Balloon ^® Terms of Service

Last updated: September 10, 2020

Welcome to Balloon!

Thanks for using our Balloon website, mobile applications, and other products and services (collectively, the “Services”). The Services are provided by Balloon, Inc. (“Balloon,” “we,” “our,” or “us”), located at 268 Bush St. #3936, San Francisco, CA 94104, U.S.A.

By using our Services, you are agreeing to these terms. Please read them carefully. Our Services are diverse, so sometimes additional terms or product requirements (including age requirements) may apply. Additional terms will be available with the relevant Services, and those additional terms become part of your agreement with us if you use those Services. By accessing Balloon or using our Services, you intend and agree to be legally bound by this agreement.

1.    Using our Services

You must follow any policies made available to you within the Services.

Don’t misuse our Services. For example, don’t interfere with our Services, try to access them using a method other than the interface and the instructions that we provide, or extensively or automatically copy any content from the Services (in other words, no scraping). You may use our Services only as permitted by law, including applicable export and re-export control laws and regulations. We may suspend or stop providing our Services to you if you do not comply with our terms or policies or if we are investigating suspected misconduct.

Using our Services does not give you ownership of any intellectual property rights in our Services or the content you access. You may not use content from our Services unless you obtain permission from its owner or are otherwise permitted by law. These terms do not grant you the right to use any branding or logos used in our Services, including the Balloon name and logo. Don’t remove, obscure, or alter any legal notices displayed in or along with our Services.

Our Services display some content that is not our own, for example, content belonging to our users. This content is the sole responsibility of the individual or entity that makes it available. We may review content to determine whether it is illegal or violates our policies, and we may remove or refuse to display content that we believe violates our policies or the law. But we do not generally review content beforehand, and we are not obligated to do so.

In connection with your use of the Services, we may send you service announcements, notifications, administrative messages, and other information. You may opt out of some of those communications, for example, by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link in marketing e-mails. Please be aware that there may be a brief period before we are able to process your opt-out, but we will always respect your legal rights to opt out of receiving unwanted messages.

Some of our Services are available on mobile devices. Using some of our Services may cause you to incur data charges with your wireless provider. Please be aware that we have no control over these charges, and if you do not wish to be charged, you should stop using the Services.

2.    Your Balloon Account

You may need an account in order to use some of our Services. You may create your own account or your account may be assigned to you by an administrator, such as your employer. If you are using an account assigned to you by an administrator, different or additional terms may apply and your administrator may be able to access or disable your account.

To protect your account, keep your password confidential. You are responsible for the activity that happens on or through your account. If you learn of any unauthorized use of your account and/or password, please contact us at privacy@getballoon.com.

3.    Payment

You agree to pay all amounts owed to us for the Services under any terms, policies or other written or electronic agreement we may have in place. We may require you to maintain valid credit card or other payment account information with us in order to receive the Services, and if so, you hereby authorize us to charge your credit card or other payment account for the Services. Any failure to maintain valid, up-to-date payment information with us or to keep your payments current will constitute a material breach of these terms, for which we may suspend or terminate your access to the Services immediately without notice. Interest will be charged on all unpaid delinquent amounts at the rate of 1.5% per month or the highest rate permitted by applicable law, whichever is lesser. You agree to reimburse us for all collection agency fees, attorneys’ fees and other costs we may incur to collect delinquent amounts you owe to us.

If you sign up from our website, you are entitled to a 7-day free trial. You will then be billed monthly or annually, as specified, once the 7 days have elapsed. If you sign up for a monthly account, you may cancel at any time. To cancel your subscription, please email us at support@getballoon.com.

4.    Privacy and Feedback

Our privacy policy explains how we treat your personal information and protect your privacy when you use our Services or when our users interact with us in other ways. By using our Services, you agree that we can collect, use and share data from you as described in our privacy policy. If you submit feedback or suggestions about our Services, we may use your feedback or suggestions without obligation to you.

