Terms of use and application licence

1. Who the agreement is with

The other party is YYY SOFTWARE LTD, company number 16938311, on the register for England and Wales. Throughout this page, we and us mean that company, and you means the person reading the site or holding the phone.

Most people reading this are consumers, meaning individuals acting outside a trade or profession, and consumer law gives you protections that no contract can take away. Where a term below would cut across one of those protections, the protection wins and the term does not apply to you. Section 12 sets out the main ones.

Where you are agreeing on behalf of a business, you are confirming that you are entitled to bind it, the business is bound alongside you, and the consumer-only paragraphs are not yours to rely on.

2. What these terms cover

Two things, running on slightly different tracks.

This website. Sections 3, 5, 7, 8 and 14 to 21 govern your use of yyysoftware.co.uk. They apply from the moment a page loads, and reading on is the acceptance.

Our applications. Sections 4 to 21 govern any application we publish through the Apple App Store or Google Play, and take effect for a given app when you install it. Every app of ours ships under these terms unless its own listing points somewhere else, in which case the listing wins for that app.

The privacy notice and the cookie notice are not competitors to this page; they describe data, and this page describes the deal. All three are read together.

When these terms change

The version and the date sit at the top and move whenever the wording does. A correction or a clarification takes effect when it appears. A change that genuinely reduces what you get, or increases what you owe, will not be applied retrospectively to a purchase already made, and where such a change affects a subscription you are already paying for, you get notice before the next renewal and can cancel instead.

3. Using this website

The site is free to read, needs no account, and asks nothing of you. Read it, quote it, link to it, print it, feed it to a screen reader, save a copy for your own use.

What is not welcome is the deliberate attempt to break it: hammering it to make it fall over, probing it for holes without telling us, injecting anything into a page, or scraping it in a way that degrades it for everyone else. Section 5 covers the same ground for apps.

Pages here describe what the company builds and how it works. They are written carefully, but they are not advice on your particular situation, and an offer capable of acceptance would say so in terms.

Where a page links somewhere else, that destination belongs to whoever runs it. We link because something is useful, not because we vouch for everything it will ever say.

4. The licence you get

Installing an app of ours buys you a licence to use it, not ownership of it. The licence is personal to you, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and revocable only as section 17 describes.

Its scope follows the store's rules, which is the practical shape of the thing:

• On Apple platforms, the licence runs to any Apple-branded device you own or control, on the terms of your Apple account, including the sharing arrangements Apple provides for a family.
• On Android, the licence runs to devices signed into your Google account, on Google Play's terms, including the family library where the listing supports it.

Where an app of ours carries no separate end user licence, Apple's standard Licensed Application End User Licence Agreement applies to the App Store version, as Apple requires. This page sits alongside it, and on any point where the two genuinely cannot both be right, Apple's document governs the App Store copy. Apple and its subsidiaries may enforce that agreement against you as third-party beneficiaries.

The licence lasts while you keep the app, and while any subscription it depends on is live. It does not expire because we stopped selling the app, and section 14 explains what withdrawal from a store does and does not do to a copy you already hold.

5. What the licence will not stretch to

A short list, and none of it is unusual. You may not:

• Sell, sublicence, rent or lend the app, or pass your copy to somebody else as if it were yours to give.
• Pull it apart to recreate the source, except to the extent that section 50B or 296A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 says you may, in which case ask us first and we will usually just tell you what you wanted to know.
• Strip out or paper over the notices that say who made it.
• Run it in a way designed to break it, break the device it is on, or break somebody else's service through it.
• Use it to do something illegal, or to help somebody else do something illegal.
• Get at it through modified system software or a modified store client, where doing so defeats the protections the platform relies on.

Apple additionally requires a confirmation from anyone downloading from the App Store: that you are not in a country subject to a United States embargo or designated as supporting terrorism, and that you are not on a United States prohibited or restricted party list. Installing is that confirmation.

Break this section badly enough and section 17 applies. Where the breach is fixable and honest, expect a message asking you to stop before anything else happens.

6. Your stuff, on your phone

Whatever you write, record, list or import into an app of ours stays yours. Nothing here transfers ownership of it, and nothing here gives us a licence to use it for our own purposes.

The default home for it is your own handset. Where a feature exists to send something somewhere, doing so is your instruction, and the app tells you at the point of sending. You are the one who has to have the right to send it.

Keeping your own copies is worth a sentence. Data held only on one phone is one dropped phone from gone, and while an app of ours will not throw your things away, we are not a backup service and cannot restore what only ever existed on a device you no longer have.

Deleting the app removes what it was holding locally. That is deliberate, it is what the operating system does, and it cannot be undone by reinstalling. Section 28 of the privacy notice covers deletion of anything that was synced to a server.

7. Who owns the software

The code, the interface, the drawings behind it, the words on this site, the name and the mark all belong to us or to whoever licensed them to us. Using an app or reading a page transfers none of it.

