Terms of Service
Last Updated: October 29, 2024
Welcome to the Birch Solutions, Inc. dba Fern (“Fern”, “us” “we” or “our”) website. Please read these Terms of Service (the “Terms”) carefully because they govern your use of our websites including buildwithfern.com and within our Fern Slack Community.
This Agreement is between Fern and the company or person accessing or using the Product. This Agreement consists of: (1) the Order Form and (2) the Key Terms, both of which are on the Cover Page below, and (3) the Common Paper Cloud Service Agreement Standard Terms Version 1.0 (“Standard Terms”). Any modifications to the Standard Terms made in the Cover Page will control over conflicts with the Standard Terms. Capitalized words have the meanings or descriptions given in the Cover Page or the Standard Terms.
If you are accessing or using the Product on behalf of your company, you represent that you are authorized to accept this Agreement on behalf of your company. By signing up, accessing, or using the Product, Customer indicates its acceptance of this Agreement and agrees to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Agreement.
Cover Page
Order Form
Cloud Service: Fern offers cloud-based software to define APIs and generate code, including SDKs and documentation.
Subscription Start Date: The Effective Date
Subscription Period: 12 month(s)
Non-Renewal Notice Period: At least 30 days before the end of the current Subscription Period.
Cloud Service Fees:
Section 5.2 of the Standard Terms is replaced with: Certain parts of the Product have different pricing plans, which are available at Provider’s pricing page (https://buildwithfern.com/pricing). Within the Payment Period, Customer will pay Provider fees based on the Product tier selected at the time of account creation and Customer’s usage per Subscription Period. Provider may update Product pricing by giving at least 30 days notice to Customer (including by email or notification within the Product), and the change will apply in the next Subscription Period.
Payment Period: 30 day(s) from Customer's receipt of invoice
Invoice Period: Annually
Key Terms
Customer: The company or person who accesses or uses the Product. If the person accepting this Agreement is doing so on behalf of a company, all use of the word "Customer" in the Agreement will mean that company.
Provider: Birch Solutions, Inc. dba Fern
Effective Date: The date Customer first accepts this Agreement.
Covered Claims:
Provider Covered Claims: Any action, proceeding, or claim that the Cloud Service, when used by Customer according to the terms of the Agreement, violates, misappropriates, or otherwise infringes upon anyone else’s intellectual property or other proprietary rights.
Customer Covered Claims: Any action, proceeding, or claim that (1) the Customer Content, when used according to the terms of the Agreement, violates, misappropriates, or otherwise infringes upon anyone else’s intellectual property or other proprietary rights; or (2) results from Customer’s breach or alleged breach of Section 2.1 (Restrictions on Customer).
General Cap Amount:
The fees paid or payable by Customer to provider in the 12 month period immediately before the claim
Governing Law: The laws of the State of Delaware
Chosen Courts: The state or federal courts located in Delaware
Notice Address:
For Provider: info@buildwithfern.com
For Customer: The main email address on Customer's account
Changes to the Standard Terms
Publicity Rights: Modifying Section 14.7 of the Standard Terms, Provider may identify Customer and use Customer’s logo and trademarks on Provider’s website and in marketing materials to identify Customer as a user of the Product. Customer hereby grants Provider a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to do so in connection with any marketing, promotion, or advertising of Provider or the Product during the length of the Agreement.
Information We Collect
Information we collect includes both information you knowingly and actively provide us when using or participating in any of our services and promotions, and any information automatically sent by your devices in the course of accessing our products and services.
Log Data
When you visit our website, our servers may automatically log the standard data provided by your web browser. It may include your device’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, your browser type and version, the pages you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on each page, and other details about your visit.
Additionally, if you encounter certain errors while using the site, we may automatically collect data about the error and the circumstances surrounding its occurrence. This data may include technical details about your device, what you were trying to do when the error happened, and other technical information relating to the problem. You may or may not receive notice of such errors, even in the moment they occur, that they have occurred, or what the nature of the error is.
Please be aware that while this information may not be personally identifying by itself, it may be possible to combine it with other data to personally identify individual persons.
Device Data
When you visit our website or interact with our services, we may automatically collect data about your device, such as:
Geo-location data
IP address
Browser version
Operating system version
Data we collect can depend on the individual settings of your device and software. We recommend checking the policies of your device manufacturer or software provider to learn what information they make available to us.
Personal Information
We may ask for personal information which may include one or more of the following:
Name
Email
Organization membership
Employer
Social media profiles
Code repository profiles
Legitimate Reasons for Processing Your Personal Information
We only collect and use your personal information when we have a legitimate reason for doing so. In which instance, we only collect personal information that is reasonably necessary to provide our services to you.
