regarding protagonists, experts, or other persons named in topic inputs — the Provider acts as a processor within the meaning of Art. 28 GDPR and the user acts as the controller within the meaning of Art. 4 No. 7 GDPR.

Upon request by the user, the Provider makes available a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) in accordance with Art. 28 (3) GDPR in its then-current standard form. The DPA forms part of the contract once concluded in text form by both parties. Where the provisions of these Terms and the DPA conflict with respect to data processing, the DPA prevails.

The user is responsible for ensuring the required legal bases (in particular consent under Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR or legitimate interests under Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR) for the processing of any personal data of third parties entered into the Service.

§ 10 EU dispute resolution

The European Commission provides an online dispute resolution platform: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/. The Provider is neither willing nor obliged to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board; the service is offered exclusively to entrepreneurs (§ 1).

§ 11 Amendments to these Terms

The Provider reserves the right to amend or supplement these Terms with effect for the future, in particular to reflect technical developments, legal changes, or supreme-court case law, or to further develop the Service.

Amendments will be communicated to the user in text form (e.g., by email) at least four (4) weeks before the planned effective date. The notice will set out the amendments in detail and expressly point out the right to object, the objection period, and the legal consequences of objecting or failing to object.

If the user does not object to the amendments in text form within four (4) weeks of receipt of the notice, the amendments are deemed accepted and take effect on the date stated in the notice. If the user objects in time, the contract continues on the existing terms; the Provider is entitled to terminate the contract with effect from the date on which the amended Terms were intended to take effect.

This right of amendment does not cover changes that materially shift the balance of performance and consideration or that affect material contractual duties (cardinal obligations); such changes require a separate agreement. Price changes are governed exclusively by § 3.

§ 12 Beta and test features

Individual features or components of the Service may be designated as beta, test, or preview features ("Beta Feature"). Beta Features are provided to the user in the form made available, without any warranty as to specific qualities ("as-is").

There is no entitlement to the availability, functionality, freedom from defects, or continued existence of Beta Features. The Provider may modify, restrict, or discontinue Beta Features at any time and without prior notice. The limitations of liability and the liability cap set out in § 6 apply to Beta Features accordingly.

§ 13 Availability (service level)

The Provider aims for a monthly availability of the Service of 95 % (Producer tier and Founding tier) and 99 % (Studio tier), measured over the calendar month and excluding scheduled maintenance windows. Maintenance windows will, where possible, be announced 48 hours in advance.

Excluded from the availability calculation are:

• outages or material performance disruptions of upstream service providers, in particular Anthropic, Stripe, Supabase, Vercel, Resend, and Cloudflare;
• events of force majeure (§ 14);
• third-party attacks on the infrastructure of the Provider or its processors;
• causes attributable to the user (in particular faulty integration, impermissible access patterns).

A single failure to meet the targeted availability does not give rise to any rights of reduction, rescission, or damages. If the target is missed in three consecutive calendar months, the user is entitled to terminate for cause; further claims are governed by § 6.

§ 14 Force majeure

Force majeure means unforeseeable events beyond the Provider's control, including in particular:

• outages or material performance disruptions of upstream service providers (Anthropic, Stripe, Supabase, Vercel, Resend, Cloudflare);
• cyberattacks, distributed denial-of-service attacks, and comparable third-party attacks;
• pandemics, epidemics, and related governmental orders;
• industrial action, strikes, and lockouts;
• acts of war, terrorism, and sabotage.

During an event of force majeure, the performance obligations of both parties are suspended; the Provider's liability for performance disruptions during this period is excluded. If the event continues for more than 30 calendar days, either party is entitled to terminate for cause.

§ 15 Data export upon termination

After termination of the contract, the user may export the data stored in the Service — in particular generated exposés, pitch history, and input history — via the account settings for a period of 30 days.

After this period, the data will be deleted unless statutory retention obligations apply (in particular § 147 of the German Fiscal Code: ten years for invoice and tax-relevant data). Details on storage and retention periods are set out in the Privacy Policy.

§ 16 Final provisions

The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. Exclusive place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from this contract is Mainz, provided the user is a merchant, a legal entity under public law, or a public-law special fund, or has no general place of jurisdiction in Germany.

Should any provision of these Terms be or become invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions shall remain unaffected. In place of the invalid provision, the valid provision that most closely reflects the economic intent of the invalid provision shall apply.