Terms of Use

1. Who we are and how these Terms apply

ScentCompass is operated by Haystack Group LLC ("Company," "we," "us," or "our"). These Terms of Use ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the ScentCompass website and any related features, content, or services that link to these Terms (collectively, the "Services").

By selecting an acceptance control that refers to these Terms, or otherwise entering into an agreement to use the Services after receiving legally sufficient notice of these Terms, you agree to them. Do not use the Services if you do not agree. A separate agreement signed by us, or additional terms you expressly accept for a particular offering, controls to the extent it conflicts with these Terms for that offering.

Our Privacy Policy explains our handling of personal information. Acceptance of these Terms is not consent to processing for which applicable law requires separate consent, and nothing in these Terms waives your nonwaivable privacy or consumer rights.

If you use the Services on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind it. In that case, "you" includes that organization.

2. Eligibility and access

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering into a binding agreement to use the Services. You must not use the Services if applicable law prohibits you from doing so.

Some features associate saved information with your browser rather than an account. Clearing or blocking cookies, using a different browser or device, or expiration of a browser identifier can prevent you from accessing saved information. Keep separate copies of information you need. Except as expressly agreed or required by law, we do not undertake to retain, synchronize, recover, or back up information for you.

Where accounts, credentials, or other access tools are provided, you must supply accurate required information, safeguard access, and notify us of suspected unauthorized use. You are responsible for activity you authorize or enable through your failure to use reasonable care, subject to applicable law.

3. Permission to use the Services

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable, nonsublicensable permission to access the Services through the interfaces we provide and use them for personal purposes or internal evaluation. You may share ordinary links to publicly accessible pages, including in commercial publications, provided you do not misrepresent an affiliation with us or imply our endorsement.

Other commercial exploitation, redistribution, or automated extraction requires our prior written permission or another applicable legal entitlement. Any permission to use the Services may be withdrawn or restricted as described in these Terms. Rights not expressly granted are reserved. Separate licenses may apply to particular materials and remain effective according to their terms.

4. Prohibited conduct

Except to the extent we authorize it in writing or applicable law gives you a right that cannot be restricted by contract, you must not:

• Systematically extract, reproduce, republish, distribute, sell, license, or otherwise commercially exploit the Services or their content; reconstruct substantial collections through repeated requests; or use the Services or their content to build or supply a competing database, service, or model, or to train or evaluate an artificial-intelligence system.
• Bypass access controls or usage limits; disguise requests to evade restrictions; access another person's private records; obtain credentials without authorization; or test, probe, disrupt, or interfere with the security or operation of the Services without permission.
• Reverse engineer protected software, remove rights notices, introduce malicious code, send unauthorized promotions, or use the Services in a manner that imposes unreasonable demands on our systems.
• Infringe intellectual-property, privacy, confidentiality, or other rights; submit unlawful material; impersonate others; or misrepresent your authority or affiliations.
• Fabricate personal experiences, manipulate ratings or other signals, conceal a material commercial connection when disclosure is required, or engage in fraud, harassment, or other unlawful conduct.

These restrictions do not prohibit lawful criticism, honest consumer reviews, reporting concerns to authorities, legally protected security research, or other conduct protected by rights that cannot be waived. Authorized accessibility tools and ordinary browser functions remain permitted. Permission to index or otherwise use the Services is limited to the scope we actually grant; it does not authorize other extraction or reuse.

5. Information about fragrances and products

The Services provide general information, opinions, estimates, comparisons, and discovery tools. Descriptions, scores, classifications, rankings, and suggestions may be incomplete, approximate, subjective, or produced using automated systems. They can change and are not guarantees of accuracy, quality, suitability, popularity, performance, authenticity, availability, or any particular experience.

Fragrance names, notes, and descriptions are not complete ingredient lists or safety assessments. The Services do not provide medical, allergy, dermatological, or other professional advice. Verify ingredients, warnings, prices, seller terms, and other material details with the manufacturer, retailer, or an appropriate professional before relying on them. Products and formulations can change, and individual reactions vary.

Except where we expressly state otherwise, inclusion does not establish that we personally tested a product, independently verified every statement about it, or endorse the product or seller. We do not undertake to cover every available product or seller or identify the lowest price.

6. Your contributions

Ownership and responsibility

"Contributions" means content or information you intentionally submit through the Services, such as notes, ratings, comments, lists, preferences, images, or other materials. You retain any ownership rights you have in your Contributions. You represent that you have the rights necessary to submit them and grant the permissions below. You must not submit other people's confidential or personal information without an appropriate legal basis.

The licenses below apply only to rights you hold or are authorized to grant. They do not transfer ownership of your Contributions to us, require compensation to you, or replace a legal basis required to process personal information.

