Terms of Use
Last updated: October 14, 2026
These Website Terms of Use (the “Terms”) are entered into on the earlier of the date you first use any part of the Website and the date you agree to be bound by these Terms (the “Effective Date”), between The Erisian Institute, a not-for-profit corporation incorporated under the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act (“Erisian Institute”), and the person accepting these Terms (“you”). Erisian Institute and you will be referred to together as the “Parties” and each a “Party”.
These Terms govern access to and use of this website and any other public website operated by Erisian Institute that expressly links to these Terms (collectively, the “Website”), and any text, pictures, media, data, information, reports, analyses and other materials or content provided by Erisian Institute on or through the Website (collectively, the “Content”).
BY USING THE WEBSITE, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ, ACCEPT AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY AND COMPLY WITH THESE TERMS, AS AMENDED FROM TIME TO TIME IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 9(g). IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS, YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY CEASE ANY FURTHER USE OF THE WEBSITE. YOU REPRESENT AND WARRANT TO ERISIAN INSTITUTE THAT YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY TO ENTER INTO THIS LEGALLY BINDING AGREEMENT.
IF YOU ARE USING THE WEBSITE ON BEHALF OF ANOTHER PERSON, YOU HEREBY REPRESENT AND WARRANT TO ERISIAN INSTITUTE THAT YOU HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO BIND SUCH PERSON TO THESE TERMS.
1. The Website
(a) Access. Subject to your compliance with these Terms, Erisian Institute permits you to access and view the publicly accessible Website for informational purposes during the Term. This permission extends only to the temporary technical copies necessary to display the Website for that authorized viewing. It does not grant permission to download, print, save, reproduce, publish, redistribute or otherwise reuse Content independently of that viewing.
(b) Separate Agreements and the Erisian Institute Platform. These Terms do not grant access to the Erisian platform, which is operated by Erisian Group Inc. under its own terms, or to other products or services supplied under a separate agreement. Where a separate agreement applies, it will govern its subject matter and prevail over these Terms in the event of any conflict, inconsistency or doubt as to their interpretation or application. These Terms do not amend, replace or expand any rights granted under that agreement, or alter its restrictions, confidentiality obligations, data provisions, disclaimers, limitations of liability or other terms.
A customer agreement, confidentiality agreement or other separate written agreement entered into with Erisian Institute continues to govern its subject matter in accordance with its own terms. Pricing, service levels, support terms and other materials incorporated into a separate agreement remain governed by that agreement even when published on the Website. An amendment to these Terms does not amend a separate agreement. These Terms are with The Erisian Institute only; references to Erisian Group Inc. or another organization do not make that organization a party to these Terms.
(c) Restrictions on Use. Except as expressly permitted by these Terms, with Erisian Institute’s prior written consent, or to the extent a restriction is prohibited by applicable law, you will not, and will not permit others to do or attempt to do any of the following:
(i) sub-licence, sell, rent, lend, lease or distribute the Website, Content or any Intellectual Property Rights therein, or otherwise make copies of the Website or Content available to any third party;
(ii) use or access the Website or Content: (A) in violation of any applicable law or Intellectual Property Rights; (B) in a manner that threatens the security or functionality of the Website; or (C) for any purpose or in any manner not expressly permitted in these Terms;
(iii) input, upload, transmit or otherwise provide to or through the Website any computer viruses, worms, malicious code, or any software intended to damage or alter a computer system or data;
(iv) copy, modify, reproduce, download, print, save, publish, post, transmit, distribute, translate or create derivative works from the Website or Content, including by recording or capturing Content in screenshots;
(v) reverse engineer, de-compile or disassemble the Website or any part of it, or otherwise attempt to discover non-public source code;
(vi) use or access the Website or Content to monitor its availability, performance or functionality, or for benchmarking;
(vii) remove or obscure any proprietary notices or labels on the Website or Content, including brand, copyright and trade-mark notices;
(viii) perform any vulnerability, penetration or similar testing of the Website;
(ix) use data mining, robots, crawlers, scrapers or similar data-gathering or extraction methods, undertake systematic or repeated manual collection, or compile any Content into a dataset, archive, index, database or third-party retrieval service; or
(x) use, input, upload, transmit or otherwise supply any Content, or any copy, extract, screenshot, translation or other representation of Content, to or for an artificial intelligence or machine-learning system. This includes use for training, fine-tuning, testing, evaluation, benchmarking, distillation, development or improvement of a model or system; creation of embeddings, vector indexes, knowledge bases or retrieval corpora; retrieval-augmented generation; or generation of answers, summaries or other outputs, whether or not a model is retrained. You will not authorize, enable or assist another person or service to undertake any such use.
