What you agree to when you use Rapporteur

1. Who we are, and what you accept

Rapporteur is a service operated from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. In these terms, "we" means Rapporteur, and "you" means the person using the service, or the organisation on whose behalf they use it.

By using Rapporteur, you enter into a contract with us, made of these terms and the privacy policy. If you disagree with any of their clauses, do not use the service. If you use it on behalf of a company, a public body or an association, you declare that you have the authority to bind it, and "you" also means that organisation.

2. Age requirement

You must be at least 18 years old, or the legal age of majority where you live if it is higher, to create an account and use Rapporteur. The service is not designed for minors and is not addressed to them; we do not knowingly collect data about them. If we learn that an account was opened by someone under the required age, we close it and erase their data.

A minor may appear in a recorded meeting — a pupil, a young employee, a family member — without being a user of the service. It is then up to you, the person recording, to check that you have the right to do so, with the consent of their parents or guardian where the law requires it.

App stores apply their own age ratings. They do not replace this rule: in the app as on the website, you must be 18 to open an account.

3. Your account

You sign in with your email address, using a temporary code or, on the website, with Google. We hold no password. You are responsible for what is done from your account: keep control of your mailbox, do not share your codes, and tell us without delay at support@lerapporteur.com if you suspect a use you did not authorise.

One person, one account. The free trial and promotional offers are attached to the person, not to the address. Opening a second account under another address or another identity to benefit from them again is not allowed; such an account may be closed and the benefits obtained withdrawn. The information you give us — name, address — must be accurate and kept up to date.

An account attached to an Enterprise subscription is opened by the manager of that subscription. They see who uses the service and how many reports are consumed; they see no meeting content.

4. What the service does, and its limits

Rapporteur records your meeting, transcribes it, then writes minutes in Word format, in the layout you have chosen, and emails them to you. Transcription and writing are done by automated systems, with no human review.

These systems are careful, but none is perfect. A misheard word, an approximate proper name, a figure to be confirmed remain possible — especially when the sound is poor, several people speak at once, or the spoken language is uncommon. The minutes are a working document that you proofread before circulating them or drawing a decision from them. They are neither certified minutes nor legal, medical, financial or accounting advice.

The announced delivery times — usually 15 to 45 minutes after upload — are indicative. The service may be temporarily unavailable, for maintenance or because of an outage on our side or at a provider; we do what it takes to restore it quickly, without being able to guarantee permanent availability. We may evolve the service, add or remove a feature, and will tell you when the change affects you.

5. Recording a meeting: your responsibility

Rapporteur is a tool. What you record, and the right to record it, are yours. In many countries, the law requires that participants be informed that a meeting is being recorded, and sometimes that they expressly consent; some information — health, data about minors, professional secrets — is protected further. You undertake to:

• record only meetings you take part in or are authorised to record;
• inform participants of the recording and obtain their consent whenever the law that applies to the meeting requires it;
• respect the rules of your organisation, your profession and the places where the meeting is held;
• not record people without their knowledge for surveillance, harassment or blackmail.

You alone are answerable for the content of your recordings and for the use you make of the minutes. If a third party brings a claim against us because of a meeting you recorded in breach of the law or of these terms, you indemnify us against the consequences of that claim.

6. What is prohibited

You may not use Rapporteur to, or with a view to:

• break a law, or infringe another person's rights — privacy, image, intellectual property, trade secrets;
• record, transcribe or distribute unlawful content, or content that exploits or endangers minors;
• circumvent a limit of the service — balance, subscription pace, free trial — through multiple accounts, automation or any other means;
• probe, disrupt or overload our systems, attempt to access data that is not yours, or introduce malicious software;
• copy, decompile, disassemble or modify our apps, or reconstruct how they work, except to the extent the law expressly allows;
• resell the service, rent it or make it available to third parties outside your organisation, or use it to build a competing service;
• impersonate Rapporteur, a member of our team or any other person.

We do not read your meetings to check these rules: we have no access to them. We act when a report, abnormal technical behaviour or a legal request requires us to.

7. Your content, our service

Your recordings, your transcripts, your minutes and the layout templates you entrust to us remain yours. You grant us only the limited, revocable right to process them in order to provide the service: store them for as long as necessary, transcribe them, write the minutes, send them to you. We do not use your meetings to train a model, nor for any other purpose. The privacy policy details what we keep and for how long.

The service itself — the website, the apps, their code, their design, the Rapporteur name and logo — belongs to us or is licensed to us. We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable licence to install and use our apps on your devices, solely for the purposes set out in these terms. Nothing here transfers to you any right over the service beyond that licence.

If you share an idea or a suggestion with us, we may use it freely to improve Rapporteur, without obligation towards you.

