Terms of Service

1. Intellectual Property Protection

All content on TheLernen is our exclusive intellectual property, protected under international copyright, trademark, and software laws. This includes:

• Proprietary Code and Layouts: Our front-end designs, custom CSS styling, animations, and database mapping logic.
• Brand Identity: The logo, the clever fox Mascot character design, name (TheLernen), and custom 3D cartoon icons.
• Elearning Material: Database dictionaries, unit arrangements, and SRS review structure.
• Strict Prohibition: You are strictly prohibited from copying, downloading, scraping, replicating, reverse-engineering, or redistributing our source files, spritesheets, mascot designs, or site templates for any commercial or clone products without explicit written permission.

2. License to Study

We grant you a personal, worldwide, non-transferable, and non-exclusive license to use the application strictly for private language learning purposes. You may export your personal learning statistics or flashcard progress for self-study purposes (e.g., via the Anki export feature).

3. Acceptable Use Policy

You agree not to abuse the website. Prohibited actions include:

• Attempting to hack, exploit, or bypass database security rules (Supabase RLS).
• Deploying web-scraping scripts, bots, or automation software to download dictionaries or assets in bulk.
• Spamming our AI API routes (explain, check-voice, parse-word) to cause artificial billing surges.

4. Limitation of Liability

TheLernen is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. While we strive to provide the highest pedagogical quality, our features rely on artificial intelligence (Google Gemini API). We do not guarantee 100% accuracy of all translated examples or grammatical context, and we are not liable for any learning errors resulting from AI-generated context.

5. Account Suspension

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate access to our database for users who violate these Terms of Service, engage in API abuse, or attempt unauthorized asset scraping.

6. PRO Subscription and Payments

TheLernen offers an optional PRO subscription that unlocks unlimited use of premium AI features (voice calls with the Erni fox mascot, unlimited AI explanations, no daily word limits).

• Free Tier: Forever-free access to 30 words/day, 2 AI explanations/day, and basic SRS features. No credit card required.
• PRO Pricing: Monthly and annual plans are displayed at checkout in EUR. Prices may change at any time, but already-billed periods are honored at the agreed price.
• Billing: All PRO subscriptions are billed in advance for the chosen period (monthly or annually) by our payment processor.
• VAT: Applicable VAT is calculated automatically based on your billing location and is included in the displayed price where required by EU law.

7. Auto-Renewal and Cancellation

PRO subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period to ensure uninterrupted access to premium features.

• You can cancel anytime from your account settings or via the link in your payment confirmation email. Cancellation stops future renewals — your PRO access continues until the end of the current paid period.
• No partial refunds are issued for unused days in the current period after cancellation (see Section 8 for the EU 14-day rule).
• If a renewal payment fails, we will attempt to retry it a few times. If all retries fail, your PRO subscription will pause and you will automatically revert to the Free tier without losing your study progress.

8. Refunds and EU Right of Withdrawal

In accordance with EU Directive 2011/83/EU (Consumer Rights), EU residents have a 14-day right of withdrawal from distance contracts. However, because TheLernen PRO is a digital service that is performed immediately upon payment, you expressly consent at checkout that performance begins immediately and you acknowledge that the right of withdrawal is lost once the service has been fully performed (i.e., once you start using PRO features).

• If you have not yet used any PRO feature after payment, contact support@thelernen.org within 14 days for a full refund.
• Outside the 14-day window or after PRO features have been used, refunds are at our sole discretion and typically not granted, except in cases of demonstrable technical failure on our side.
• Refund requests for technical issues should include a description of the problem and approximate dates.

9. Payment Processing

All payments are processed by Lemon Squeezy (Lemon Squeezy LLC), our Merchant of Record. Lemon Squeezy handles billing, currency conversion, EU VAT, fraud protection, and PCI-DSS compliance on our behalf.

• We do NOT store, process, or have access to your full credit/debit card details. Card data is handled exclusively by Lemon Squeezy and its underlying processors (e.g., Stripe).
• Your receipt is issued by Lemon Squeezy and may appear on your bank statement as "LEMONSQUEEZY*THELERNEN" or similar.
• For billing disputes or invoice corrections, contact support@thelernen.org and we will coordinate with Lemon Squeezy on your behalf.

10. Governing Law

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with international intellectual property standards. Any disputes shall be resolved in the competent courts of the domain owner's jurisdiction. Nothing in these Terms limits your statutory consumer rights under EU law where applicable.