No general permission is granted for quotation, republication, search indexing, machine-readable reuse or use in artificial intelligence systems. The limited viewing permission in Section 1(a) does not authorize any of the activities prohibited by this Section 1(c).
(d) Suspension and Modification. Erisian Institute may from time to time and in its discretion, without limiting any of its other rights or remedies under these Terms, or at law or in equity: (i) suspend your access to or use of the Website or any component of it: (A) for scheduled maintenance; (B) if Erisian Institute believes in good faith that you have violated any provision of these Terms; (C) to address any emergency security concerns; or (D) if required to do so by a governmental or regulatory authority or as a result of a change in applicable law; and (ii) make any modifications, updates, upgrades, improvements or enhancements to the Website or Content (each, a “Modification”). Except where prohibited by applicable law or restricted by a separate agreement, Erisian Institute may change or discontinue any element of the Website or Content without notice.
2. Reservation of Rights and Licence Grants
(a) Website Submissions. As between Erisian Institute and you, you retain all right, title and interest in and to electronic data and information submitted by or on your behalf through Website enquiry channels (“Website Submissions”), including any Intellectual Property Rights therein. You grant Erisian Institute a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use, copy, store, transmit and display Website Submissions solely to the extent, and for the period, reasonably necessary to receive, assess and respond to your enquiries and complete directly related follow-up, in accordance with these Terms, the Privacy Policy and applicable law. This limited licence survives cessation of Website use or termination of these Terms only for those purposes and that period. Feedback is governed by Section 2(c). Material governed by a separate agreement remain governed by that agreement under Section 1(b). Personal information is subject to Section 4(b).
(b) Erisian Institute Property. Erisian Institute or its licensors own and retain all right, title and interest, including all intellectual property rights (including patents, copyrights, trade-marks, trade secrets and any other intellectual property rights recognised in any jurisdiction) (“Intellectual Property Rights”), in and to: (i) the Website; (ii) the Content, including all reports, analyses and other materials provided by Erisian Institute through the Website; and (iii) any Modification to any of the foregoing (collectively, “Erisian Institute Property”). No rights are granted to you hereunder other than as expressly set forth herein. Making Erisian Institute Property publicly accessible does not transfer ownership or grant a licence to reuse it.
“Erisian” and Erisian logos are trade-marks of Erisian Group Inc. Other names, trade-marks and third-party materials remain the property of their respective owners. No right to use any trade-mark or third-party material is granted merely because it appears on the Website. All rights not expressly granted in these Terms are reserved.
(c) Feedback. To the extent that you submit ideas, suggestions, documents or proposals regarding the Website or Erisian Institute’s offerings to Erisian Institute (“Feedback”), you acknowledge and agree that: (i) the Feedback does not contain confidential or proprietary information; (ii) Erisian Institute is not under any obligation of confidentiality with respect to the Feedback; (iii) Erisian Institute may already be considering or developing something similar to the Feedback; and (iv) Erisian Institute will be entitled to use the Feedback for any purpose, in any way, without compensation or reimbursement to you. This provision is subject to Section 1(b) and does not change obligations under an applicable separate agreement.
3. Your Responsibilities
You are responsible for: (a) ensuring that Website Submissions do not violate any applicable law or infringe or misappropriate the rights of any third party; (b) obtaining all necessary consents, rights and permissions in connection with those submissions, including any consents required under applicable privacy law; and (c) promptly notifying Erisian Institute of any actual or suspected unauthorized use of the Website or other breach of security known to you. Information you supply through the Website must be true, accurate, current and complete. You will not impersonate another person, misrepresent your authority or affiliation, harvest personal information, or use the Website to transmit spam or unlawful communications.
An enquiry, funding enquiry, partnership enquiry, collaboration proposal, volunteer expression of interest or other communication does not itself create an agreement or other commercial relationship, grant access to the Erisian platform, or oblige Erisian Institute to enter into a transaction or engagement. An automated acknowledgement confirms receipt only. Any resulting engagement is subject to the applicable separate agreement.
4. Communications and Privacy
(a) Communications. Except as provided in an applicable separate agreement, Erisian Institute does not guarantee the confidentiality of communications made through the Website or the security of data transmitted over the Internet or public networks. Do not submit confidential or proprietary information through public Website enquiry channels unless appropriate arrangements have been agreed with Erisian Institute. Nothing in these Terms displaces confidentiality or data obligations imposed by an applicable separate agreement or by law.
