ABOUND Intellectual Property Agreement
Last updated April 23, 2023
A summary of this policy is given for your convenience - it is not a substitution for reading and understanding the full policy:
This policy governs the intellectual property rights of artists, tinkerers and owners on the ABOUND platform, a project of Diving Bell Dev LLC (“us”, “we”, “Diving Bell”, “ABOUND”). These terms are incorporated into the Terms of Service of ABOUND, and continuing to use the ABOUND platform constitutes acceptance of this policy by you (“user”, “tinkerer”, “artist”, “owner”, “purchaser”). We may change the terms of this agreement at any time, and without notice. You can check the “Last Updated” date of this document to see whether this policy has changed since you last read it. This document uses the terminology of the site - please refer to abound.art/about for resolving uncertainties about these definitions.
When you upload an algorithm to ABOUND, you are representing that the downloading, running, copying, and use of the code does not infringe the proprietary rights of any third party, including but not limited to any copyright, patent, trademark, natural, or trade secret rights that could be claimed against your uploaded content. You have the sole responsibility for what you upload, and any harm that results from running it, or publishing and selling its outputs.
When uploading an algorithm to the platform, you are granting a revocable, limited license to ABOUND. This license includes the right to examine, run and test the binary, and the right to publish a web interface which enables other users to run the binary, producing works (“Art”) that will be governed by the terms of this policy. The revocation of this license can be initiated through an email sent to the contact below. By uploading the algorithm you are asserting that you have the capacity to grant this license, and are responsible for harms derived from this reliance.
Though a copy of it will live on our servers, the algorithm (specifically the binary data representing the Docker image of the algorithm) will be treated by ABOUND as the sole intellectual property of the artist that uploaded it, and ABOUND will maintain the secrecy of the actual binary, as well as non-public metadata about it, to the best of our ability. This does not cover the Flag Specifications or public description of the algorithm - about which no intellectual property assertions are made here. ABOUND will abide by best practices around trade secret maintenance, enabling artists to retain the full set of intellectual property rights that they hold at the time of upload. These may include the ability to distribute the algorithm elsewhere, display it or its derivative works, execute it on other infrastructure, create derivative algorithmic work, and the ability to delete it from the ABOUND platform.
When a user tinkers with an algorithm, they will supply it with a set of configuration values for the settings that an algorithm exposes. These values (together with the context of the identifier for the algorithm that they are supplied for) constitute what we’ll call “Parameters”. Parameters are the creative production of the tinkerer that entered them, and the tinkerer represents that at the time of inputting these values to initiate a run, their use, reproduction and copying does not constitute an infringement upon the intellectual property rights of any third party. Tinkerers accept at the time of generating a run that they bear the responsibility for the content of, and the harm that results from, the values that they enter.
Once uploaded, parameters will be treated as a trade secret by ABOUND to the best of our ability, with tinkerers possessing the rights to export and copy these parameters, and ABOUND doing its best to maintain their secrecy. By entering these values into the ABOUND platform, the tinkerer grants the platform a limited license to use their parameter values in the running of the appropriate algorithm, and to license the resulting Art as further described within this policy. This license may be revoked (if it has not been sold) by emailing the contact below - runs are not manually deletable for record keeping purposes.
When an algorithm is run with a given set of parameters, it will produce one or more outputs, which may include the intended piece of Art (an image, vector graphic, video, or other piece of media), as well as any logs (outputs of the algorithm that are derivative of its execution and describe the course of the algorithm) - together these are called the “Artifacts” of a run. Once generated, artifacts become the narrow intellectual property of Diving Bell Dev, with only a few narrow allowed uses:
No other party retains any other intellectual property claims over these artifacts - the proprietary rights are intentionally narrowed until after the point of sale.
Once purchased, the Art produced by a run becomes the sole intellectual property of the purchaser of the Art. They can distribute, recreate, create derivative works, attempt to copyright or license the content as they see fit, without restriction or limitation. If the new owner so chooses, they can request that the low resolution copies be taken down from ABOUND, and the artifacts deleted off of our servers by contacting us at the email address below.
If you have any questions or concerns about intellectual property practices on the platform, or wish to exercise any of the property rights described above, please contact us at:
ip@abound.art