Archon

Quorin Technologies · Archon

Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of Archon and any licence you hold for it.

Effective
9 August 2026
Last updated
9 August 2026

Draft — not yet in force

This document is missing details that only Quorin Technologies can supply, and it has not been reviewed by a qualified lawyer in Zimbabwe. Do not rely on it, and do not present it to a customer, until both are done.

Outstanding

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1. Who these terms are between

These terms are an agreement between Quorin Technologies, of [TO BE COMPLETED] (“Quorin”, “we”, “us”), and the organisation that installs, runs or licenses Archon (“you”, “the laboratory”).

By installing, running or licensing Archon you accept these terms. If you are accepting them on behalf of an institution, you confirm you are authorised to bind it.

2. What we supply, and what we do not

Archon is software that you install and run on infrastructure you control. We supply the software, the licence that unlocks paid capabilities, and the support described in section 8.

We do not host your deployment, hold your records, or operate your laboratory. The server, the database, backups, network security, physical access, user account management and everything recorded in Archon are yours to run and yours to be responsible for. We cannot recover data we have never held.

Where you choose to run Archon on infrastructure operated by a third party — a cloud provider, a hosting company, a managed database — your relationship with that provider is yours, not ours, and their terms apply to it alongside these.

3. Licence grant

Subject to these terms and to payment of any applicable fees, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to install and use Archon for the internal operations of your own laboratory or laboratories, for the term of your licence key.

The Free tier is granted permanently and does not expire. Paid tiers unlock additional capabilities for the period stated in your licence key.

You may not:

  • Circumvent, disable, patch out or otherwise tamper with licence verification, entitlement checks, the audit hash chain, or electronic signature capture.
  • Forge or alter a licence key, share one outside the organisation it names, or use one issued to another organisation.
  • Resell, sublicense, rent, or offer Archon to third parties as a hosted or managed service without a separate written agreement with us.
  • Remove or obscure attribution, copyright or licence notices in the software.
  • Use Archon to hold records you then represent to an accreditation body or regulator as having been produced under controls you have deliberately bypassed.

Reverse engineering is permitted only to the extent that applicable law says it cannot be prohibited.

4. Your records are yours

We claim no ownership of, and no licence over, anything you record in Archon. Your notebook entries, samples, protocols, datasets, attachments, audit trail and signatures belong to your laboratory. In a normal self-hosted deployment they never leave your infrastructure, and we have no technical means of reading them.

Archon does not phone home. Licences are verified offline against a public key that ships with the software, so an air-gapped deployment works exactly like a connected one.

5. Tiers, fees and payment

Current tiers and prices are published on our pricing page. Prices are quoted per laboratory per year in United States dollars, exclusive of any value-added tax, withholding tax, duty or bank charge, which are your responsibility.

Users are unlimited at every tier, permanently. We do not charge per seat and we will not introduce seat caps, because seat caps push laboratories into shared logins, and shared logins destroy the attribution that makes a record defensible. The one metered dimension is the number of concurrently active research projects, which is stated for each tier on the pricing page and can always be resolved by archiving completed work rather than by paying more.

Paid licences are issued for a fixed term, normally twelve months, and are invoiced annually in advance. Where you pay by card or mobile money through a payment provider, the provider’s own terms govern the payment transaction itself. Where you pay by purchase order or bank transfer, invoices are due within 30 days of issue unless we agree otherwise in writing.

Network tier pricing is by quotation only and is set out in a separate order form, which prevails over the published price where the two differ.

6. What happens when a licence expires

An expired licence degrades to the Free tier. It never locks you out of your own records. Paid capabilities — audit trail verification, accreditation readiness, evidence packs, quality management, API access, the validation pack — stop being available. Every notebook entry, sample, protocol, dataset, audit entry and electronic signature remains present, readable and exportable, indefinitely.

We consider any other design indefensible in a system of record. A laboratory should never face losing access to its own compliance history because an invoice was late.

Reinstating a licence restores the paid capabilities immediately. Nothing is deleted in the interim.

7. Pilot and evaluation licences

We may make a pilot code available that grants full capabilities for a fixed evaluation period. Pilot codes are limited in number, single-use per laboratory, and granted for evaluation of the software — not for production accreditation submissions.

A pilot grant expires on its stated date and then degrades to the Free tier under section 6. We may withdraw an unredeemed pilot code at any time. Nothing in a pilot obliges either of us to enter a paid agreement.

8. Support

Free tier: documentation and public issue reporting. No response time is committed.

Professional tier: email support during our business hours, with a target first response of two business days.

Accredited tier: a named support contact, a target first response of one business day, and assistance preparing for assessment. Network tier support is set out in the applicable order form.

Support covers Archon itself. It does not extend to your server, operating system, database administration, network, or the scientific content of your records.

9. Accreditation and regulatory claims

Archon helps you demonstrate compliance. It does not confer it, and we do not certify you. Accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025, conformity with 21 CFR Part 11, GLP, ALCOA+ or any other standard is granted by your accreditation body or regulator on the basis of their own assessment of your laboratory — its people, methods, equipment and quality system, of which a records system is one part.

The readiness scores, control assessments and evidence packs Archon produces are derived from your live data and are provided to help you prepare. They are not an audit opinion, a certification, or a warranty that any assessment will succeed.

You remain responsible for validating Archon for your intended use. The validation pack supplied with the Accredited tier is documentation to support your qualification exercise; performing that exercise is yours.

10. Intellectual property

Archon, its source code, design and documentation remain the property of Quorin and its licensors. These terms grant you a licence to use the software, not any ownership of it. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

Third-party open-source components are licensed under their own terms, which are included with the software and prevail over these terms in respect of those components.

11. Warranties and disclaimers

We warrant that we have the right to license Archon to you, and that paid capabilities will materially perform as described in our documentation during your licence term. Your exclusive remedy for a breach of that warranty is that we correct the defect or, if we cannot within a reasonable period, refund the unused portion of your fee.

Otherwise, and to the fullest extent permitted by law, Archon is provided “as is” without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the software will be uninterrupted or error-free.

12. Limitation of liability

Neither party excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Subject to that, and to the fullest extent permitted by law:

  • Neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of revenue, loss of anticipated savings, loss of business, or loss of goodwill.
  • We are not liable for loss of or damage to your data, or for the cost of reconstituting it. Your data is held on infrastructure you control and we have no access to it. Backing it up is yours.
  • Our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with these terms is limited to the fees you paid us in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim. Where you hold only a Free tier licence, and have therefore paid us nothing, that limit is nil.

13. Term and termination

These terms apply for as long as you use Archon. Either party may terminate a paid licence for material breach that the other has not remedied within 30 days of written notice.

On termination, paid capabilities cease. Your Free tier licence and your access to your own records continue, because they are on your own infrastructure and we have no ability — and no wish — to take them away. Sections 4, 10, 11, 12 and 15 survive termination.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. Where a change materially reduces your rights, we will give at least 30 days’ notice by email to the address on your account or licence record, and the change will not take effect for your current paid term. Continuing to use Archon after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of it.

15. General

These terms, together with any order form and our Acceptable Use Policy and Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between us on this subject. An order form signed by both parties prevails where it conflicts with these terms.

Neither party may assign this agreement without the other’s consent, except to a successor of substantially the whole of its business. If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest continues in force. A failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it.

These terms are governed by the laws of Zimbabwe, and the parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Zimbabwe.

16. Contact

Questions about these terms: quorinstartup@proton.me. General enquiries: quorinstartup@proton.me.