Terms of Service for Gaia by Illuminum
Version: 3
Last Updated: 2025-06-04
Enactment Date: 2025-06-05
Welcome, and thank you for choosing Illuminum’s services!
1 Definitions
The words of which the initial letter is capitalized have meanings as defined in this section 1. The following definitions shall have the same meaning regardless of whether they appear in singular or in plural.
For the purposes of these Terms of Service for Gaia by Illuminum:
“Company” (also referred to as “Illuminum”, “the Company”, “we”, “us” or “our”) refers to Illuminum AB, a limited liability company existing under Swedish law, located at Västra Ågatan 22, 753 09 Uppsala, with Swedish organization number 559359-4343 and VAT number SE559359434301.
“Device” means any device that can access the Service such as a computer, a mobile phone or a digital tablet.
“Gaia Token” refers to an internal credit issued by Illuminum, which enables You to perform various functions within our Service.
“Homepage” refers to Illuminum’s homepage, accessible from https://illuminum.se/
“Module” refers to a distinct, self-contained component of the Service, designed to perform specific functions independently or in conjunction with other modules.
“Observation” refers to any type of third-party data about species, in any format, that the Service provides to You based on information gathered from external sources.
“Observer” refers to a human or instrument that has documented an Observation. The identity and expertise of the Observer are unknown to Us. The Observer has no contract or obligations to Illuminum. We do not guarantee the accuracy of the information provided by the Observer.
“Other Data” refers to information collected, generated, or processed by the Company, which cannot be used to identify a natural person, including but not limited to usage data, technical data, error reports, and aggregated statistical data.
“Personal Data” refers to information that can be used to identify a natural person, whether directly or indirectly, for example name or e-mail address.
“Provider” refers to any third-party web service that collects, stores, and distributes Observations documented by an Observer. The Provider has no contract or obligations to Illuminum, and we cannot guarantee the accuracy or validation practices of their data.
“Service” (also referred to as “gaia.eco”) refers to Illuminum’s web-based “as-a-service” application, named “Gaia by Illuminum” accessible from https://gaia.eco, its associated upgrades, patches, and updates and related services. This includes Modules if included in the Users Service Plan.
“Service Plan” refers to the license options chosen by the User through their Illuminum Account, which determine the payment model, and the specific Modules included in their access to the Service.
“Terms” means these Terms of Service for Gaia by Illuminum.
“User Agreement” (also referred to as “Agreement”) refers to these Terms of Service, the Illuminum Data Privacy Policy, and if applicable, Your information provided when signing up for an account. Together, these documents, including any updates or amendments, establish Your rights and obligations with respect to the Company and the use of the Service.
“You” (also referred to as “User” and “Your”) means the individual accessing or using the Service, or a business, or other legal entity on behalf of which such individual is accessing or using the Service, as applicable.
“User Session” refers to the period during which a user accesses and interacts with Service. A session begins when the user logs into the service and ends when the user logs out or is automatically logged out due to inactivity. Each session is unique to the individual user and is used to track usage patterns, maintain security, and ensure the proper functioning of the service. The duration and activity within a user session may be monitored and recorded for the purposes of improving service quality, troubleshooting issues, and complying with legal and regulatory requirements. We reserve
2 Acceptance of Terms
These Terms of Service (“Terms”) apply to the use of the Service provided by Illuminum AB, a company existing under Swedish law, located at Västra Ågatan 22, 753 09 Uppsala (“Company”). By accessing or using the Service, You agree to be bound by these Terms.
Illuminum’s Data Privacy Policy forms an integral part of this User Agreement. By using the Service, You agree to accept the Terms at all times.
3 The Service
3.1 The Purpose of Illuminum
Illuminum develops tools and services to empower the work of professionals and enhance learning. With our Service, we hope to:
educate our users about our planet’s natural ecosystems and their inhabitants,
aspire to accelerate nature conservation, restoration of natural habitats, simplify blue-green design of urban spaces,
slow down and reverse, if possible, the trends that might threaten ecosystem services,
increase the resilience of our civilization to blights, and mitigate effects of climate change on agriculture, forests, and ecosystems,
simplify data-driven foraging within the limits of safe reproduction capacity of the given species or habitat.
