Idea submission policy

Idea submissions open soon. This is how the check will work.

When idea submissions open, this policy will apply to any idea, concept, invention, business plan, description or file that you send to Avictus Inc. (“Avictus” or “we”), including ideas sent for a feasibility check (a “submission”). By sending a submission, you will accept this policy. If we agree with you in writing on a paid engagement, that agreement prevails over this policy where they differ.

Who will be able to send an idea

You must be 18 or older. If you are younger, a parent or guardian may send the idea for you. If you send an idea on behalf of a business, you confirm that you are allowed to do so.

When we receive a submission, we will reply by email with a link to this policy and to our privacy policy.

Before you send: patents and confidential information

• Patents. Sending a submission discloses your idea to us and, through the search queries described in section 5, to outside search services. In many countries, disclosing an invention before a patent application is filed can prevent you from obtaining a patent. If you intend to seek a patent, speak to a licensed patent agent before you send us the idea.
• Confidential information. Do not send trade secrets, information you received in confidence, or anything you are not allowed to share, whether it belongs to you, your employer or anyone else.
• Personal information. Do not include personal information about other people. Describe the idea without names or personal details that the research does not need.

No confidential relationship

Sending a submission does not create a confidential, fiduciary or special relationship between you and Avictus, and we do not sign non-disclosure agreements for submissions, unless we agree to it in a written agreement signed by Avictus. We handle submissions as described in this policy and in our privacy policy: we do not publish them and we do not sell them.

Similar ideas

Many people have similar ideas at the same time. Avictus and others may already be working on, or may later develop, ideas, products or services similar to yours, independently of your submission. Receiving your submission does not limit what Avictus may develop, acquire or offer independently or from other sources, and it creates no obligation to pay or credit you, unless a written agreement signed by Avictus provides otherwise.

We will use submissions only for the purposes in section 5. We will not use them to develop our own products or services.

How we use and process your submission

We will use your submission to research it and write your report, to send you the report and answer your questions about it, to keep a record of what we received and when, and to comply with the law and protect our rights.

The research will be done by automated agents:

• The agents will run on our own servers in Quebec. They will send the text of your submission, and what they find about it, to AI models provided by Anthropic, in the United States.
• They will search the web through our own search gateway. The search queries will be made up of words taken from your submission and will go to public web search engines and to the paid search services Brave and Exa, in the United States. These services handle the queries under their own terms.

You will keep whatever rights you have in your submission. You will give Avictus a non-exclusive, free permission to copy, store and process it, including sending parts of it to the services named above, only for the purposes in this section.

Storage and retention

Submissions will reach us by email through Proton, in Switzerland. We will keep your submission, your report and our exchanges about them for three years after our last exchange, so that we can answer any later question about what we received and when. The agents’ working files (search queries, search results and drafts) will be deleted within 90 days after the report is sent. You will be able to ask us to delete your submission earlier; we will do so unless the law requires or permits us to keep it. Our privacy policy explains your other rights.

No obligation to evaluate or respond

We may decline any submission, for example if it is incomplete, unlawful or outside what a feasibility check covers. Unless we have agreed with you in writing on a paid engagement, we have no obligation to evaluate a submission, to research it or to respond to it.

What a report is

A report will have four parts, even when a part finds nothing:

1. Similar offerings we found, and where yours might improve on them.
2. The technical path, with rough estimates of build and running costs.
3. Published patents and trademark filings in the registers you name, listed for information only. Not a patentability, availability or clearance opinion.
4. Market evidence, with a rough revenue and cost scenario and its assumptions. Not a forecast or financial advice.

For patent and trademark searches, the registers you can name are CIPO, USPTO, EUIPO and WIPO. Register searches can miss unregistered marks in use and reserve no rights for you.

Reports will come from automated research and may miss things. Cost and revenue figures will be rough estimates, not forecasts or financial advice. Patent and trademark results will be information only, not legal advice; consult a licensed patent or trademark agent.

Changes

We may change this policy. The version in force on the day you send a submission applies to that submission. We publish every new version on this page with its date.

Governing law and contact

This policy is governed by the laws in force in Quebec, including the federal laws of Canada that apply there. Subject to the rights the law grants you, including as a consumer, any dispute relating to it falls under the jurisdiction of the courts of the judicial district of Montréal.

Questions: contact@avictus.net.