8. Prices, payment and refunds

Prices are those displayed on the Pricing page at the time of purchase, in US dollars, plus any taxes applicable in your country. Your first three meetings are free, with every feature. After that:

• reports bought individually or in packs remain yours with no time limit and add up with a subscription;
• reports included in a subscription are valid for the paid period — the month or the year — and are taken at the pace stated on the plan; what is not used is not carried over;
• a renewing subscription renews automatically at the end of each period, at the current price, until you stop it from My account — at the latest the day before renewal; the stop takes effect at the end of the period already paid, which remains usable;
• a one-off subscription does not renew: you top it up when you decide.

A report is only deducted once it reaches you. If the writing fails, it is returned to you and we resume the work from the transcript, without you having to record your meeting again. Apart from that case, prepaid reports and subscription periods already started are not refunded, except where the law of your country gives you that right — in which case it applies. If you believe you were charged wrongly, write to us: we examine every request.

A meeting may last up to six hours per report. Beyond that, a notice appears before the limit, and you choose whether to start a second report or stop there.

Payments are made on lerapporteur.com, by bank card or, for the Enterprise plan, by bank transfer. We hold no card numbers. When a purchase goes through an app store, that store's payment and refund terms apply to that purchase.

Purchases are not offered in the iPhone and iPad app: they are made on lerapporteur.com, from a browser. Your balance, however, is the same everywhere.

We may change our prices. A change never applies to what you have already paid, and for a renewing subscription it is announced to you at least thirty days before the renewal concerned, so that you can stop it if you wish.

9. Suspension and closure

You can close your account at any time, yourself, from My account. Your data is then erased, except for the accounting records the law requires us to keep. An unused prepaid balance is lost on closure: use it up first, or write to us if your situation calls for a different answer.

We may suspend or close your account if you breach these terms, if a payment is declined or disputed, or if the law requires it. Except in an emergency or where the law prevents it, we warn you first and let you respond. In case of closure for a serious breach, the remaining balance is not refunded. If we were to discontinue the service as a whole, we would give you at least thirty days' notice and refund unused prepaid reports.

10. Warranties and liability

We provide Rapporteur with care and in good faith, as it is offered, and we improve it constantly. We do not warrant that it meets all your needs, that it runs without interruption or error, or that any minutes are free of inaccuracies. You remain responsible for proofreading them and for the use you make of them.

To the extent permitted by law, our liability for any damage related to the service is limited to the amounts you paid us in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to it. We are not liable for indirect losses — lost profit, lost opportunity, harm to reputation, loss of data not caused by us — nor for the consequences of a meeting recorded in breach of section 5.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits a liability that the law does not allow to be excluded — in particular for wilful misconduct, personal injury, or under the mandatory consumer rights of your country of residence.

11. The apps

Our apps for Windows, Mac, iPhone and iPad and Android are subject to these same terms. They record only when you ask them to, and access nothing else on your device beyond what is needed to record and upload. An app may ask you to update it in order to keep working.

The iPhone and iPad app is subject to these same terms. It records only when you ask it to, and accesses nothing else on your device beyond what is needed to record and upload. It may ask you to update it in order to keep working.

App downloaded from the App Store. The contract is between you and us, not with Apple. Apple has no obligation to provide support or maintenance for it and is not responsible for its operation or for any claims relating to it — those are ours. You declare that you are not located in an embargoed country and are not on any list of prohibited persons. Apple and its subsidiaries may rely on this section as third-party beneficiaries, and the minimum terms of Apple's standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement apply in addition where they are more favourable to you.

App downloaded from Google Play or installed directly from our website: the Google Play terms apply in addition to the copy obtained through the store; the directly installed copy is governed by these terms alone.

12. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms as the service, the law or our organisation evolve. A change that reduces your rights or increases your obligations is announced to you by email and on the website at least fifteen days before it takes effect; a minor correction or clarification takes effect on publication. The date at the top of the page indicates the version in force.

If you keep using Rapporteur after a change takes effect, you accept it. If you refuse it, close your account before that date: unused prepaid reports are then refunded to you on simple request.

13. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before any action, write to us at support@lerapporteur.com: most difficulties are settled in a few exchanges, and we undertake to seek an amicable solution in good faith for thirty days. Failing agreement, the courts of Kinshasa have jurisdiction.

If you are a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory rules of the country where you reside, and the right to bring proceedings before the courts of that country where its law grants it to you.

14. Final provisions

• These terms and the privacy policy form the entire agreement between you and us regarding the service.
• If a clause is held invalid, the others remain in force, and the clause is replaced by the valid provision closest to its intent.
• Our not exercising a right does not amount to waiving that right.
• You may not assign this contract without our written consent; we may transfer it to an entity that takes over the service, informing you of it.
• These terms exist in several languages. In case of discrepancy, the French version prevails.

For any question about these terms: support@lerapporteur.com, or the Support page.