Published at https://trust.octicase.com/aup
1. Scope and Incorporation
This Acceptable Use Policy (the "AUP") is incorporated by reference into the Terms of Service (the "Agreement") between OCTICASE, INC. ("Provider", "Octicase") and Customer, and forms part of it. Capitalized terms not defined here have the meaning given in the Agreement.
This AUP applies to Customer, to every Authorized User, and to every person who accesses the Services through Customer's account, including a Customer's own personnel, contractors, and agents. Customer is responsible for each of them.
Provider may update this AUP on thirty (30) days' notice, except where a shorter period is required to address a legal, security, or regulatory risk, in which case Provider will give as much notice as is practicable.
2. General Prohibited Conduct
Customer will not, and will not permit any Authorized User or third party to:
- Use the Services in violation of any applicable law, regulation, or rule of professional conduct.
- Upload, transmit, or store material that infringes any intellectual property right, or that is defamatory, harassing, obscene, or unlawful.
- Introduce malware, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Services, to any other Customer's data, or to any underlying system or network.
- Perform penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, load testing, or any other security assessment of the Services without Provider's prior written authorization. Authorized testing is coordinated through security@octicase.com.
- Scrape, crawl, harvest, or use automated means to extract data from the Services, other than through an API Provider has expressly made available to Customer and in accordance with its documented rate limits.
- Resell, sublicense, rent, timeshare, or provide the Services to any third party except as expressly permitted in the Agreement, or use the Services to build or benchmark a competing product.
- Circumvent or attempt to circumvent any access control, usage limit, tenant boundary, or authentication mechanism.
- Impersonate any person, misrepresent an affiliation, or use another person's credentials.
- Use the Services in a manner that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionate load on Provider's infrastructure, or that degrades the Services for other Customers.
3. Data, Privacy, and Protected Health Information
These restrictions exist because a breach of any of them creates exposure for Provider, for the Customer, and for the individuals whose information is involved.
- Customer will not submit Protected Health Information to the Services unless a Business Associate Agreement is in effect between Customer and Provider, and will not submit PHI through any channel Provider has not designated as approved for PHI. Provider publishes the approved channels in the Subprocessor List (the platform itself, fax through the fax provider and voice through the voice provider named there; never email, text message or a forum post). Email and SMS are not approved for clinical content or matter detail: platform SMS notifications are designed to be content-minimal - they identify no diagnosis, treatment, injury type or case detail - and Customer will not use email or SMS to send clinical content.
- Customer will not upload or transmit any special category or sensitive personal information for which Customer lacks a lawful basis, appropriate consent, or authorization.
- Customer will not submit data belonging to another person or entity without the right to do so, and will not use the Services to process data obtained in violation of law, including data obtained by unauthorized scraping.
- Customer will not submit a records request through the Services on the basis of an authorization that is forged, altered, expired, or revoked, and will not submit a records request through the Services on the basis of an authorization that is forged, altered, expired, or revoked, and will hold, for every records request that requires one, a valid authorization under 45 CFR 164.508 and, where the request seeks medical information governed by the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, under Cal. Civ. Code section 56.11.
- Customer will not connect to the Services any generative AI tool, large language model service, or other third-party processor that Provider has not approved, and will not route data from the Services to such a tool by any automated means. Approved AI processing occurs only within the Services and is described in the AI Usage and Data Handling Policy. What Customer does with its own Customer Data after a lawful export under Section 7.5 of the Agreement is governed by Customer's own professional obligations rather than by this AUP.
- Customer will not attempt to re-identify any de-identified or aggregated data made available through the Services.
- Customer will maintain the confidentiality of access credentials and portal links, will enforce multi-factor authentication where available, and will promptly notify Provider at security@octicase.com of any suspected compromise.
4. Directory Listings
A claimed Directory profile is an advertisement placed by the professional it describes, and Customer, not Provider, is responsible for the content it supplies and for that content's compliance with every rule that applies to Customer's profession and jurisdiction. Provider validates certain fields and blocks certain terms, but validation is not approval and is not legal advice. An unclaimed pre-loaded listing contains only source data, as Part D of the Expert and Vendor Portal Terms and the Privacy Policy describe, is not Customer content, and is not an advertisement by anyone.
4.1 Attorney listings -- required
An attorney profile cannot be claimed, or published as Customer's advertisement, unless each of the following is present and accurate:
| Field | Rule |
|---|
| Attorney name | The name of at least one attorney licensed in the jurisdiction of the listing (at launch, California) must appear prominently. |
| Bona fide office city and county | The place where the attorney meets clients, takes calls, and keeps files. A profile cannot be published without it. |
| State Bar number | Displayed, and linked to the State Bar lookup. |
| License status | Displayed as verified by Provider against the licensing authority of the listing's jurisdiction (at launch, the State Bar of California). Customer must notify Provider immediately if the status of any listed attorney changes. |
| Practice areas | Selected from Provider's controlled list. Free text is not accepted. Unclaimed pre-loaded listings show source data only, marked as unconfirmed, until claimed. |
| Contingency percentage | Required where the stated fee structure is contingency. Must be specific figures (for example, 33% pre-litigation / 40% post-litigation). Vague descriptions are rejected. |
| Client cost responsibility | Required where a contingency percentage is entered. |
4.2 Attorney listings -- prohibited
Customer will not include in any profile, headline, biography, or other Customer-supplied copy:
- Any claim to be a specialist, certified, or an expert, unless a State-Bar-recognized certification is on file with Provider. Provider blocks these terms absent a verified certification.