5.    Content You Submit

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Balloon (and those we work with) a royalty-free, worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, perform, display and distribute such content solely for the purpose of operating and providing Services to you, improving our Services, or developing new services to better serve you and other customers. For the avoidance of any doubt, Balloon shall only use your content to provide Services to you and for internal purposes. Balloon will not make your content publicly available, nor share your content with any third party without your prior written consent. The license contained herein shall continue even if you stop using our Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.

If you have an account, we may display your profile information or actions you take on the Services or on third-party applications connected to your account (such as comments you post) in our Services, including providing notifications to you on linked platforms. However, we will respect the choices you make to limit sharing or visibility settings in your account. Any content that the Services permit you to delete is removed from public display and marked for future deletion; however, it may persist in backup or residual copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to other users).

You agree that you will not:

• Submit excessive or unsolicited commercial messages or spam any users
• Submit malicious content or viruses
• Solicit other people’s login information, credit card numbers, or other sensitive information
• Harass or bully other users
• Post content that is hate speech, threatening or pornographic, that incites violence or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.

6.    INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION

As we ask others to respect our intellectual property rights, we respect the intellectual property rights of others, and require our users and customers to do so. If you are a copyright owner or its agent and believe that any content residing on or accessible through the Services infringes upon your copyrights, you may submit a notification under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) by providing our Copyright Agent (the “Designated Agent”) with the following information in writing (see 17 U.S.C § 512(c)(3) for further detail):

• Identification of the work or material being infringed.
• Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing, including its location, with sufficient detail so that we are capable of finding it and verifying its existence.
• Contact information for the notifying party (the "Notifying Party"), including name, address, telephone number, and email address.
• A statement that the Notifying Party has a good faith belief that the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or law.
• A statement made under penalty of perjury that the information provided in the notice is accurate and that the Notifying Party is authorized to make the complaint on behalf of the copyright owner.
• A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright that has been allegedly infringed.

Please also note that the information provided in a notice of copyright infringement may be forwarded to the user who posted the allegedly infringing content. After removing material in response to a valid DMCA notice, we will notify the user responsible for the allegedly infringing material that we have removed or disabled access to the material. We will terminate, under appropriate circumstances, users who are repeat copyright infringers, and we reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to terminate any user for actual or apparent copyright infringement.

If you believe you are the wrongful subject of a DMCA notification, you may file a counter-notification with us by providing the following information to the Designated Agent at the address below:

• The specific URLs of material that we have removed or to which we have disabled access.
• Your name, address, telephone number, and email address.
• A statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided the original DMCA notification or an agent of such person.
• The following statement: "I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled."
• Your signature.

Upon receipt of a valid counter-notification, we will forward it to Notifying Party who submitted the original DMCA notification. The original Notifying Party (or the copyright holder he or she represents) will then have ten (10) days to notify us that he or she has filed legal action relating to the allegedly infringing material. If we do not receive any such notification within ten (10) days, we may restore the material to the Services.

The contact information for our Designated Agent is:

Balloon, Inc.
Attention: Copyright Agent
268 Bush St. #3936
San Francisco, CA 94104
Email: copyright@getballoon.com

If you believe that any of your intellectual property rights other than copyrights have been infringed, please e-mail us at copyright@getballoon.com. We reserve the right, in our sole and absolute discretion, to suspend or terminate any user who infringes the intellectual property rights of Balloon or others, and/or to remove, delete, edit or disable access to such person’s content.  You agree that we have no liability for any action taken under this section.

7.    About Software in our Services

When a Service requires or includes downloadable software (such as a mobile app), this software may update automatically on your device once a new version or feature is available. By continuing to use Services, you acknowledge and consent to such software updates or implementation of new versions or features of software. Some Services may let you adjust your automatic update settings.

Balloon gives you a revocable, personal, worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable and non-exclusive license to use the software we provide to you as part of the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the Services as provided by us, in the manner permitted by these terms. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, or lease any part of our Services or included software, nor may you reverse engineer or attempt to extract the source code of that software, unless laws prohibit those restrictions or you have our written permission.