(b) Privacy. Please review Erisian Institute’s Privacy Policy, which contains information about Erisian Institute’s practices in collecting, storing, using and disclosing information about identifiable individuals. These Terms do not replace any notice or consent required by applicable privacy law. The permissions concerning Website Submissions and Feedback do not authorize the handling of personal information contrary to applicable law or the Privacy Policy.
(c) Electronic Communications. Erisian Institute may communicate with you electronically in response to enquiries and provide notices in accordance with Section 9(a). To the extent permitted by applicable law, notices and other communications provided electronically satisfy requirements that they be in writing. Acceptance of these Terms does not by itself constitute express consent to marketing communications; any such communications remain subject to applicable law.
5. Third-Party Content, Websites and Services
The Website may provide links or access to third-party content, websites or services. Erisian Institute does not endorse any third-party content, websites or services, or guarantee or warrant their quality, accuracy, reliability, completeness, currency, timeliness, non-infringement, merchantability or fitness for any purpose. Third-party content, websites and services are not under Erisian Institute’s control, and if you choose to access them, you do so entirely at your own risk. You may be required to accept and comply with applicable third-party terms. Your interactions with third parties are solely between you and those third parties.
6. Your Warranty; Disclaimer
(a) Your Warranty. You represent, warrant and covenant to Erisian Institute that: (i) you have the legal power and authority to enter into these Terms; (ii) you have obtained all necessary consents, rights and permissions in and relating to Website Submissions for Erisian Institute to perform its obligations and exercise its rights under these Terms; and (iii) your use of the Website will comply with all applicable laws.
(b) DISCLAIMER. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ERISIAN INSTITUTE DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE WEBSITE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE; NOR DOES IT MAKE ANY WARRANTY AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM USE OF THE WEBSITE OR CONTENT. EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY SET FORTH IN THESE TERMS, THE WEBSITE AND CONTENT ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, AND ERISIAN INSTITUTE HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.
Without limiting the foregoing, Erisian Institute does not warrant the accuracy, completeness or currency of Content, compatibility with your computer system, or that the Website or links from it will be free of viruses or other harmful code. You are responsible for implementing safeguards to protect your systems. These Terms do not create a Website support or service-level commitment. Nothing in this Section 6 alters a commitment incorporated into an applicable separate agreement under Section 1(b).
7. Limitation of Liability
(a) TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL ERISIAN INSTITUTE BE LIABLE, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR LOST PROFITS, LOSS OF REVENUE, LOSS OF GOODWILL, INTERRUPTION OF BUSINESS, LOSS OF USE, LOSS OF DATA, PERSONAL INJURY, FINES, FEES, PENALTIES OR OTHER LIABILITIES, WHETHER OR NOT ERISIAN INSTITUTE WAS ADVISED OR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, RESULTING FROM OR RELATED TO THE WEBSITE, CONTENT, THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE WEBSITE OR CONTENT, OR THESE TERMS.
(b) YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE WEBSITE AND CONTENT ARE PROVIDED FOR GENERAL INFORMATION AND ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR YOUR OWN PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT OR ADVICE TAILORED TO YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES. YOU ARE WHOLLY RESPONSIBLE FOR DECISIONS MADE WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE WEBSITE OR CONTENT AND WILL APPLY YOUR OWN PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT TO SUCH DECISIONS. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ERISIAN INSTITUTE WILL HAVE NO LIABILITY FOR ANY LOSSES INCURRED BY YOU ARISING FROM DECISIONS OR ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE WEBSITE OR CONTENT.
(c) TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL ERISIAN INSTITUTE’S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS OR YOUR USE OF, OR INABILITY TO USE, THE WEBSITE OR CONTENT EXCEED CAD $100. THE EXISTENCE OF ONE OR MORE CLAIMS WILL NOT INCREASE THIS MAXIMUM LIABILITY AMOUNT.
(d) The Parties acknowledge that the limitations of liability set out in this Section 7 reflect the allocation of risk between the Parties under these Terms, and that the Parties would not enter into these Terms without these limitations on liability.
(e) This Section 7 applies to claims governed by these Terms. The exclusions and limitations in this Section 7 protect Erisian Institute only and do not limit your liability to Erisian Institute. This Section 7 does not replace, reduce or otherwise amend any exclusion or limitation of liability under another applicable separate agreement, which takes priority under Section 1(b). Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability, a warranty, a condition, a right or a remedy to the extent that doing so is prohibited by applicable law.
