Terms of Service

Framis is an automated copyright-recovery service for photographers. We monitor the open web for unauthorised use of images you upload to your private library, draft retroactive-licence outreach to parties using those images without permission, route their replies through AI classification, and where they accept the licence offer we generate a Stripe Checkout session and issue a Licence Agreement PDF on payment. Framis (KLB Solutions FZCO) is the merchant of record and collects the full recovery payment from the licensee. We then pay 60% of the recovery to you manually following confirmed receipt of the funds, and retain the remaining 40% as service commission.

You must be at least 18 years old, have legal capacity to enter contracts, and own the copyright in (or have an exclusive licence covering) any image you upload. You are responsible for keeping your account credentials secure and for all activity under your account.

By uploading an image you warrant that:

• You own the copyright or hold an exclusive licence with the right to enforce against third parties.
• You have the necessary releases for any identifiable persons depicted, including for the purposes of issuing licences for future commercial or editorial use.
• The image is not encumbered by exclusive licences to other parties that would conflict with the licences Framis issues on your behalf.
• You will indemnify Framis against any third-party claim arising from breach of the warranties above.

Framis takes 40% of the gross recovery amount as service commission. The remaining 60% is the photographer’s share. Card-processing fees come out of Framis’s commission; your 60% share is the gross amount agreed with the licensee regardless of processing costs.

Framis (KLB Solutions FZCO) is the merchant of record. The licensee pays the full recovery amount to Framis through standard Stripe Checkout, and Framis receives those funds. There is no payment account for you to set up — the recovery is collected centrally by Framis.

Once the payment has cleared, Framis pays your 60% share to you manually. For now this is settled off-platform: you may invoice Framis for your share, or supply payout details that Framis holds securely and uses only to pay you (see §4A). We aim to release your share promptly after funds have cleared. An automated payout rail is planned for a future release, but does not affect your entitlement to the full 60% in the meantime.

Card payments from licensees are processed by Stripe, Inc. (US) and/or Stripe Payments UK Ltd (UK) as Framis’s payment processor. Framis (KLB Solutions FZCO) is the merchant of record: the licensee pays Framis the full recovery amount through standard Stripe Checkout, and those funds are received by Framis. You do not have, and are not required to set up, any payment account of your own to receive your share.

How your 60% share reaches you. After a recovery payment has cleared, Framis pays your share to you manually. You can either (a) invoice Framis for your 60% share, or (b) provide payout details (for example bank or other transfer details), which Framis stores encrypted and access-restricted and uses solely to pay you your share. Framis settles your share off-platform once funds have cleared. A planned automated payout rail (via a dedicated payments entity) may replace this manual process in future; until then, the manual/invoice route above applies and does not affect your entitlement to the full 60%.

Chargebacks and refunds. If a licensee initiates a chargeback, refund, or payment dispute after a licence fee has been collected, the disputed amount may be reversed out of the funds Framis collected. Where this happens before your share has been paid out, Framis will not pay out the share attributable to the reversed payment. Where your share has already been paid out, you agree that Framis may recover or set off that amount against future payouts. In all such cases Framis will notify you promptly, share the evidence we hold to contest the dispute, and work with you in good faith to resolve it. Framis is not liable for amounts lost to a good-faith chargeback where we have taken reasonable steps to contest it.

Payout timing. Framis aims to release your share promptly after the licensee’s payment has cleared and any chargeback window or dispute risk has been reasonably assessed. During the pilot phase (currently defined as fewer than 10 active photographers), Framis reserves the right to apply a hold of up to 30 days on a payout where we have reasonable grounds to suspect the recovery may be disputed. Adam Kelbie (Director, KLB Solutions FZCO) must authorise any such hold, and we will notify you in writing within 24 hours of applying it.

Outreach is gated by approval. Framis will not send a first outreach email about a match until that match has been approved for recovery, either (a) by you, or (b) where Framis has set your account to Automatic mode at your written request, by Framis on your behalf, for confirmed matches only (see the Recovery Terms). Once a first outreach email has been sent, the follow-ups described in §7A are sent automatically on schedule without further approval, and emails are not individually reviewed by a person before they are sent. You may decline any match. You may withdraw approval of a match before its first outreach email is sent; once sent, we cannot recall the email but you may instruct us to stop further follow-up. You may ask us at any time to take your account out of Automatic mode or to pause it.

When a match is approved for recovery (by you, or by Framis under Automatic mode), you acknowledge that Framis introduced the opportunity of recovery to you. You agree that:

• (a) Any recovery of a licence fee or settlement payment from the party identified in that match, for that specific image use, within 24 months of the Approval Date — whether effected by you directly, through a third-party IP firm, through a collecting society, or through any other channel — is subject to Framis’s commission at the rate set out in §4.
• (b) You will not take any action designed to circumvent Framis’s commission, including framing a payment as unrelated to the identified image use.
• (c) If you receive an unsolicited payment that you believe in good faith is unrelated to the Framis-introduced match, you will notify legal@framis.app within 14 days of receipt and provide sufficient information for Framis to assess whether its commission applies.

This clause survives termination of your account.

Each successful recovery results in a Licence Agreement PDF generated by Framis on your behalf and issued under your name as Licensor. The PDF is delivered to the licensee with the standard Framis terms (current version v1.0). You authorise Framis to issue these licences on your behalf for the duration of your active account.