Permission to process Contributions

You grant us a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free, transferable, and sublicensable license to host, store, reproduce, process, analyze, adapt, translate, and create derivative works from your Contributions to provide, operate, secure, evaluate, research, develop, improve, and commercialize the Services, our other products and services, and related technologies. This includes developing and improving statistical and artificial-intelligence systems and creating aggregated or deidentified information.

For Contributions that are private, this license is subject to the uses, recipients, retention practices, and choices described in the Privacy Policy. It permits access by us and appropriate recipients for those purposes; it does not make private Contributions public or authorize unrestricted disclosure of identifiable personal information. We will not publicly display your private notes or other private Contributions as your identifiable content unless you choose to publish them or otherwise authorize that display.

Additional permission for public Contributions

If a feature expressly allows you to publish a Contribution and you choose to do so, you additionally grant us a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, and sublicensable license, subject to applicable law and your privacy rights, to display, perform, reproduce, edit, translate, adapt, distribute, promote, syndicate, and otherwise use that public Contribution in any media for lawful purposes connected with our Services and business, including commercial purposes. We may use the public name or attribution you supplied with it in connection with those uses, but not to falsely represent your endorsement of an unrelated product.

To the extent permitted by law, you consent to the editing and uses authorized by this section and agree not to assert waivable attribution or integrity rights to prevent them. Nothing here requires you to give up ownership of an honest consumer review or prevents you from publishing it elsewhere.

Deletion and continuing rights

Deleting a Contribution or ending your use does not invalidate a use lawfully made before deletion. The public-Contribution license continues to the extent permitted by law. For private Contributions, our license continues only as necessary for the processing and retention permitted by the Privacy Policy, including permitted backup, security, legal, and compliance purposes.

We may continue using lawfully created models, statistical findings, and other outputs after deletion to the extent they do not contain your personal information or protected expression requiring a continuing license, or another lawful basis permits that use. Calling an output "deidentified," a "derivative," or a "model" does not override applicable privacy, deletion, or intellectual-property rights.

We are not required to publish, use, credit, or compensate you for a Contribution unless we separately agree or law requires it.

7. Suggestions and feedback

If you submit ideas, suggestions, or feedback about our products or business, you grant us a worldwide, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, transferable, and sublicensable license to use and exploit that feedback for any lawful purpose without compensation or an obligation to implement it. This provision concerns suggestions and feedback, not an expansion of the permissions applicable to private notes or personal information.

8. Our intellectual property

As between you and us, we and our licensors retain our respective rights in the Services, including software, design, original text, visual materials, and protectable selections, arrangements, compilations, and databases. Our rights in scores, classifications, summaries, models, and other outputs extend only as far as applicable law permits. We do not claim ownership of underlying facts merely because they appear in the Services.

Third-party names, trademarks, product names, images, and other materials remain subject to their owners' rights. Their appearance does not, by itself, imply affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement. No right to use a trademark, image, or other protected material is granted except as expressly stated, provided by a separate license, or permitted by law.

9. Third parties and commercial relationships

The Services may include third-party links, offers, integrations, advertising, affiliate links, or sponsored placements. We may receive commissions, fees, products, or other benefits. Commercial arrangements may affect which offers or placements appear and their prominence or order. Advertising, sponsorship, and other material connections are disclosed where required. See our Commercial Disclosure.

Unless expressly identified otherwise, purchases from another seller are transactions between you and that seller. We are not a party to them and do not control the seller's products, fulfillment, returns, warranties, or practices. Review the third party's applicable terms and privacy information. This section does not exclude responsibility that applicable law places on us for our own conduct.

10. Paid offerings

If we offer a paid Service, its price, billing arrangements, and any additional purchase terms will be presented before you agree to pay. You authorize only charges you actually accept. These Terms alone do not authorize a subscription, automatic renewal, or a charge for a previously free feature.

Unless the offer or applicable law provides otherwise, fees are nonrefundable once the purchased Service is supplied. Any change to an existing paid arrangement is subject to the terms you accepted and applicable notice, consent, cancellation, and refund requirements. Mandatory consumer remedies are preserved.

11. Changes to the Services; suspension and termination

We may add, modify, restrict, suspend, or discontinue features or content, and may refuse or end access, for legal, security, operational, editorial, or business reasons. We may remove or limit a Contribution without undertaking a general obligation to monitor all Contributions. We will provide notices, reasons, review opportunities, continued access, or refunds when required by applicable law or an express agreement.

We may act immediately when reasonably necessary to address abuse, an actual or suspected violation, a security threat, or a legal obligation. We may terminate access in appropriate circumstances for repeat infringement. You may stop using the Services at any time.

Provisions that by their nature are intended to continue survive termination, including applicable licenses, intellectual-property protections, payment obligations already incurred, disclaimers, liability limitations, indemnity, dispute provisions, and the general provisions below. Survival does not override applicable retention limits or mandatory rights.

12. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Services are provided "as is" and "as available." We and our affiliates, licensors, and service providers disclaim all warranties and conditions, express, implied, or statutory, including merchantability, satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and noninfringement.