8. Term and Termination
(a) Term. These Terms commence on the Effective Date and continue in effect unless terminated in accordance with this Section 8 (the “Term”). You may terminate these Terms by ceasing use of the Website and complying with Section 8(b). Erisian Institute may suspend or terminate your right to access or use the Website, or terminate these Terms, in its discretion, including if it believes in good faith that you have violated these Terms. Termination of these Terms does not terminate an applicable separate agreement.
(b) Effect of Termination. Upon termination of these Terms for any reason: (i) all rights and licences granted to you hereunder will immediately terminate, and you will immediately cease all use of the Website and Erisian Institute Property obtained under these Terms; and (ii) you will return or destroy all such Erisian Institute Property in your possession or control. Upon Erisian Institute’s written request, you will certify in writing that you have complied with this Section 8(b). This obligation is not limited to copies obtained in breach of these Terms. Property, licences and retention obligations governed by an applicable separate agreement remain subject to that agreement under Section 1(b). Any copy that must be retained under applicable law may be retained solely for that required purpose and not for reuse.
(c) Survival. Sections 1(b) (Separate Agreements and the Erisian Institute Platform), 1(c) (Restrictions on Use), 2(a) (Website Submissions, solely for the purposes and period specified in that section), 2(b) (Erisian Institute Property), 2(c) (Feedback), 4 (Communications and Privacy), 5 (Third-Party Content, Websites and Services), 6 (Your Warranty; Disclaimer), 7 (Limitation of Liability), 8(b) (Effect of Termination), 8(c) (Survival) and 9 (General Provisions), together with any other provision which by its nature survives termination, will survive termination of these Terms.
9. General Provisions
(a) Notices. All notices under these Terms will be in writing and will be deemed given when: (i) delivered personally; (ii) sent by confirmed email; or (iii) one (1) business day after deposit with a nationally recognised overnight courier. Notices to Erisian Institute will be sent to legal@erisian.org. Notices to you may be sent to an email address you have provided to Erisian Institute. Erisian Institute may also provide notices by posting them on the Website. Questions and permission requests may be sent to legal@erisian.org.
(b) Assignment. You will not assign or transfer these Terms without the prior written consent of Erisian Institute. Any purported assignment in violation of this Section will be null and void. Erisian Institute may assign these Terms without restriction, subject to applicable law. These Terms will be binding upon and will inure to the benefit of the Parties and their respective successors and permitted assigns.
(c) Governing Law. Subject to mandatory applicable law, these Terms will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without regard to their conflict of laws principles. The Parties irrevocably submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Province of Ontario. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods will not apply to these Terms.
(d) Severability. If any provision of these Terms is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable, such provision will be severed from these Terms and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.
(e) Waiver. A waiver of any provision of these Terms must be in writing and a waiver in one instance will not preclude enforcement of such provision on other occasions.
(f) Entire Agreement. Subject to Section 1(b), these Terms constitute the entire agreement between the Parties with respect to their subject matter and supersede all prior or contemporaneous agreements, representations or communications between the Parties concerning that subject matter, whether written or oral. For clarity, this provision does not supersede another applicable separate agreement.
(g) Amendments. Erisian Institute may amend these Terms from time to time by giving you thirty (30) days prior notice of an amendment or posting notice of that amendment on the Website. Unless otherwise indicated by Erisian Institute, an amendment will become effective thirty (30) days after the date the notice is provided to you or is posted on the Website, whichever is earlier. Your continued use of the Website following the effective date of an amendment will constitute your acceptance of that amendment. Erisian Institute will update the “Last updated” date and provide any additional notice or obtain any consent required by applicable law.
(h) Relationship of Parties. These Terms do not create a partnership, franchise, joint venture, agency, fiduciary or employment relationship between the Parties.
(i) Force Majeure. To the extent permitted by applicable law, neither Party will be liable for any failure or delay in performance under these Terms caused by circumstances beyond its reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, acts of government, flood, fire, earthquakes, civil unrest, acts of terror, strikes, Internet service failures or delays, or cyberattacks.
(j) English Language. Subject to mandatory applicable law, it is the express wish of the Parties that these Terms and all related documents be drawn up in English.
(k) Mandatory Law. All provisions of these Terms apply to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. Nothing in these Terms is intended to exclude a right or remedy, or impose a restriction, to the extent that doing so is prohibited by applicable law.