- Any guarantee or prediction of recovery, any promise of a favorable verdict or settlement amount, any claim of quick or immediate cash, or any other outcome claim.
- Any award, ranking, or recognition that was conferred in exchange for payment, or by reason of membership in the conferring organization.
- Any statement that Provider rates, ranks, recommends, endorses, or vouches for Customer, or that Customer's placement reflects a judgment by Provider about quality.
- Any false or misleading statement of fact, including inflated years in practice. Provider derives years in practice from the bar admission date rather than from self-report.
4.3 Non-attorney professional listings
- License or registration number and status are required where the category is licensed, and are displayed from the relevant public board.
- No outcome, recovery, or treatment-result guarantees.
- No patient information of any kind may appear in a listing. Directory content is business information about the professional only.
- The prohibitions in Section 4.2 on platform-conferred ratings and paid awards apply equally.
- No claim that Provider has verified, approved or vetted the professional's qualifications; Provider verifies license status only.
4.4 Fees and the no-contingent-fee rule
Provider charges subscriptions, add-ons and usage-based features at flat prices stated on the Services or in the Subscription Confirmation, which do not vary with any consumer contact, retention or recovery. Claiming and keeping a basic Directory listing is free today; any listing fee later introduced is flat, is charged only after the professional accepts it as Part D of the Expert and Vendor Portal Terms provides. Provider never charges a provider of medical care or treatment to be listed or to be found in the Directory; no Platform Fee is charged on any medical care or treatment, no Platform Engagement includes medical care or treatment, and Provider receives nothing from anyone for a patient's or client's selection of a provider. Where an expert, consultant, vendor or partner sells services to a Customer through the Services, Provider's Platform Fee is a percentage of the seller's published price (or, for insurance partners, a flat amount per listing period, as the Partner Agreement provides), fixed for each engagement when it is formed, deducted from what is remitted to that seller, disclosed to the seller in advance and stated separately on the invoice Customer receives; a partner pays the Platform Fee likewise out of its own price. No Platform Fee is charged to a law firm on top of the seller's price; no Platform Fee, commission or other amount measured by legal fees is charged to or received from any attorney or law firm for legal services (any lawyer-to-lawyer referral or fee division is solely between those firms under Rule 1.5.1 and Rule 5.4); and none of them varies with whether any consumer contacts or retains anyone. Beyond that, Customer will not request, and Provider will not offer, any pricing arrangement under which a fee payable to Provider varies with the number of consumers who contact Customer, the number who retain Customer, whether any engagement with a consumer is signed, or any amount recovered in any matter. Any such arrangement is void, and a request for one is a breach of this AUP.
5. Prohibited Uses Specific to This Platform
The following conduct is prohibited because it would place Provider, Customer, or both, in breach of California law, including Bus. & Prof. Code sections 6151-6152 (capping and running) and 6155 (lawyer referral services) and, for healthcare licensees, Bus. & Prof. Code section 650 and Health & Safety Code section 445. These are not stylistic preferences.
- Requesting, inducing, or attempting to induce Provider or Provider personnel to transmit a consumer's case information, intake, form, or summary to Customer or to any other professional, by any channel, including email and manual transmission. Provider does not do this and will not do this on request. A summary that a consumer itself chooses to send to Customer through the Services is received by Customer only because the consumer sent it; Customer will not solicit such links and will not treat one as a referral.
- Requesting that Directory results be filtered, sorted, ranked, or personalized on the basis of information a consumer entered into Understand My Options (the consumer self-service informational tool described in the Agreement, however named on the Services).
- Offering, paying, or receiving any consideration for the referral, recommendation, or procurement of a client or patient through or in connection with the Services.
- Using the Services to operate, facilitate, or participate in any arrangement in which a person is compensated for procuring clients or patients.
- Using the Services to solicit any person in violation of applicable solicitation, advertising, or capping rules, including in-person or telephone solicitation of accident victims where prohibited.
The Platform Fee described in Section 4.4 compensates the platform services listed in Schedule A of the Expert and Consultant Services Agreement or in the Partner Agreement, and no referral, recommendation, steering or introduction of any firm, client, patient or matter.
5A. Forums and Question-and-Answer Features
Where Provider offers a forum for law firms and other professional Customers, Customer will not post information that identifies a client, a patient or a matter, will not use the forum to solicit clients, and will not exchange with other participants current or future fees, prices, discounts, rates paid to experts, vendors or staff, or any intention to deal or not deal with any insurer, provider or firm; Provider does not collect or circulate such information. The forum is not an approved channel for Protected Health Information (Section 3). Provider may remove any post and suspend forum access for breach.