3.2 Gaia by Illuminum
Gaia by Illuminum is a web-based service that gathers and visualizes biodiversity data from across the internet, presenting it in an interactive map. It allows the User to access, search, analyse, and download observations and biological interactions for various species, taxon, language, location, and time.
3.3 Changes to the Service
Illuminum reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to update, change, modify, or add to the Service for any reason and without prior notice. This includes, but is not limited to technical updates, maintenance, and optimizations to improve the Service.
New Modules or features may be added in the future. Such additions may or may not be available to You depending on Your Service Plan.
If any future changes to the Service make the Service unsuitable to You, or cause You to become noncompliant with the Terms herein, You agree to discontinue use of the Service and cancel Your subscription and, or, account if necessary.
4 Your Illuminum Account
To access our Service, You must create and validate an Illuminum Account. The account can be personal, or on behalf of a business entity, provided You have the authority to accept the Terms of Service on the entity’s behalf. You agree to create and validate separate Illuminum Accounts for private use and organizational needs.
The account is non-transferrable. You may not sub-license, sell, lend, or transfer the account without our prior written approval. You agree not to share Your log in credentials to any other person or organization.
By using the Service, You confirm that You are at least 16 years old or the minimum age required in Your country, whichever is higher. If You do not meet the age requirement, Your parent or legal guardian must accept the Terms on Your behalf.
The Account is available on the condition that the information You provide is accurate and complete, and that the Account is not used in breach of applicable law or the Terms set forth herein. We reserve the right to delete or modify Your Illuminum Account or reclaim any username.
Any Personal Data You have provided for Your Illuminum Account is subject to our Data Privacy Policy, and You have the right to access and manage Your Personal Data at any time. If You delete the account, Your Personal Data will be deleted from our archive, except as stated in section 5.3.
5 Grant of License
5.1 User Licence
Illuminum grants You a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Service in whole or in part (the “License”), subject to the Service Plan and the User Agreement, until either the customer or Illuminum terminates the Agreement.
5.2 Service Availability
We strive to ensure that the Service always remains available and functional. However, availability may be affected by maintenance, updates, network disruptions and/or technical issues, whether caused by us or third parties. Illuminum provides no warranties other than as explicitly stated in these Terms and does not guarantee uninterrupted access and is not liable for any related claims.
5.3 Misuse
Illuminum strictly prohibits the use of its Service for any illegal and/or unethical activities, including, but not limited to:
Poaching;
illegal wildlife trade;
illicit biodiversity offsetting practices; or,
over-exploitation beyond the reproductive capacities of any given species or habitat.
Suspected misuse of our Service may lead to the immediate blocking of Your Illuminum Account or affiliated third-party services, such as, but not limited to, use of or access to the Discord server of our Service.
In case Your Illuminum Account is blocked due to suspected illegal or unethical Activities, data collected about You may be retained to prevent circumvention of access restriction, and may be shared with law enforcement agencies, non-governmental organisations working with wildlife protection, and/or other relevant authorities, subject to restrictions applicable by law.
6 Third-Party Features
6.1 Third-Party Features
As applicable, certain parts of the Service may utilize third-party software, services, or features, including, but not limited, to; secure login, community discussion board and payment processing, which are subject to separate terms and conditions issued by the applicable third-party supplier. By using such Third-Party Features, You agree to comply with such additional terms.
We only use third-party suppliers that adhere to industry standards for data protection. However, we explicitly disclaim any liability for issues arising from the use of third-party services. You agree to address any disputes or issues related to these services directly with the respective third-party supplier.
6.2 Links to Other Online Resources
Our Service may contain links to third-party web sites or services that are not owned or controlled by Illuminum.