Ordinary things remain ordinary. Screenshots in a review, a quotation with a link back, a description of what an app does in your own words: none of that needs permission, and asking for it would be tiresome for both of us. Reusing the name or the mark in a way that suggests we are behind something we are not is the line.

Where an app of ours includes open source components, those keep their own licences, and the notices are shipped inside the app where the platform expects them. Where any of it requires source to be made available, ask and it will be provided.

8. Ideas you send us

Suggestions are genuinely welcome, and they arrive often. This paragraph exists so that sending one never becomes awkward for either side.

If you tell us an app should do something and we later build something along those lines, we owe you nothing for it and you have not given anything away by mentioning it. Ideas of that kind are treated as free to use, without obligation and without confidence, and you are not restricted from doing anything with your own idea.

That is a rule about unsolicited suggestions, not about your data. Anything personal in the message is handled under the privacy notice, which is a separate matter entirely. If you have something confidential to discuss, say so first and we will agree terms before you send it.

9. The store is the shop

This is the part people get caught by, so it is worth being blunt. When an app of ours costs money, or sells something inside itself, Apple or Google is the seller of record. Your money goes to the store, your receipt comes from the store, and the payment relationship is between you and them.

What that means in practice:

• The price you see on the listing is what you pay, in your own currency, with tax handled by the store for your country.
• Your card details are held by Apple or Google. They never reach us, as card 11 of the privacy notice records.
• Purchase history, receipts and invoices live in the store account, not in an app of ours.
• A purchase made through one store does not carry across to the other, because the accounts are unconnected.

Being outside the payment does not put us outside the deal. The app itself is ours, and section 12 is what you hold us to when it does not do the job.

10. Subscriptions, and stopping one

A subscription renews by itself until you stop it. That is how both platforms are built, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. The listing states the period and the price before you buy, and the store charges you within the day or so before each renewal.

Cancelling is done in the store account, and it takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, which you keep in full:

On iPhone and iPad

Settings, tap your name at the top, then Subscriptions. Choose the subscription and cancel it there. The same list is reachable from the App Store account screen.

On Android

Open the Play Store, tap your profile picture, then Payments and subscriptions, then Subscriptions. Choose the subscription and cancel it there.

Deleting the app is not cancelling. The subscription belongs to the store account rather than to the copy on your phone, and it will carry on renewing until you cancel it where it lives. Nobody at our end can cancel it for you, because we have no access to your store account, though we will happily point you at the right screen if you write.

Where a price is going up, the store notifies you in advance and, depending on the size of the change, requires your agreement before the higher price is taken. Doing nothing in that situation may end the subscription rather than renew it at the new price.

11. Refunds

Refunds are processed by whoever took the money, which is the store.

Apple

Go to reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in, find the purchase and request a refund. Apple decides, under its own policy and under the consumer law of your country.

Google

Use the Play Store's order history, or the refund request form in Google Play Help. Google decides, on the same footing.

Where you have a statutory right that entitles you to money back, it is a real right and not a matter of goodwill. If the store turns you down and you think section 12 or section 13 gives you the entitlement, write to us. We cannot reverse a charge we never received, but we can put the case to the store on your behalf, and where the fault is genuinely ours we will not leave you standing between two companies pointing at each other.

12. What the Consumer Rights Act gives you

An app is digital content, and Chapter 3 of Part 1 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 applies to it when you are a consumer. These rights sit underneath everything else on this page and cannot be signed away.

Nothing in section 15 or section 16 cuts any of this down. Where a paragraph elsewhere on this page appears to, treat it as not applying to you, and tell us so that the wording can be fixed for the next person.

Section 62 of the same Act makes an unfair term unenforceable against a consumer, and requires the rest to be written in plain and intelligible language. That is the standard this page is trying to meet, and if a paragraph here reads as though it were drafted to be skipped, we would rather hear about it than have it quietly work in our favour.

13. Fourteen days, and the button that gives them up

Buying at a distance normally comes with a fourteen-day right to change your mind, under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. It runs from the day the contract is made, and it needs no reason.

Digital content has a twist that catches people out. Regulation 37 says the right disappears once supply has begun, if you asked for immediate supply and acknowledged that asking would end the cancellation right. On both stores, pressing the button that downloads or unlocks the content is that request and that acknowledgement, made at the moment of purchase.

So: buy an app and download it straight away, and the fourteen days are gone by design, not by trickery. Buy and leave it undownloaded, and the fourteen days are still yours.

Two things this does not touch. A subscription can still be cancelled under section 10 at any time, for the period ahead. And section 12 is unaffected entirely, because a right to a remedy for something defective is not a right to change your mind, and losing one has never meant losing the other.

14. Updates, changes and withdrawal

Software that never changes stops working, because the platforms under it keep moving. Updates arrive through the store, on whatever automatic-update setting you have chosen there.

