Website Terms of Use

These Terms govern access to and use of the geno.ac website. Use of the Work published through this website is additionally governed by the Legal Notice and Licensing document.

1. Acceptance

By accessing or using geno.ac (the “Site”), you accept and agree to be bound by these Website Terms of Use (“Terms”) and by the Legal Notice and Licensing document incorporated herein by reference, and by the Privacy Policy incorporated herein by reference. If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not access or use the Site.

By using the Site, you represent and warrant that you have the legal capacity to enter into binding agreements and that you accept the obligations set forth in these Terms on behalf of yourself and any entity you represent, employ, advise, or act on behalf of.

2. The Site and the Work

The Site is operated by Category One Limited, a Business Company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (BVI Business Company No. 2208440), which conducts the Geno Project initiative under the trade names “Geno Project” and “GENO Research.” The Site serves as the canonical distribution point for all research output, written materials, and associated content published under the Geno Project, wherever distributed. All materials published on the Site (the “Work”) are licensed under the terms set forth in the Legal Notice; these Terms govern use of the Site itself.

3. Permitted Use

You may access the Site to read, download, and cite the Work in accordance with the license granted in the Legal Notice. You may share links to the Site and to individual works. You may quote from the Work for academic, educational, or journalistic purposes consistent with fair use or fair dealing principles under applicable law and with proper attribution to the Geno Project.

4. Prohibited Use

You may use the Site only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these Terms. You agree not to use the Site:

• In any way that violates any applicable federal, state, local, or international law or regulation;
• For any commercial purpose without prior written permission from Category One Limited;
• To reproduce, republish, or redistribute the Work in whole or in substantial part except as permitted by the license in the Legal Notice;
• To create derivative works based on the Work and distribute them;
• To scrape, crawl, harvest, or systematically extract content from the Site by automated means, including by use of any robot, spider, or other automatic device, process, or manual process, except for search engine indexing consistent with the Site’s robots.txt;
• To use the Site or the Work, in whole or in part, as training data for machine learning models, large language models, embedding models, vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation systems, or any other automated-processing system;
• To create mirror sites or unauthorized copies of the Site;
• To remove, obscure, or alter any copyright notice, watermark, or attribution associated with the Work;
• To use the Site to transmit viruses, trojan horses, worms, logic bombs, malware, or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful;
• To conduct denial-of-service attacks, distributed denial-of-service attacks, or otherwise attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Site;
• To attempt to gain unauthorized access to, interfere with, damage, or disrupt any parts of the Site, the server on which the Site is hosted, or any server, computer, or database connected to the Site;
• To impersonate or attempt to impersonate Category One Limited, Dr. Yousef Jum’a Saleh (the author of the Work), or any other person or entity, or to suggest that the Geno Project endorses you or any third party;
• To use the Site for any unlawful purpose or in any manner that could damage, disable, or impair the Site or interfere with any other party’s use of the Site.

5. Intellectual Property

The Site, its design, its layout, its visual elements, and all original content (excluding the Work, which is separately licensed under the Legal Notice) are the intellectual property of Category One Limited. No license to Site design elements, trademarks, or trade dress is granted by these Terms. All trademarks referenced in these Terms or on the Site are the property of Category One Limited or their respective owners, as described in the Legal Notice.

6. Reliance on Information

The information presented on the Site is made available solely for general information and academic research purposes. Category One Limited does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of this information. Any reliance you place on materials published on the Site is strictly at your own risk. Category One Limited disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such materials by you, by any other visitor to the Site, or by anyone who may be informed of any of the Site’s contents.

The Site may include content provided by third parties, including data sourced from publicly available databases. All third-party content is the responsibility of its respective source. Third-party content does not necessarily reflect the views of Category One Limited, and Category One Limited is not responsible for the accuracy of any third-party materials.

7. Site Availability and Changes

Category One Limited reserves the right to withdraw or amend the Site, and any material or service provided on the Site, in its sole discretion without notice. Category One Limited does not guarantee that the Site or any content on it will always be available, complete, or up to date. Category One Limited will not be liable if for any reason all or any part of the Site is unavailable at any time or for any period.

