These terms are the agreement between Monochrome, a software studio in Lebanon, and you, the merchant who installs the Provenance app on a Shopify store. Installing the app means accepting them.
They are written to be read. Where a clause has a reason, the reason is in the clause.
1. What the app does
Provenance issues unique identifiers for individual physical items, records what each identifier names, and answers a lookup when somebody scans one.
It produces printable codes, a certificate document per item, and a register held both in our database and as metaobjects in your own Shopify admin.
2. What the app does not do, and does not promise
This section matters more than any other in this document, so it is second rather than buried.
- We do not verify anything you record. If you record that an item was made on a date, from a material, in a place, the register repeats it because you said it. We do not check it, audit it, inspect it or certify it.
- The app does not determine authenticity. It returns an item's recorded identity. It never returns a verdict, and there is no "authentic" state anywhere in it. A lookup that resolves means an identifier is in the register. It does not mean the object in somebody's hand is the object described.
- It is not an anti-counterfeiting system. It makes one kind of fake easy to spot: the one carrying a copied identifier that resolves to a different object. It does nothing about a fake with no card, and nothing about a forged card beyond reporting that its code is not in the register.
- It is not a chain of custody. The register records what is written to it, not where an object has physically been.
- It does not make you compliant with anything. No regulation, no scheme, no standard. Nothing on this site or in the app is legal advice.
- A lookup requires the service to be available. Unlike an app that can fail open, a lookup is a live request: during an outage, a scanned card does not resolve. It does not affect your storefront or your ability to sell, because the app is not in the buying path.
Claims are yours. What you assert about your products is your statement to your customers and your regulator. If a claim you record turns out to be false, misleading or unsubstantiated, that is your liability. Section 9 says the same thing in the language lawyers expect.
3. Your account and your responsibilities
- You need a Shopify store, and you are bound by Shopify's terms as well as these. Nothing here overrides them.
- You are responsible for what your staff do in the app. Actions are recorded against the staff account that performed them.
- You are responsible for the accuracy of what you record. See section 2.
- You must not use the app to make claims you know to be false, to impersonate another brand, or to register items you did not make or sell.
4. Printed cards, and why some things cannot be undone
Some actions in the app are one-way. They are marked as such before you take them, and they are one-way because a card that has been printed cannot be recalled.
- Marking a run printed freezes the identifiers in it. They cannot then be edited or deleted, and your storefront address is locked, because both are printed on physical cards that are about to leave your building.
- An identifier cannot be re-pointed at a different product at any stage. An identifier that can be reassigned makes the whole register untrustworthy. Delete an unprinted run and mint again instead.
You are responsible for checking a run before you mark it printed. We cannot undo it for you.
5. Payment
At the time of writing the app is not published on the Shopify App Store and no charge is made for it. Everything in this section describes what will apply once it is, and we will tell installed merchants before any charge begins, by email, and not by changing a page.
There is one plan. It is a recurring monthly fee, preceded by a free trial period, plus a one-off charge for each identifier you register, with an allowance of free identifiers. The current amounts, the length of the trial and the size of the allowance are on the pricing page and, once there is a listing, on the App Store listing itself. The listing is what charges you, so where the two ever differ, the listing governs.
The trial applies to the monthly fee only. Identifiers you register beyond the free allowance during a trial are charged for.
Two things about the per-identifier charge are part of these terms rather than a matter of presentation:
- It is incurred when you download the print sheet for a run, not when you mint. Identifiers that are minted and deleted without a sheet being downloaded are not charged for.
- It is charged once per identifier. Reprinting a sheet does not charge again, and an identifier you delete after it has been charged is not refunded.
The free allowance is a one-time quantity for the life of the shop, not a recurring monthly one. It is available to every shop that installs the app, rather than being an introductory offer for a limited period.
Charging runs through Shopify's billing. Charges appear on your Shopify invoice, prices are shown to you in your own currency, and refunds, trials and mid-cycle changes are handled under Shopify's rules rather than ours. We never hold your payment details.
If the subscription lapses, lookups stop and minting stops. The monthly fee is what pays for the register staying resolvable, so that is what ends: cards already in circulation stop resolving, and no new identifiers can be issued. Nothing you have recorded is deleted because of non-payment, and the copy of your register in your own Shopify admin is unaffected and remains yours. What happens to records when you uninstall is section 7, which is a different thing from not paying.
Development stores are free, permanently.
6. Availability
We aim to keep the service available and we do not promise a percentage. There is no service level agreement in these terms, and you should not build a commitment to a third party on the assumption of one.
We will give notice of planned maintenance that would interrupt lookups.
7. Your data, and what happens when you leave
The Privacy Policy says what we hold and for how long, and the Data Processing Addendum governs our handling of it as your processor. In summary:
- The records you create are yours. We process them to run the app.
- A copy of each item record lives in your own Shopify admin as a metaobject. That copy is yours and it survives uninstalling the app. It is the reason the app writes it at all.
- Uninstalling deletes our copy 48 hours later. Export first if you want ours too.
8. Intellectual property
We own the app, this site and everything in them. You get a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the app while you are installed and in compliance with these terms.
You own your records, your product data, your certificate design and your brand. Nothing here gives us a licence to use any of it beyond what is needed to run the service for you.
9. Warranties and liability
The app is provided as is. To the fullest extent the law allows, we exclude all implied warranties, including fitness for a particular purpose.
We are not liable for:
- The truth of anything you record, or any consequence of a claim you made that turned out to be wrong. This includes claims a customer, a buyer, a regulator or a court relies on.
- Any decision anyone makes on the basis of a lookup, including a decision to buy, to sell, to refuse a return, or to treat an item as genuine or not.
- Counterfeiting, loss or theft of your goods, or any failure of this app to prevent it, which it does not claim to do.
- Indirect or consequential loss, lost profits, or lost business.
Where liability cannot be excluded, it is capped at the total amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. If you have paid us nothing, it is capped at nothing, and we would rather say so than let you discover it later.
Nothing here excludes liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.
10. Suspension and termination
You can uninstall at any time, from your Shopify admin, without asking us.
We may suspend or terminate an account that is using the app to make claims we believe to be fraudulent, to impersonate another brand, or in a way that threatens the service for other merchants. We will tell you why, and we will give you a chance to export your data unless doing so would be unlawful.
11. Changes to these terms
We date this document at the top. Material changes are announced to installed merchants by email before they take effect. Continuing to use the app after that means accepting them; if you would rather not, uninstall.
12. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of Lebanon, and the courts of Beirut have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer rather than a business, this does not remove any protection you have under the law of the country you live in.
13. Contact
hello@monochrome.digital. A person reads it.