Collection and Use of Information
We may collect personal information from you when you do any of the following on our website:
Register for an account
Sign up to receive updates from us via email or social media channels
Use a mobile device or web browser to access our content
Contact us via email, social media, or on any similar technologies
When you mention us on social media
We may collect, hold, use, and disclose information for the following purposes, and personal information will not be further processed in a manner that is incompatible with these purposes:
to provide you with our platform's core features and services
to enable you to customize or personalize your experience of our website
to contact and communicate with you
for analytics, market research, and business development, including to operate and improve our website, associated applications, and associated social media platforms
to enable you to access and use our website, associated applications, and associated social media platforms
for internal record keeping and administrative purposes
for security and fraud prevention, and to ensure that our sites and apps are safe, secure, and used in line with our terms of use
Please be aware that we may combine information we collect about you with general information or research data we receive from other trusted sources.
Security of Your Personal Information
When we collect and process personal information, and while we retain this information, we will protect it within commercially acceptable means to prevent loss and theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use, or modification.
Although we will do our best to protect the personal information you provide to us, we advise that no method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure, and no one can guarantee absolute data security. We will comply with laws applicable to us in respect of any data breach.
You are responsible for selecting any password and its overall security strength, ensuring the security of your own information within the bounds of our services.
How Long We Keep Your Personal Information
We keep your personal information only for as long as we need to. This time period may depend on what we are using your information for, in accordance with this privacy policy. If your personal information is no longer required, we will delete it or make it anonymous by removing all details that identify you.
However, if necessary, we may retain your personal information for our compliance with a legal, accounting, or reporting obligation or for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific, or historical research purposes or statistical purposes.
Children’s Privacy
We do not aim any of our products or services directly at children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information about children under 13.
Disclosure of Personal Information to Third Parties We may disclose personal information to:
a parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of our company
third party service providers for the purpose of enabling them to provide their services, for example, IT service providers, data storage, hosting and server providers, advertisers, or analytics platforms
our employees, contractors, and/or related entities
our existing or potential agents or business partners
courts, tribunals, regulatory authorities, and law enforcement officers, as required by law, in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings, or in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights
third parties, including agents or sub-contractors, who assist us in providing information, products, services, or direct marketing to you
third parties to collect and process data
International Transfers of Personal Information
The personal information we collect is stored and/or processed in United States, or where we or our partners, affiliates, and third-party providers maintain facilities.
The countries to which we store, process, or transfer your personal information may not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you initially provided the information. If we transfer your personal information to third parties in other countries: (i) we will perform those transfers in accordance with the requirements of applicable law; and (ii) we will protect the transferred personal information in accordance with this privacy policy.
Your Rights and Controlling Your Personal Information
You always retain the right to withhold personal information from us, with the understanding that your experience of our website may be affected. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights over your personal information. If you do provide us with personal information you understand that we will collect, hold, use and disclose it in accordance with this privacy policy. You retain the right to request details of any personal information we hold about you.
If we receive personal information about you from a third party, we will protect it as set out in this privacy policy. If you are a third party providing personal information about somebody else, you represent and warrant that you have such person’s consent to provide the personal information to us.
If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time. We will provide you with the ability to unsubscribe from our email-database or opt out of communications. Please be aware we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity.
If you believe that any information we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant, or misleading, please contact us using the details provided in this privacy policy. We will take reasonable steps to correct any information found to be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or out of date.
If you believe that we have breached a relevant data protection law and wish to make a complaint, please contact us using the details below and provide us with full details of the alleged breach. We will promptly investigate your complaint and respond to you, in writing, setting out the outcome of our investigation and the steps we will take to deal with your complaint. You also have the right to contact a regulatory body or data protection authority in relation to your complaint.
Limits of Our Policy
At our discretion, we may change our privacy policy to reflect updates to our business processes, current acceptable practices, or legislative or regulatory changes. If we decide to change this privacy policy, we will post the changes here at the same link by which you are accessing this privacy policy.
If the changes are significant, or if required by applicable law, we will contact you (based on your selected preferences for communications from us) and all our registered users with the new details and links to the updated or changed policy.
If required by law, we will get your permission or give you the opportunity to opt in to or opt out of, as applicable, any new uses of your personal information.
Branding and Fair Use
It's not possible for a Customer to remove the small "Build with Fern" link that appears in published documentation through tactics, including but not limited to, custom CSS or global JavaScript.
Contact Us
For any questions or concerns regarding your privacy, you may contact us using the following details:
Support support@buildwithfern.com