Illuminum has no control over, and assumes no responsibility or liability for, the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party web sites or services. You further acknowledge and agree that Illuminum shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any such content or services available on or through any such web sites or services.
We strongly advise You to read the terms and conditions and privacy policies of any third-party web sites or services that You visit.
7 Intellectual Property
7.1 Intellectual Property of Illuminum
All intellectual property rights in and to the Service, including but not limited to software, content, designs, graphics, and trademarks, are owned by Illuminum, its Third-Party Suppliers, Observers, or Providers of Observations. You agree not to copy, modify, distribute, sell, or lease any part of the Service or its content, nor to reverse engineer or attempt to extract the source code of the software, except as permitted by agreement or law. Any unauthorized use of the Service or its content is strictly prohibited and may result in the termination of the customer’s account as well as legal action and liability for damages.
7.2 Intellectual property of Observers, or Providers of Observations
All Observations and related content provided by Observers or Providers are licensed under the Creative Commons license, such as:
CC0 1.0, accessible from http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode,
CC4.0 BY, accessible from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode,
CC4.0 BY-NC, accessible from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode.
When using the Observations, You are fully responsible for complying with all applicable license terms and conditions. This may include, but is not limited to, proper attribution, non-commercial use, and sharing alike, as specified by the specific Creative Commons license under which the content is provided.
8 Data Collection
You agree that Illuminum may collect the following type of data from Your use of our Service your search activities and settings, interaction frequency and time with individual components of the interface of the Service.
We store this information indefinitely for security purposes, i.e. detecting any eventual Unethical Activities done within our Service, and for technical purposes to improve the quality of our user experience.
We do not sell Your Personal Data to third parties.
Anonymous, group-level data that are not tied to individual users (“Other Data”) may be shared with third parties. These aggregated data are used to gain insights into user segment interests.
For details on how we handle Personal Data, please refer to our Data Privacy Policy.
9 Billing
The Service is made available on the economic terms stated in the Users chosen Service Plan. The payment models described in clauses 9.2 and 9.3 are currently available.
The default Service Plan upon Your registration is the Free Plan.
Prices are in Euros (€) and exclude VAT. Prices may change and be indexed.
9.1 Free Plan
You get 5 cost free searches with the module Forager per calendar month as part of your Free Plan. After you deplete them, You must get a paid Service Plan, if you wish to continue to use the Service.
After an expiry of a Paid Service Plan, Your Service Plan will automatically default to Free Plan.
9.2 Pay-as-you-go
Gaia Tokens may be purchased in advance, or Invoices for the Gaia Tokens used will be issued monthly in arrears, based on actual usage.
The cost of 1 Gaia Token is €0.01. Illuminum reserves the right to change the cost of Gaia Tokens at any time.
Your Illuminum Account will maintain Your balance of Gaia Tokens. For specified actions You perform, Gaia Tokens will be deducted from Your Illuminum Account according to the computational requirements of each action.
Since we cannot determine the computational requirements of Your actions in advance, Gaia Tokens will be deducted retrospectively based on the actual computation required. If Your account has a negative balance at the beginning of each calendar month, You will receive an invoice to cover the cost of Your usage of Gaia Tokens.
9.2.1 Chargeable computational actions in Module Forager in Gaia
| Type of Illuminum Account | Cost of 1 data instance of Observation found and returned by the Service |
| Private | 15 Gaia Tokens |
| Organisational: non-profit | 75 Gaia Tokens |
| Organisational: for profit | 95 Gaia Tokens |
| Organisational: governmental | 95 Gaia Tokens |
| Organisational: academic | 75 Gaia Tokens |
9.4 Payment
9.4.1 Invoices will be sent electronically to the e-mail address provided by the User upon registration. Users will be prompted to pay with a payment card.
9.4.2 Payment for the Pay-as-you-go is due 30 calendar days after the invoice date.
Payment for the Day Pass and Week Pass is due before the Service Plan activates.
9.4.3 If You fail to make a payment by the due date, the Company reserves the right to suspend access to the Service due to payment default until the outstanding amount is paid.
