Legal
The agreement between you and Benchbook: what you can expect from the service, what we expect from you, and where our responsibility ends.
Benchbook is an experiment execution platform provided by Play Plot Digital Solutions Ltd. By creating an account or using the service you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use Benchbook.
You must be at least 16 years old. If you are using Benchbook as part of your work or studies, you are confirming that you are allowed to do so under your institution's own policies — some institutions require research records to be held in a specific system, and that is your responsibility to check, not ours.
Keep your credentials secure and do not share your account with others. You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us at support@benchbook.app if you think it has been compromised. Some features require a verified email address.
You own your protocols, experiments and results. We do not claim any ownership of them, and we do not use your research content to train AI models.
You give us only the permission we need to run the service for you: to store, process and display your content back to you, to send it to our service providers where a feature requires it — including the AI provider when you choose to use an AI-assisted feature — and to show an experiment to anyone holding a share link you created. This permission ends when you delete the content or your account.
Benchbook can convert an uploaded protocol document into structured steps, and can draft a methods section from a completed experiment. Both are AI-assisted, and both can be wrong. They may misread a document, omit a step, or state a number or a detail incorrectly.
You must check every AI-generated output against your source material before you rely on it, run an experiment from it, or publish it. An imported protocol is a starting point to review and correct, not a validated procedure. A generated methods section is a draft for you to verify and edit — you remain its author and you remain responsible for the accuracy and integrity of anything you publish. We give no warranty that AI output is accurate, complete or fit for your purpose.
Benchbook is a research tool. It has not been validated for regulated use, and it is not a medical device.
Do not use Benchbook as a system of record for GxP, GLP or GMP work, for clinical trial records, for diagnostic decisions, or for any workflow requiring compliance with 21 CFR Part 11 or an equivalent regime. Do not enter patient data, personal data about human research subjects, or any other special-category personal data. If you do so anyway, that is your decision and your responsibility.
Benchbook should not be your only copy of anything that matters. There is no undelete: if you delete an experiment, a protocol or your account, it is gone immediately and permanently, and we cannot restore it for you. Export your work regularly — PDF, CSV and spreadsheet exports are built in — and keep those copies somewhere you control.
Benchbook is provided as-is and as-available. We work to keep it running, but we do not offer a service level agreement and we do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation. Maintenance, faults and provider outages will happen.
We may add, change or remove features. If we plan to discontinue the service or remove something you depend on, we will give you reasonable notice and time to export your data.
To keep the service available to everyone and its costs sustainable, we apply limits — including limits on how often requests can be made, a daily allowance for AI-assisted features, and caps on upload size and file type. We may adjust these limits, and we may temporarily disable AI features entirely if we need to. Share links expire automatically after 90 days.
Benchbook is currently free to use, with all features available to every account. We may introduce paid plans in the future. If we do, we will tell you before any charge applies, and you will never be charged without agreeing to it first.
The Benchbook software, design, branding and documentation belong to Play Plot Digital Solutions Ltd. These terms give you permission to use the service — they do not transfer any ownership in it to you.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Benchbook is provided without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will meet your requirements, that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that any output it produces — AI-assisted or otherwise — is accurate or suitable for publication.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Play Plot Digital Solutions Ltd will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for loss of data, loss of research, lost time, lost funding, delayed, retracted or rejected publication, or any other economic loss arising from your use of Benchbook.
Our total aggregate liability to you for all claims connected with Benchbook is limited to the greater of the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or US$100.
Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
You can stop using Benchbook and delete your account at any time from Settings. We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches these terms, or where we are required to by law; where it is reasonable to do so, we will warn you first and give you a chance to export your data. Sections 4, 5, 7, 8 and 12 to 14 survive termination.
We may update these terms. If a change materially affects your rights, we will update the date at the top of this page and notify you by email or in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use Benchbook after that means you accept the updated terms.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Michigan, United States, where Play Plot Digital Solutions Ltd is established, and the courts of that state have authority over any dispute. If you use Benchbook as a consumer elsewhere, you keep the protections of the mandatory law of the country you live in.