Terms of Use

1. Agreeing to these terms

These Terms of Use ("Terms") apply to your use of the Minneflora mobile app and the website at minneflora.com (together, the "Service"), provided by Northwoods Digital LLC ("Northwoods Digital," "we," "us," or "our"). When you create an account, we ask you to agree to these Terms. By agreeing, or by using the Service, you accept these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you don't agree, please don't use the Service.

2. Who can use Minneflora

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If you're under 18, or under the age of majority where you live, you may use the Service only with the permission of a parent or guardian who agrees to these Terms on your behalf.

3. Your account

You need an account to identify plants. Please give us an accurate email address, keep your password private, and let us know at contact@minneflora.com if you think someone else has accessed your account. You're responsible for activity under your account.

4. Plant identification and information

Minneflora suggests what a plant might be based on your photo and shows related information, such as names, descriptions, and Minnesota status. These suggestions are generated automatically by third-party recognition technology, and some plant information is prepared with the help of AI. They can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date.

Do not rely on Minneflora to decide whether a plant is safe to eat, touch, or use as medicine, or whether it is safe for people or pets. Many edible plants have toxic look-alikes. If you think someone has been exposed to a poisonous plant, contact U.S. Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222 or emergency services right away. If you think a pet has been poisoned, contact a veterinarian or an animal poison control service right away.

Plant status information, such as whether a plant is native or invasive, is provided for learning and is not legal or regulatory advice. For questions about regulated, noxious, or invasive plants, consult the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, or another qualified authority.

5. Plants and places

Minneflora is meant to encourage appreciation for plants and the places they grow. When you're out exploring, please follow posted rules and applicable laws, respect private property, and don't damage or collect plants where it isn't allowed, especially rare or protected species. Minneflora doesn't give you permission to enter any land or collect any plant. Please be careful outdoors; you're responsible for your own safety.

6. Your photos and content

You keep ownership of the photos and other content you submit. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, process, modify, transmit, and display your content to run and improve the Service. That includes:

• sending your photos to our plant identification service and other service providers, as described in the Privacy Policy;
• showing your photos back to you, for example in your identification history; and
• using your photos, now or in the future, to improve Minneflora, for example to develop, train, or test plant identification models.

This license to us is limited to those purposes. When you delete your account, we de-identify your photos as described in the Privacy Policy, and our license continues only for those de-identified photos, only to improve Minneflora. We don't use your photos for advertising or sell them.

Photos you submit for identification. Separately from the license above, every photo you submit for identification is sent to Plant.id, a plant identification service provided by FlowerChecker s.r.o. ("Kindwise"). Kindwise provides Plant.id to us under its API Terms and Conditions, which require broader rights. For each photo you submit for identification, you grant Kindwise, and authorize us to grant it on your behalf, a non-exclusive, worldwide, unlimited, irrevocable license to:

• keep, use, and modify the photo, including for Kindwise's commercial purposes;
• use it to develop Kindwise's software, including training machine learning and other artificial intelligence models;
• supply it to Kindwise's other customers as part of identification results or other outputs; and
• share it publicly under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license or any later version, which lets others copy, adapt, and redistribute it, including commercially.

This license to Kindwise can't be revoked. Deleting a photo or your Minneflora account ends our own use as described above, but it doesn't end Kindwise's license or licenses it has already granted to others. The Privacy Policy explains this in more detail.

This license goes only to Kindwise. If we switch to a different identification provider, that provider won't receive these rights unless we update these Terms first, as described in section 16.

Your rights to the photos. Submit only photos you took yourself, or photos whose owner has given you permission to grant all of the licenses in this section, including commercial use and public Creative Commons sharing. Permission just to upload or share a photo isn't enough. Keep other people and personal details out of your photos.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them to improve Minneflora without any obligation to you.

7. Acceptable use

When using the Service, please don't:

• break the law or violate anyone else's rights;
• upload content that is illegal, harmful, hateful, or sexually explicit, or that isn't related to plants;
• try to access accounts, data, or systems you aren't authorized to access;
• interfere with or disrupt the Service, or place unreasonable load on it;
• scrape, copy, or resell the Service or its content using automated means; or
• reverse engineer the app, except where the law allows it.

8. Subscriptions and purchases

Some features or usage levels require a paid subscription. Before you subscribe, the price, billing period, any free trial, and how to cancel are shown with the offer.