Each licence is recorded in the Framis registry at framis.app/licenses/[id] and is publicly verifiable to support the licensee’s legal use.

You set your own per-tier rate card on /photographer/settings/pricing. Framis suggests price bands per usage tier but the final rate quoted to a licensee is yours. Framis may from time to time recommend pricing changes but will not change your rates without your action.

When a recipient does not respond to the initial licence offer, Framis sends a graduated sequence of follow-up emails on behalf of the photographer. Follow-ups are scheduled and sent automatically by Framis’s systems; they are not individually reviewed by a person before they are sent. Stages 1 and 2 are sent on every approved case unless you have paused your account. Stages 3 to 5, and any settlement discount, are sent only where the photographer has enabled Recovery Tactics in their account settings. The schedule currently in operation, counted in days from the date the initial licence offer was sent, is set out below. Each stage may include a time-limited settlement discount applied to the original quoted licence price:

• Stage 1 (day +3): Full price, soft nudge. No discount.
• Stage 2 (day +8): Full price, warmer tone. No discount.
• Stage 3 (day +15): Up to 10% discount off the original quoted price, offered as a quick-resolution incentive. Valid for approximately 7 days.
• Stage 4 (day +22): Up to 30% discount off the original quoted price, with a firm 7-day deadline. After this deadline, the discounted offer is withdrawn.
• Stage 5 (day +30): Up to 40% discount off the original quoted price as a final settlement offer. At this stage, where the photographer has authorised it, the Stage 5 email also warns the recipient that a takedown notice will be filed with the infringing site’s hosting provider in 48 hours unless the matter is settled. If it is not settled, Framis files the notice no earlier than 48 hours after the Stage 5 email was delivered (currently day +32). See §8 and Recovery Terms §7.2.

Timing of the schedule. The days above are the schedule in operation on the effective date of these Terms. Framis may adjust the timing of individual stages to improve deliverability or results, provided that: (a) no follow-up is sent earlier than 3 days after the initial licence offer; (b) no settlement discount is offered earlier than day 15; (c) the Stage 5 takedown warning is not sent earlier than day 30, and no takedown notice is filed earlier than 48 hours after that warning was delivered; and (d) no discount exceeds the cap you have configured. Framis will give you at least 15 days’ notice by email before any such adjustment takes effect, and the current schedule will always be shown on your Recovery Tactics settings page. An adjustment outside these limits, or one that adds a stage or raises a discount, will be made only as a revision of these Terms under §12. An individual message may be sent later than its scheduled day (for example, while delivery, verification or suppression checks complete), but not earlier.

The exact discount percentages applied in any given case may be lower than the maximums above, subject to the photographer’s own configured cap in their Recovery Tactics settings. All discount offers are shown transparently in the outreach email — both the original quoted price and the discounted settlement figure are stated explicitly. Framis will not claim a discount is unavailable and then offer one — if a ladder is active, recipients can see precisely where they stand at each stage.

The discount window closes permanently after Stage 5. Any resolution after that point is handled through the photographer’s chosen route and Framis’s commission is calculated on the amount actually recovered.

If a recipient disputes the recovery or sends a takedown notice rather than accepting the licence, the case is held for human review and we will consult you before any further action. Framis does not initiate legal proceedings on your behalf without your explicit instruction; we are an automation and recovery service, not a law firm.

Where Framis files a takedown notice on your behalf, it does so under the applicable statutory regime for the host’s jurisdiction: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §512) for US-hosted content; the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (§97A) and Online Safety Act 2023 for UK-hosted content; the DSA (EU 2022/2065) notice-and-action procedure for EU-hosted content. You warrant that the content identified in any takedown notice we file on your behalf does constitute copyright-infringing use of your work, and you accept liability for any counter-notification or wrongful-takedown claim arising from a warrant you provided to us.

See our DMCA Policy for the full takedown-notice and counter-notice process, including how a recipient can dispute a notice filed on your behalf and how to report content on framis.app itself.

You may close your account at any time by emailing legal@framis.app. We will close the account within 14 days, retaining only the records we are legally required to keep. Framis may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these Terms, attempt to abuse the service, or are subject to verified ownership disputes.

Framis’s aggregate liability to you for any claim arising from these Terms or the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the commission we have earned from your account in the 12 months preceding the claim, or (b) £500. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, gross negligence, or any liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates. The courts of Dubai shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, save that we may bring proceedings in any jurisdiction where you reside or have assets to enforce a judgment.

We may revise these Terms. Material changes will be communicated to active users by email at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use of the Service after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance. Adjustments to the follow-up timing within the limits in §7A are made on the notice set out in §7A and are not revisions under this section.

Legal & commercial enquiries: legal@framis.app. Privacy enquiries: privacy@framis.app.

Neither party shall be liable for any failure or delay in performance caused by circumstances beyond their reasonable control, including but not limited to: acts of God, government action, war, civil unrest, pandemic, internet infrastructure failure, or the acts of third-party service providers (including Stripe, Vercel, Supabase, or Cloudflare). This clause does not apply to payment obligations already due.

The processing of personal data through the Service is governed by our Privacy Policy at framis.app/legal/privacy. If you use Framis as an agency or studio processing images on behalf of your own clients, please contact legal@framis.app to discuss a Data Processing Agreement.