9.4.4 In the event of overdue payment, You may be charged interest on the overdue amount at a rate determined in accordance with applicable law, calculated from the due date until the date of payment.
9.4.5 The Company reserves the right to assign claims to a third-party institution for collection. The User will be notified of such an assignment, and all further communications regarding the debt will be handled by the third-party institution.
10 Termination and Suspension
You are free to stop using our Service at any time. Running subscriptions may be cancelled as provided in section 9.3.
If You wish to terminate Your access to our Service, it is Your responsibility to delete Your Illuminum Account. Upon termination, Your right to use the Service will cease immediately.
We reserve the right to terminate or block Your access to our Service immediately, without prior notice or liability, if we determine that:
You have defaulted Your obligations according to these Terms; or
We are obligated to do so in order to comply with the applicable law.
We reserve the right to discontinue the Service at any time. In such cases, we will provide You with advance notice where possible.
11 Liability and Warranties
11.1 LIABILITY
ILLUMINUM’S TOTAL LIABILITY UNDER THESE TERMS IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT YOU HAVE PAID FOR THE SERVICE. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, ILLUMINUM AND ITS SUPPLIERS ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, PERSONAL INJURY, OR PRIVACY LOSS) RELATED TO THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE, THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE, OR HARDWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
11.2 Data Accuracy and Third-Party Data Sources
The Service provides data from public databases based on Your Illuminum Account type. Illuminum is not responsible and cannot be held liable for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of this data. Use it at Your own risk.
11.3 NO WARRANTIES
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES. ILLUMINUM DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. ILLUMINUM DOES NOT GUARANTEE THAT THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, ACHIEVE ANY INTENDED RESULTS, BE COMPATIBLE WITH OTHER SOFTWARE, APPLICATIONS, SYSTEMS, OR SERVICES, OPERATE WITHOUT INTERRUPTION, MEET PERFORMANCE OR RELIABILITY STANDARDS, OR BE ERROR-FREE. NO ORAL OR WRITTEN ADVICE OR INFORMATION PROVIDED BY ILLUMINUM OR ANY AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE SHALL CREATE A WARRANTY.
11.4 Indemnification
You will indemnify and hold harmless Illuminum, its affiliates, and personnel from any costs, losses, liabilities, and expenses (including attorneys’ fees) arising from third-party claims related to Your use of the Services and Content or any violation of these Terms.
12 Miscellaneous
12.1 Originals in English
The original version of these Terms is in English. In the event of any conflict between the English version and any translation, the English version shall prevail.
12.2 Severability
If any provision of these Terms or the User Agreement is deemed unenforceable or invalid, such provision will be modified and interpreted to fulfill its intended objectives to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. All remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.
12.3 Changes to these Terms
Illuminum reserves the right to revise, update, modify, or delete parts of these Terms at any time, at its sole discretion. Changes may be made with or without prior notice to you. We will make efforts to notify You of significant changes. You must accept the updated Terms to continue using the Service. By continuing to access or use the Service after changes become effective, You agree to be bound by the revised Terms. If You do not agree to the new Terms, You agree to stop using the Service.
12.4 Disputes Resolution
If You have any concern or dispute about the Service, You agree to first try to resolve the dispute amicably by contacting the Company. See chapter Contact Us.
12.5 Governing law and venue
The laws of Sweden, excluding its conflicts of law rules, shall govern the Terms. Your use of the Service may also be subject to other local, state, national, or international laws.
12.5.1 For consumers based in European Union
If You are a European Union consumer, You will benefit from any mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which You are resident.
12.5.2 For consumers based in United States
You represent and warrant that (i) You are not located in a country that is subject to the United States government embargo, or that has been designated by the United States government as a “terrorist supporting” country, and (ii) You are not listed on any United States government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
13 Contact Us
If You have any questions about these Terms or the User Agreement, You can contact us:
- By email: info@Illuminum.se
We appreciate Your confidence in our services.