Category One Limited may update the content on the Site from time to time, but the content is not necessarily complete or current. Any material on the Site may be out of date at any given time, and Category One Limited is under no obligation to update such material. Economic data, monetary aggregates, and other quantitative information cited on the Site reflect conditions as of the date of publication and may have been subsequently revised by their issuing authorities.

8. Third-Party Links

The Site may contain links to third-party websites and resources for reference or context, including links to data sources, academic repositories, and other external services. These links are provided for convenience only. Category One Limited has no control over the contents of those sites or resources and accepts no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them. If you access any third-party website linked from the Site, you do so entirely at your own risk and subject to the terms and conditions of that website. Inclusion of a link does not constitute endorsement.

9. Linking to the Site

You may link to the Site’s homepage or to individual pages, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage the reputation of Category One Limited or the Geno Project or take advantage of it. You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval, or endorsement on the part of Category One Limited or the Geno Project where none exists. Category One Limited reserves the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.

10. Disclaimer of Warranties

The Site and the Work are provided “as is” and “as available” without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory. Category One Limited disclaims all warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness, security, reliability, non-infringement, and title. Category One Limited does not warrant that the Site will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of viruses or other harmful components, that defects will be corrected, or that the Site or any content on it will meet your needs or expectations.

You are responsible for implementing sufficient procedures and safeguards to satisfy your particular requirements for data accuracy and security, and for maintaining your own means of reconstructing any lost data. Some jurisdictions do not allow exclusion of implied warranties; in such jurisdictions, the foregoing exclusions apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.

11. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall Category One Limited, the author, its contributors, affiliates, agents, or licensors be liable for damages of any kind, under any legal theory, arising out of or in connection with your use of, or inability to use, the Site, any content on the Site, or any services or items obtained through the Site, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to personal injury, loss of revenue, loss of profits, loss of business or anticipated savings, loss of use, loss of goodwill, loss of data, business interruption, or other intangible losses, whether caused by tort (including negligence), breach of contract, or otherwise, even if foreseeable. The foregoing does not affect any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

12. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Category One Limited, the author, its contributors, affiliates, and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, judgments, awards, losses, costs, expenses, or fees (including reasonable attorney’s fees) arising out of or relating to your violation of these Terms, your use of the Site or the Work other than as expressly authorized in these Terms and the Legal Notice, or your infringement of any third-party rights.

13. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the British Virgin Islands, where Category One Limited is incorporated, without giving effect to any choice or conflict-of-law provision or rule that would cause the application of the laws of any other jurisdiction. Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms, the Site, or your use of the Site shall be brought exclusively in the courts of the British Virgin Islands, and you irrevocably consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

For the avoidance of doubt, Category One Limited reserves the right to pursue claims for infringement of its intellectual property rights, violations of the Legal Notice and Licensing document, or other unauthorized use of the Work in the courts of any jurisdiction in which the infringement, violation, or unauthorized use occurs or has effect, and the choice of British Virgin Islands law for these Terms shall not be construed as a waiver, restriction, or surrender of that right.

14. Waiver and Severability

No waiver by Category One Limited of any term or condition set forth in these Terms shall be deemed a further or continuing waiver of such term or condition or a waiver of any other term or condition, and any failure of Category One Limited to assert a right or provision under these Terms shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision.

If any provision of these Terms is held by a court or other tribunal of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable for any reason, such provision shall be eliminated or limited to the minimum extent necessary such that the remaining provisions of these Terms will continue in full force and effect. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision in any jurisdiction shall not affect the validity or enforceability of that provision in any other jurisdiction.

15. Entire Agreement

These Terms, the Legal Notice and Licensing document, and the Privacy Policy constitute the sole and entire agreement between you and Category One Limited with respect to the Site and supersede all prior and contemporaneous understandings, agreements, representations, and warranties, both written and oral, with respect to the Site.

16. Changes to These Terms

Category One Limited may revise and update these Terms from time to time in its sole discretion. All changes are effective immediately when posted. The current version is always available at this URL. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of revised Terms means that you accept and agree to the changes. You are expected to check this page so that you are aware of any changes, as they are binding on you.

17. Contact

For questions about these Terms, contact Category One Limited at legal@geno.ac. For matters covered by the Legal Notice and Licensing document — including permissions, licensing inquiries, and infringement notices — see the contact addresses set out in the Legal Notice.