PioneerBio — Terms of Service

1. Acceptance

By creating an account, or by accessing or using the PioneerBio platform ("the Service"), you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1.1 Where the Service is used as part of a course, these Terms apply alongside the course's own rules and the host institution's regulations. Nothing here limits your rights as a student, and nothing here forms part of your assessment.

1.2 We record the version of these Terms you accepted and the date of acceptance. Where we make material changes, we will ask you to accept the new version.

2. The Service

PioneerBio is a platform for AI-based biomedical image analysis, developed at Linköping University and used for teaching and research. It provides tools for image annotation, model training, segmentation and quantitative analysis.

2.1 The Service is provided for research and educational use. It is not a medical device and must not be used for clinical diagnosis or patient care.

3. Accounts

3.1 Provide accurate information when creating an account, and keep your credentials secure.

3.2 You are responsible for activity under your account. Tell us promptly if you believe it has been used without your authorisation.

3.3 Accounts are personal. Do not share credentials or allow another person to use your account.

3.4 Where an account is created for you as part of a course, it is provisioned using the email address on the course roster.

4. Your content and your data

4.1 Ownership. You retain ownership of what you create on the Service: your annotations, trained models, analyses and written work. We claim no ownership of your work.

4.2 Licence to operate the Service. You grant us a non-exclusive licence to store, process and display your content for the purpose of operating the Service and providing it to you. This licence ends when your content is deleted.

4.3 Course use. Where you use the Service as part of a course:

• (a) Your instructors may access your work for teaching, supervision, feedback and assessment.
• (b) We may use your work in anonymised or aggregated form to improve teaching materials and the Service.
• (c) We will not publish your work, or use it in research outputs, without asking you first. Consent is sought separately and may be declined with no effect on your assessment.
• (d) Course data provided to you — including images and reference annotations — is for that course only and must not be redistributed or published outside it.

4.4 Research use. Where you use the Service for your own research, §4.1 and §4.2 apply and §4.3 does not. Your data and results are yours; we access them only as needed to operate the Service or at your request for support.

4.5 What you upload. You are responsible for having the right to upload your content. Do not upload personal data, patient data or identifiable clinical images unless you have a lawful basis and have agreed it with us in advance.

4.6 Retention and deletion. You may request deletion of your content at any time. Accounts and content created for a course may be removed after the course ends; we will give notice and an opportunity to export your work.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• (a) use the Service unlawfully or in breach of your institution's rules;
• (b) attempt to access another user's account, data or work;
• (c) interfere with, overload or probe the Service or its infrastructure;
• (d) upload malicious code or unlawful or infringing content;
• (e) present work as your own where your course's rules do not permit it. Academic-integrity rules apply here in full.

5.1 Computing resources — including GPU capacity — are shared. Use them reasonably and do not circumvent limits.

6. Intellectual property in the Service

6.1 The Service, its software, design and documentation remain the property of PioneerBio and its licensors.

6.2 These Terms grant a right to use the Service. They transfer no rights in it.

6.3 Terms governing content we provide to you are in §4.3(d).

7. Personal data

7.1 We process personal data in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

7.2 We process the data needed to operate the Service: your name and email address, your account and login activity, and the content and analyses you create.

7.3 You have the rights the GDPR gives you — access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection. To exercise them, contact us at §12.

7.4 We do not sell personal data and do not use it for advertising.

7.5 Our Privacy Policy sets out in full how we process personal data.

8. Availability

8.1 We aim to keep the Service available but do not guarantee uninterrupted access. Maintenance, faults and capacity limits may interrupt it.

8.2 Where the Service is used for coursework, an interruption is not a reason for you to lose marks. Tell your instructor; deadlines are handled through the course's own process.

9. Liability

9.1 We provide the Service with reasonable care and skill.

9.2 To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of data, or business interruption.

9.3 Our total liability for all claims relating to the Service shall not exceed EUR 20, or the fees you have paid us in the twelve months preceding the claim, whichever is greater.

9.4 Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

10. Suspension and termination

10.1 You may close your account at any time.

10.2 We may suspend or close an account that breaches §5, or where required by law.

10.3 Where an account is used for a course, we will not suspend it for reasons unrelated to §5 without first notifying you and your course coordinator, so your studies are not affected.

10.4 On termination, §4.1, §6 and §9 survive.

11. Changes

11.1 We may update these Terms. The version and date at the top will change.

11.2 For material changes we will notify registered users by email and ask you to accept the new version. Continued use after a non-material change constitutes acceptance.

11.3 Previous versions are available on request.

12. Governing law and contact

These Terms are governed by Swedish law, and disputes are subject to the jurisdiction of the Swedish courts. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory law in your country of residence.

Pierre Hakizimana, PhD, Docent
Linköping University
pierre.hakizimana@liu.se