These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the VitaPalate app and related services (the "Service"), provided by VitaPalate ("we", "us", "our"). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
1. Eligibility
To use VitaPalate, you must be:
- At least 21 years old if you are in the United States, or the legal age of majority and legal drinking age in your jurisdiction, whichever is older.
- Legally able to consume alcohol where you live and intend to use the Service.
- Capable of entering into a binding contract under applicable law.
By creating an account, you represent and warrant that you meet these eligibility requirements. If you do not, you must not use the Service. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate any account that we reasonably believe was created by an ineligible user.
2. Your account
You are responsible for:
- Providing accurate, current information when you create your account
- Keeping your password secure and confidential
- All activity that occurs under your account
- Notifying us immediately if you suspect unauthorized access to your account
You may not share your account credentials with others or allow another person to use your account. One person, one account.
3. Acceptable use
When you use VitaPalate, you agree not to:
- Violate any applicable law or regulation, including laws governing the sale, distribution, or consumption of alcohol
- Use the Service to harass, threaten, defame, or harm any other person
- Post or transmit content that is illegal, abusive, hateful, sexually explicit, or otherwise objectionable
- Impersonate another person or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or organization
- Attempt to access another user's account, data, or any non-public area of the Service
- Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service or any related system
- Interfere with the Service's operation, including via denial-of-service attacks, spam, or malware
- Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the source code of the Service, except to the extent expressly permitted by applicable law
- Scrape, crawl, or otherwise programmatically extract data from the Service without our express written permission
- Use the Service to facilitate the sale or distribution of alcohol to minors or in any other way that violates the law
We reserve the right to investigate and take appropriate action against any user who, in our sole judgment, violates these terms — including suspending or terminating their account.
4. Your contributions
When you use VitaPalate, you contribute two distinct types of content to the Service. The Terms treat them differently because they are different in nature.
Your Content (personal, owned by you)
"Your Content" includes:
- Party names and descriptions you create
- Photos of wine bottles you upload
- Notes, written commentary, and tasting reactions you add to wines or parties
- Other personal expressions you contribute through the Service
You retain ownership of Your Content. By submitting Your Content to the Service, you grant VitaPalate a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify (for technical purposes such as resizing images), display, and distribute Your Content solely for the purpose of operating, providing, and improving the Service. This license ends when you delete Your Content or delete your account, except for backup copies that may persist for a reasonable period.
Wine Catalog Contributions (reference data contributed to the Service)
"Wine Catalog Contributions" include:
- Wine metadata extracted from labels you scan (varietal, producer, vintage, region, appellation, and similar objective attributes about a wine)
- Rating values you assign to wines during blind tastings
- Cropped images of wine labels (once our auto-cropping feature ships in a future release; until then, bottle photos are treated as Your Content and deleted on account deletion)
Wine Catalog Contributions are factual information about wines that exist in the world — they are not personal expressions about you. When you scan a label or rate a wine, you contribute that information to our reference catalog, which we use to:
- Improve the accuracy of our Palate DNA inference engine for all users
- Provide wine recommendations and discovery features
- Build aggregate, anonymized analytics about wines (average ratings, frequency of appearance, sensory profile signals)
- Potentially share anonymized aggregate insights with wineries about how their wines perform in real consumer blind tastings (a future product offering)
Wine Catalog Contributions, in anonymized form (with your name, email, and any identifier removed), are retained after your account is deleted. The contribution itself can no longer be traced back to you. This is industry-standard practice for product catalogs and review platforms — a restaurant directory does not delete its restaurant entries when reviewers leave, and a movie database does not delete movies when editors close their accounts.
Your representations
You represent and warrant that:
- You own Your Content or have the necessary rights to grant the license above
- Your Content and Wine Catalog Contributions do not infringe the intellectual property, privacy, or other rights of any third party
- Your Content does not contain illegal, defamatory, or harmful material
- Wines you scan and contribute metadata for are commercially produced wines whose labels are visible in the photographs you upload (no fabricated or fictitious entries)
We do not actively monitor user contributions, but we reserve the right to remove any content that violates these Terms or that we otherwise find objectionable.
5. Our intellectual property
VitaPalate, including its branding, design, software, written content, visual assets, and underlying technology, is owned by us or our licensors and protected by copyright, trademark, patent, and other intellectual property laws.
Specifically:
- The "VitaPalate" name and logo are our trademarks. You may not use them without our prior written permission.
- The blind tasting methodology — including the bag-and-scan mechanism, the multi-axis Palate DNA inference engine, and the synchronized sightless reveal flow — is the subject of patent applications. You may not replicate, copy, or commercialize this methodology in a competing product.
- The user interface, visual design, and copy of the Service are protected by copyright. You may not copy them.
We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service for personal, non-commercial purposes in accordance with these Terms. All other rights are reserved.
6. Wine and alcohol-related responsibilities
VitaPalate is a tool for hosting and recording blind wine tastings among friends. We do not sell, distribute, or recommend specific alcoholic beverages for purchase. Wine ratings on VitaPalate are subjective opinions submitted by individual users during private tastings — they are not professional reviews and should not be relied on for purchase decisions, investment decisions, or any other commercial purpose.
You are solely responsible for:
- Compliance with all applicable laws regarding alcohol in your jurisdiction, including age restrictions, transportation, and serving
- The safety of yourself and your guests, including responsible consumption and not driving while impaired
- Respecting any private-property and venue rules where you host or attend a tasting
- Any taxes, fees, or licenses required to host an event in your jurisdiction
VitaPalate is not responsible for any harm, injury, or damage that arises from your consumption of alcohol or from your hosting or attending a tasting. Drink responsibly.
7. Affiliate links
The Party Kits page — available both on our website at vitapalate.com/party-kits and from within the VitaPalate iOS app (Settings → Party Supplies) — contains affiliate links to third-party retailers (such as Amazon). When you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. These links do not affect the price you pay. We only feature products we believe are genuinely useful for hosting a blind tasting; we do not accept payment for product placement.
8. Disclaimers
The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranties arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.
We do not warrant that:
- The Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free
- The information provided through the Service is accurate, reliable, or complete
- Any errors in the Service will be corrected
- The Service is free of viruses or other harmful components
You use the Service at your own risk.
9. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, in no event will VitaPalate, its founders, employees, agents, or affiliates be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or business interruption, arising out of or related to your use of the Service, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.
Our total cumulative liability to you for any claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you have paid us in the twelve months preceding the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars (US$100).
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, so the above limitations may not apply to you.
10. Termination
You may terminate your account at any time by deleting it inside the app under Settings → Account → Delete Account.
We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service at any time, with or without notice, for any reason, including if we reasonably believe you have violated these Terms. Upon termination, your right to use the Service ends immediately. Provisions of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination — including intellectual property, disclaimers, limitations of liability, and dispute resolution — will continue in effect after termination.
11. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make a material change, we will notify you by email and update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Your continued use of the Service after a change becomes effective constitutes your acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree to the changes, you must stop using the Service.
12. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of [STATE TO BE SPECIFIED] in the United States, without regard to its conflict of law principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in [COUNTY/CITY TO BE SPECIFIED], and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.
This section will be finalized once we incorporate VitaPalate as a legal entity. Until then, these Terms remain enforceable under applicable U.S. consumer protection law in the jurisdiction where you reside.
13. Severability
If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.
14. Entire agreement
These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and VitaPalate regarding your use of the Service, and supersede any prior or contemporaneous agreements, communications, or proposals between us.
15. Contact us
If you have questions about these Terms, contact us at legal@vitapalate.com or ops@vitapalate.com.