Where Provider offers a feature in which consumers ask general legal questions and listed attorneys answer them, the following rules apply. The consumer is anonymous to the attorney. The attorney answers in its own name, personally, with its license verified by Provider, and the answer is general legal information: it addresses only the law of a jurisdiction in which the answering attorney is licensed, which the answer states; it does not evaluate the consumer's case, does not say or imply that the consumer has a good case or should retain anyone, and contains no call to action, contact details or offer of services; it is subject to Rule 7.1 and to Section 4.2 (no outcome, guarantee, specialist or misleading claims); and an AI-assisted draft is subject to Section 7. Each answer carries Provider's notice that it is general information, that no attorney-client relationship is formed, and that the consumer should not post confidential details; the feature has no private-reply function, and Customer will not attempt to identify the consumer or to reply privately. Provider does not rank, sort or reward attorneys by the number or content of their answers, does not sell priority, position or the right to answer, and includes access to the feature in the flat subscription; a consumer reaches an attorney's profile only by choosing to. Answers are public; Provider keeps a copy of every answer, with the attorney's name and the date, for at least one (1) year after it is posted and gives the attorney a copy on request, and the attorney remains responsible for any retention duty of its own under Bus. & Prof. Code section 6159.1. An attorney who uses the feature to solicit, or who contacts a consumer outside the feature because of a question, breaches this AUP.
6. Communications
Customer is solely responsible for the lawfulness of every communication it originates through the Services.
- Email: compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act, including accurate headers, a functioning opt-out, and a valid physical postal address; and, because the Services launch in California, compliance with Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code section 17529.5, which is stricter. Subject lines must accurately describe the content of the message, header and sender information must be accurate and must not be misrepresented, and messages may be sent only from domains the sender owns or has documented permission to use. Section 17529.5 imposes liquidated damages of $1,000 per message, up to $1,000,000 per incident, on a strict liability basis - no intent and no proof of harm is required.
- Fax: compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act as amended by the Junk Fax Prevention Act (47 U.S.C. section 227). No unsolicited fax advertising; any permitted fax advertisement must carry the required opt-out notice. Records-retrieval and other transactional faxes must be directed only to their intended recipient.
- Text messages and telephone calls: compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, its implementing rules, and applicable state law, including state mini-TCPA statutes, and including prior express written consent where required for automated or artificial-voice calls and for automated texts, honoring STOP and other opt-out keywords immediately, observing quiet hours in the recipient's local time, and maintaining do-not-call records. Federal Communications Commission guidance treats AI-generated voices as artificial voices for these purposes.
- Call recording: California is an all-party consent jurisdiction under Penal Code section 632, and other states impose all-party consent as well. Customer will not record any call through or in connection with the Services without the consent of every party that the law of each applicable state requires, obtained before recording begins.
- Customer will not use Provider's domains, sending infrastructure, or subprocessors to send unsolicited bulk communications. Messages to experts and vendors through the Expert and Vendor Portal are subject to Section C.17 of the Expert and Vendor Portal Terms and to this Section.
- The Services are not a substitute for emergency services. The voice features do not support calls to 911, and the Services may not be used to place or receive emergency calls.
7. AI Features
- AI output is informational and is not legal, medical, or other professional advice. Customer will independently review, verify, and approve all AI-generated content before using it in any professional capacity.
- Customer will not represent to any client, court, opposing party, or regulator that AI output constitutes the professional judgment of a licensed person where it does not.
- Customer will not use AI features to generate advertising or profile content that would violate Section 4.2.
- Customer will comply with any disclosure obligation its own professional rules impose regarding the use of AI in client matters. Provider publishes the AI Usage and Data Handling Policy to help Customer meet that obligation; meeting it remains Customer's responsibility.
8. Enforcement
Provider may investigate a suspected violation and may, in its discretion and with notice where practicable:
- Require correction of a Directory profile, or unpublish the profile until corrected.
- Suspend an individual Authorized User's access.
- Suspend Customer's access to an affected feature or to the Services.
- Remove a forum or question-and-answer post, or suspend Customer's or an Authorized User's access to those features.
- Terminate the Agreement in accordance with its terms.
- Terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the access of an Authorized User or Customer who is a repeat infringer of copyright, in accordance with 17 U.S.C. section 512(i). Copyright infringement notices are handled through the process described in the Website Terms of Use.
Provider may act without advance notice where the conduct presents an imminent risk to the Services, to another Customer's data, to an individual's safety or privacy, or to Provider's legal position. Provider will notify Customer promptly afterwards.
Suspension for breach of this AUP does not entitle Customer to a refund or service credit, and does not relieve Customer of the obligation to pay fees for the remainder of the Subscription Term.
Provider will report conduct to a licensing authority, regulator, or law enforcement where Provider is required to do so by law.
9. Reporting
Report a suspected violation, an inaccurate Directory listing, or a security concern:
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