8.    Modifying and Terminating our Services

We are constantly changing and improving our Services. We may add or remove functionalities or features, and we may suspend or stop a Service altogether.

You can stop using our Services at any time, although we’ll be sorry to see you go. We may also stop providing Services to you, or add or create new limits to our Services, at any time and at our sole and absolute discretion.

9.    Our Warranties and Disclaimers

We provide our Services using a commercially reasonable level of skill and care and we hope that you will enjoy using them. But there are certain things that we don’t promise about our Services.

OTHER THAN AS EXPRESSLY SET OUT IN THESE TERMS OR ADDITIONAL TERMS, NEITHER Balloon NOR ITS LICENSORS, SUPPLIERS OR DISTRIBUTORS MAKE ANY SPECIFIC PROMISES ABOUT THE SERVICES. FOR EXAMPLE, WE DON’T MAKE ANY COMMITMENTS ABOUT THE CONTENT WITHIN THE SERVICES, THE SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS OF THE SERVICES, OR THEIR RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY, OR ABILITY TO MEET YOUR NEEDS. WE ALSO DO NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTIES OR COMMITMENT RELATING TO NON-INFRINGEMENT, FREEDOM FROM VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL CODE, OR ERROR-FREE OR UNINTERRUPTED OPERATIONS. WE PROVIDE THE SERVICES “AS IS.”

SOME JURISDICTIONS PROVIDE FOR CERTAIN WARRANTIES, LIKE THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES.

10.    Liability for our Services

WHEN PERMITTED BY LAW, Balloon, AND OUR LICENSORS, SUPPLIERS AND DISTRIBUTORS, WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUES, OR DATA, FINANCIAL LOSSES OR INDIRECT, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES.

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE TOTAL LIABILITY OF Balloon, AND OUR LICENSORS, SUPPLIERS AND DISTRIBUTORS, FOR ANY CLAIMS UNDER THESE TERMS OR RELATING TO YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES, INCLUDING FOR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES, IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US TO USE THE SERVICES (OR, IF WE CHOOSE, TO SUPPLYING YOU THE SERVICES AGAIN).

IN ALL CASES, Balloon, AND ITS LICENSORS, SUPPLIERS AND DISTRIBUTORS, WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE THAT IS NOT REASONABLY FORESEEABLE OR THAT IS DUE TO EVENTS OUTSIDE OF OUR REASONABLE CONTROL, SUCH AS WARS, CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES, STORMS, NATURAL DISASTERS, ACTS OF GOVERNMENT, SUPPLY INTERRUPTIONS, OR TELECOMMUNICATION OR INTERNET FAILURES.

11.    Business/Employer Uses of our Services

If you are using our Services on behalf of a business or employer, that business or employer accepts these terms.

12.    Indemnification

You hereby agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Balloon its affiliated companies, and their respective directors, officers, employees, agents, representatives, partners, contractors, successors and assigns from and against all claims, losses, expenses, damages and costs (including, but not limited to, reasonable attorneys' fees), resulting from or arising out of your actual or alleged breach of these terms, any content you provide through the Services, or your use or misuse of the Services. However, you will not be responsible for claims, damages and costs which are found by a court of competent jurisdiction to have arisen solely from our wrongful acts or omissions.  