• Where you pay. In the app, purchases are made through the Apple App Store or Google Play, under that store's terms. On the web, purchases are made with Northwoods Digital through our checkout provider, which processes the payment for us. These Terms, including the refund policy below, apply to web purchases.
• Free trials. If a plan includes a free trial, it becomes a paid subscription when the trial ends, at the price and billing period shown when you started the trial, unless you cancel before the trial ends. Stores may set earlier deadlines. For example, Apple asks you to cancel at least 24 hours before a trial ends to avoid being charged. Depending on the store, cancelling during a trial may end your trial access right away.
• Renewal. Paid subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period until you cancel. Cancel through the App Store, Google Play, or our web customer portal (linked from Settings in the app), whichever you subscribed through, before the deadline that store or portal sets.
• When paid access ends. Cancelling turns off future renewals. You keep paid features until the end of the billing period you've already paid for, and then your account returns to free use.
• Refunds for App Store and Google Play purchases. Apple and Google handle these refunds under their own policies. Request them through your store account.
• Refunds for web purchases. Except where the law requires otherwise, payments are non-refundable, and we don't give refunds or credits for partly used billing periods. If you think you were charged by mistake, email contact@minneflora.com within 30 days of the charge and we'll review it.
• Deleting your account. Deleting your Minneflora account does not cancel an App Store or Google Play subscription. Cancel it through your store account, or billing will continue. If you subscribed on the web, deleting your account cancels future renewals, and your paid access ends right away because the account no longer exists. Any unused part of the current billing period isn't refunded, except where the law requires otherwise.
• Free use. Free use of the Service may have limits, such as a daily number of identifications.

9. Minneflora's content

The Service, including its design, software, text, and illustrations, belongs to Northwoods Digital or its licensors and is protected by law. We give you a personal, non-transferable, revocable license to use the app for your own non-commercial purposes, subject to these Terms.

If you downloaded the app from Apple's App Store, your license to the app itself is governed by Apple's standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement. These Terms cover your use of the Service, including your account, subscriptions, and content. If the two conflict about your license to the app, Apple's agreement controls.

10. Third-party services

The Service relies on third-party providers, and may link to websites or services we don't control. We aren't responsible for third-party services, and your use of them may be subject to their own terms.

11. Ending your use

You can stop using the Service and delete your account at any time in the app's Settings. We may suspend or end your access if you violate these Terms or if we need to in order to protect the Service or its users. If we end your access for misuse, we don't owe a refund, except where the law requires otherwise.

We may change or remove individual features over time. That alone doesn't entitle you to a refund. If a change significantly reduces what a paid subscription includes, we'll tell you in advance, as described in section 16. The change may take effect during a billing period you've already paid for. If you don't want the reduced subscription, cancel before your next renewal and you won't be charged again.

If we shut down the Service entirely, we'll give reasonable advance notice by email or in the app when practicable, and always any notice the law requires, and we'll stop future renewals. For web subscriptions, we'll refund the unused part of any prepaid billing period. For App Store or Google Play subscriptions, we'll point you to the store's refund process.

Sections that by their nature should continue after your use ends will continue, including sections 9 through 15. Our own license in section 6 continues only for the limited purposes and for as long as described there. The license to Kindwise in section 6 is irrevocable and continues.

12. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don't promise that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that any identification or plant information will be correct.

13. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Northwoods Digital won't be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data or profits, arising from your use of the Service, including any decision you make based on an identification or plant information. Our total liability for all claims related to the Service, combined, is limited to the greater of US $50 or the amount you paid for the Service in the 12 months before the claim, including payments made through the App Store or Google Play.

Some places don't allow certain of these limits, so they may not all apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits rights you have that can't be waived under applicable law.

14. Indemnity

To the extent the law allows, you agree to cover reasonable losses and costs, including legal fees, from claims brought against Northwoods Digital by someone else, to the extent the claim is caused by your unlawful conduct, your infringement of someone else's rights (for example, by uploading a photo you don't have the right to use), or your intentional misuse of the Service. This doesn't apply to losses caused by our own fault or misconduct. We'll let you know promptly about any such claim.

15. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Minnesota, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be handled in the state or federal courts located in Minnesota, unless applicable law requires otherwise.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We'll post the new version here and update the effective date above. Minor changes, such as clarifications or fixes that don't reduce your rights, take effect when posted.

For material changes, we'll tell you by email or in the app at least 30 days before they take effect, and the notice will say when they take effect. If a change is needed sooner, for example for legal or security reasons, we'll give as much notice as we can. This never shortens a notice the law requires. Where the law requires your consent, we'll ask for it. Otherwise, continuing to use the Service after the effective date means you accept the updated Terms. If you don't agree, you can stop using the Service, cancel any subscription, and delete your account.

Changes to subscriptions. Before a material change to a paid subscription takes effect, we'll email you a notice you can keep. It will describe the change, say when it takes effect, and explain how to cancel. We'll send it at least as far in advance as the law and the store you subscribed through require. Where the store or the law requires your consent, we'll ask for it.

• Reduced features. As section 11 explains, a change that significantly reduces what a paid subscription includes may take effect during a billing period you've already paid for. If you don't want the reduced subscription, cancel before your next renewal and you won't be charged again.
• Price and billing terms. A higher price or other change to how you're billed applies only from a renewal after the notice period, never to a billing period you've already paid for.

17. Contact us

Questions about these Terms: contact@minneflora.com