We do not warrant that the Services will be accurate, complete, current, reliable, uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of harmful components, that information will be preserved, or that any recommendation or other output will meet your needs. No informal communication creates a warranty beyond one expressly agreed by us or required by law.

These disclaimers do not exclude a warranty, condition, remedy, or standard of care that applicable law does not permit us to exclude.

13. Limits on liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Company and its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, contractors, licensors, and service providers will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, punitive, or consequential damages, or loss of profits, revenue, business opportunities, goodwill, or data, arising out of or relating to the Services or these Terms.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the aggregate liability of those parties for claims arising out of or relating to the Services or these Terms will not exceed the greater of US $100 or the amounts you paid us for the Service giving rise to the claim during the 12 months before the first event giving rise to that liability. Multiple claims do not increase this cap.

These limitations apply regardless of the legal theory and even if a party has been advised of the possibility of the loss. They do not limit liability for our fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, willful misconduct, gross negligence, death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. They do not waive nonwaivable statutory damages or other mandatory consumer or privacy remedies.

If you are a consumer and a limitation in this section is unenforceable under the law applicable to you, that limitation does not apply to you to that extent. The remaining lawful limitations remain effective.

14. Third-party claims caused by your conduct

To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify the Company and its affiliates, officers, directors, and employees against damages, judgments, settlements, and reasonable legal expenses arising from a third-party claim to the extent caused by your unlawful use of the Services, your Contributions infringing another person's rights, or your negligent or intentional material breach of these Terms.

This obligation does not apply to loss caused by an indemnified party's own unlawful conduct, negligence, or breach, or to your good-faith exercise of a statutory right. For consumers, it applies only to the extent the loss is a reasonably foreseeable result of conduct for which applicable law permits you to be held responsible.

We may control the defense of a covered claim using reasonably appropriate counsel, and you will reasonably cooperate. We will not agree to a settlement imposing a nonmonetary obligation on you, requiring your admission of wrongdoing, or failing to release you from the settled claim without your consent, which must not be unreasonably withheld.

15. Governing law and disputes

Tennessee law governs these Terms and disputes arising out of or relating to them or the Services, without applying conflict-of-laws rules that would select another jurisdiction's law. This choice does not deprive a consumer of mandatory protections under the law that otherwise applies.

Subject to the exceptions below, you and we submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state courts located in Davidson County, Tennessee, and the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee for such disputes. An eligible individual small-claims case may instead be brought in a court with lawful small-claims jurisdiction. Either party may seek urgent provisional relief from a court with jurisdiction where reasonably necessary to protect rights pending resolution in the proper forum.

Where mandatory consumer law permits you to bring a claim in your home jurisdiction, that right remains available. If you are a consumer habitually resident in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, this clause does not require you to bring a claim in Tennessee or prevent you from relying on mandatory protections or jurisdiction rules applicable where you live.

We encourage you to contact legal@scentcompass.com so we can try to resolve a concern. Doing so is not a mandatory prerequisite to legal action and does not shorten a filing deadline. Nothing prevents you from contacting a regulator, reporting unlawful conduct, or obtaining a remedy that cannot be waived. These Terms do not impose mandatory arbitration.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms to reflect changes in the Services, our business, legal requirements, or security needs. We will identify the effective date of the revised Terms and provide reasonably conspicuous notice of material changes. When required, we will provide advance notice or obtain renewed agreement. Changes needed to address a legal or urgent security requirement may take effect sooner to the extent permitted by law.

A revised version applies prospectively when it becomes effective and you validly accept it. Merely posting a revision does not retroactively expand our rights to previously submitted Contributions or alter accrued claims where additional notice, agreement, or consent is legally required. If you do not accept a required revision, you may stop using the affected Services, subject to any cancellation or refund rights you have.

17. General provisions

These Terms and any applicable terms you expressly accept form the agreement concerning your use of the Services. They do not displace a separate signed agreement unless that agreement says otherwise. The Privacy Policy governs our representations about personal-information handling; a content license does not expand them.

We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, financing, sale of assets, or other transfer of the Services or our business, subject to applicable law and without reducing your mandatory rights. You may not assign your contractual rights or obligations without our written consent, except where applicable law permits it.

If a provision is unenforceable, it will be ineffective to the extent necessary and the remainder will continue, unless applicable law requires otherwise. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. A waiver must be made by an authorized representative. Nothing creates a partnership, agency, employment, or fiduciary relationship between you and us.

The persons protected by Sections 12 through 14 may enforce those protections to the extent permitted by law. Otherwise, these Terms create no third-party contractual rights. We may communicate with you electronically through the Services or contact information you provide, subject to applicable legal requirements.

18. Contact

Haystack Group LLC, operating ScentCompass

Legal questions: legal@scentcompass.com
Privacy requests: privacy@scentcompass.com
Copyright and other rights requests: dmca@scentcompass.com