Subject to this Agreement, Balloon hereby agrees to (i) defend you (and if applicable, your officers, directors and employees) against any third party suit, claim, or demand (each a “Claim”) that alleges the Services used in accordance with this Agreement infringe any issued patent, copyright, trademark or misappropriation of any trade secret of such third party; and (ii) pay any court-ordered award of damages or settlement amount to the extent arising from such Claims. In addition, Balloon may, at its expense and in its sole discretion: (i) procure for you the right to continue using the Services; (ii) replace the same with other products of substantially equivalent functions and efficiency that are not subject to any Claims of infringement; or (iii) modify the Services so that there is no longer any infringement, provided that such modification does not materially and adversely affect the functional capabilities of the Services. Alternatively, Balloon may elect to terminate the affected Services and refund to you any subscription fees prepaid by you, prorated to cover the remaining portion of the applicable subscription term for the affected Services after the date of termination. The foregoing indemnification obligation of Balloon shall not apply: (1) to Claims arising from any content posted by third parties using the Services, (2) if the Services are modified by any party other than Balloon, but solely to the extent the alleged infringement is related to such modification; (3) the Services are combined with other non-Balloon products, applications, or processes not authorized by Balloon, but solely to the extent the alleged infringement is related to such combination; (4) to the extent the Claim arises in connection with any unauthorized use of the Services, or use that is not in compliance with all applicable laws; or (5) to any third party products, processes or materials that are not provided by Balloon. THIS SECTION SETS FORTH Balloon’S SOLE LIABILITY AND YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDY WITH RESPECT TO ANY CLAIM OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY INFRINGEMENT.

13.    About these Terms

We may modify these terms or any additional terms that apply to a Service to, for example, reflect changes to the law or changes to our Services. You should look at the terms regularly and the “Last Updated” date at the beginning of these terms. We’ll post notice of modifications to these terms on this page or notify you of modifications to these terms by e-mail or through the Services. We’ll post notice of modified additional terms in the applicable Service. Changes will not apply retroactively and will become effective no sooner than ten (10) days after they are posted. However, changes addressing new functions for a Service or changes made for legal reasons will be effective immediately. If you do not agree to the modified terms for a Service, you should discontinue your use of that Service.

If there is a conflict between these terms and any additional terms for a Service, the additional terms will control for that conflict.

These terms control the relationship between Balloon and you. They do not create any third party beneficiary rights. If you do not comply with these terms, and we don’t take action right away, this doesn’t mean that we are giving up any rights that we may have (such as taking action in the future). If it turns out that a particular term is not enforceable, this will not affect any other terms.

The laws of the United States and the State of Delaware, excluding Delaware’s conflict of laws rules, will apply to any disputes arising out of or relating to these terms or the Services. All claims arising out of or relating to these terms or the Services will be litigated exclusively in the federal or state courts of San Francisco, California, U.S.A., and you and Balloon consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts.

You may not assign or delegate your rights or obligations relating to these terms or your account for the Services without our prior written consent. We may assign these terms or assign or delegate any of our rights or obligations at any time.

For information about how to contact Balloon, please email us.

14.    THIRD PARTY TERMS

You agree that in addition to these terms, your use of our mobile app is subject to the usage rules set forth, as applicable, in Apple’s App Store terms of service, Google Play’s terms of service, or any other third party platform, developer or distributor end-user license agreement and/or terms and conditions by which you agree to be bound when you download our mobile app or otherwise access the Services.

Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, if you downloaded our mobile app from Apple, you and Balloon acknowledge and agree to the following: This agreement is concluded between you and Balloon only, and not with Apple Inc. (“Apple”). Balloon, not Apple, is solely responsible for the app and the content thereof. Apple has no obligation whatsoever to furnish any maintenance and support services with respect to the app. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Apple will have no warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the app, and any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs or expenses attributable to any failure to conform to any warranty will be Balloon’s sole responsibility. Balloon, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claims by you or any third party relating to the app or your possession and/or use of the app, including, but not limited to: (i) product liability claims; (ii) any claim that the app fails to conform to any applicable legal or regulatory requirement; and (iii) claims arising under consumer protection or similar legislation. In the event of any third-party claim that the app or your possession and use of the app infringes that third party’s intellectual property rights, Apple will have no responsibility for the investigation, defense, settlement and discharge of any such intellectual property infringement claim. You represent and warrant that (i) you are not located in a country that is subject to a U.S. Government embargo, or that has been designated by the U.S. Government as a “terrorist supporting” country; and (ii) you are not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties. Apple, and Apple’s subsidiaries, are third party beneficiaries of this agreement, and upon your acceptance of the terms and conditions of the agreement, Apple will have the right (and will be deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce the agreement against you as a third party beneficiary thereof.