Most updates fix things or add things. Occasionally one removes a feature, because a platform withdrew what it depended on, because it was used by almost nobody and was holding the rest back, or because it could not be kept working properly. Where a removal is significant, the release notes say so plainly rather than describing it as an improvement. Where the removal is of something you paid for specifically, section 12 is engaged and we will sort it out.

An operating system your handset can no longer run is the one thing we cannot solve. Store listings state the minimum version, and a device that falls below it keeps the last compatible build rather than getting the new one.

If an app is withdrawn from sale, the copy you have installed keeps working for as long as your device and its operating system allow. Withdrawal stops new purchases; it does not reach into a phone and switch anything off. Where a withdrawn app depended on a server of ours, we will say how long that side will keep running, and give reasonable notice before it stops. Anyone holding a live subscription at that point gets the unused part back.

15. What is not promised

Two promises are worth more than a page of adjectives, so here is what is not being said.

An app of ours is not promised to be free of every defect, nor to run identically on every handset ever made, nor to be available without interruption where a server is involved. Software is written by people, and phones vary more than anyone would like.

Nothing here is professional advice. Where an app helps with something that has consequences, it is a tool you are using rather than a professional you have engaged, and the judgement stays yours.

These disclaimers are subject to section 12 in every respect. They describe the outer edge of what is claimed; they do not reduce a statutory standard, and cannot.

16. Where our liability starts and stops

Some liability cannot be limited by anybody, and this page does not try. That covers death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, anything under section 31 or section 57 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and any other liability the law forbids excluding.

Past that line, and for consumers: we are responsible for loss you suffer that was a foreseeable result of our breaking this agreement or failing to use reasonable care. Foreseeable means obvious at the time, or something you told us about when you bought. We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable in either sense.

Where you use an app of ours for a business purpose, different limits apply. We are not liable for lost profit, lost business, lost data, lost goodwill or business interruption, and our total liability for everything arising out of the agreement is capped at whatever you paid us in the twelve months before the claim.

We are also not liable for what the platforms and the networks do. A store outage, a payment declined by your bank, an operating system update that breaks something, a device fault, or your own connection failing are outside our hands, and section 18 covers events of that shape.

Apple's position is worth stating because Apple requires it. Apple has no obligation to provide support for an app of ours, and any warranty claim on an App Store copy may be directed to Apple for a refund of the purchase price, beyond which Apple has no further liability.

17. Ending it

You end the agreement by deleting the app, and by cancelling any subscription under section 10. No notice is needed and no explanation is wanted.

We can end your licence where you have broken section 5 in a way that is serious or repeated, or where the law requires it. Except in a case where notice would be pointless or unlawful, you get told first, told why, and given a chance to put it right.

Whatever ends the agreement, the parts that were always meant to outlive it carry on: ownership under section 7, the liability position in section 16, and sections 19 and 20. Ending your licence does not affect anything either of us did before it ended, and it does not remove a refund you were already owed.

18. Things nobody controls

Neither of us is in breach for failing to do something made impossible by an event outside reasonable control: a serious network or power failure, a store or platform outage, a supplier collapsing, a natural disaster, civil unrest, war, a public health measure, or a change in the law that prohibits what was promised.

Where such a thing happens we will tell you, and the affected obligation is suspended rather than cancelled while it lasts. If it drags on long enough that the arrangement no longer makes sense, either of us can end it, and anything paid for and not delivered comes back to you.

19. General clauses

The whole of it

These terms, the store listing for the app in question, the privacy notice and the cookie notice are the agreement between us. Nobody is relying on anything said outside them, though nothing here excludes liability for a statement made fraudulently.

If a paragraph fails

Should a court find any paragraph unenforceable, that paragraph is cut and the rest stands. The agreement is written so that removing one clause does not bring the structure down.

Not enforcing something

Letting something go once, or late, is not a waiver. We can still insist on it afterwards, and so can you.

Transfers

We may transfer the agreement as part of a genuine transfer of the business, and your rights are not reduced by it; you will be told if it happens. You may not transfer yours without our written agreement, although the store's own family sharing arrangements are expressly permitted under section 4.

Other people

Apart from Apple's third-party beneficiary rights under sections 4 and 16, nobody outside this agreement can enforce any part of it under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

Language

The agreement is made in English, and English is the language of any dispute about it.

20. Complaints, law and courts

Start by writing. Say what happened and what would settle it, and you get a considered answer from the company rather than a template. Most things end there.

English law governs this agreement. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, or elsewhere in the world, the mandatory consumer protections of your own home remain available to you regardless, and this clause does not take them away.

The courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction, with the same qualification: a consumer resident in Scotland or Northern Ireland may bring proceedings in their own courts, and a consumer elsewhere keeps whatever forum their own law guarantees.

There is no ombudsman scheme covering software of this kind, and we have not signed up to an alternative dispute resolution body. That leaves the route above and, if it comes to it, the courts. A small claim can be brought online through the Money Claim Online service without needing representation.

21. Where to write

Questions about any of this, a complaint, or a paragraph that reads as though it were built to trip you up: