Manufacturer Terms
These terms are an agreement between a ball manufacturer (the "brand", "you") and LayoutQ LLC ("we", "us") for manufacturer accounts in the LayoutQ app and web app. You accept them when your brand's account is linked, or when anyone using that account submits a specification. The Terms of Use and Privacy Policy still apply. If they conflict with these terms on a brand matter, these terms win.
Your account
A manufacturer account is opened for a brand by invitation and is free. We may introduce a fee later with at least 60 days' notice by email; any free period we agreed to in writing is honored.
The brand names the people who may use the account and is responsible for what they do with it. Each person using the account confirms that the brand has authorized them to submit specifications on its behalf. Tell us when someone leaves so we can remove their access; until then their sign-in still works.
What you may submit
Through the account you may submit, one ball at a time or as a CSV file:
- Ball names, release years, coverstock and core details, radius of gyration, differential, mass bias differential, factory surface finish, and a link to the public source of the numbers.
- A spec sheet as a PDF or photo, attached to a submission so we can check it. We keep the file as the record of what was submitted.
- Corrections to your own balls already in the catalog.
What you may not submit
- Ball images, logos, or other artwork. The app does not display them. If we agree in writing to show your artwork, that agreement sets the terms for it.
- Specifications for another brand's balls.
- Anything you do not have the right to share, including another party's specifications under embargo. Your own unreleased ball is different: keep it as a draft rather than submitting it, as the section below describes. Approved specifications become visible to every user of the app.
- Numbers you know or suspect to be wrong.
Drafts before release
You can enter a ball before it is released and keep it as a draft. A draft is not a submission: it is not in the catalog, it is not used in any recommendation, and no bowler or pro shop sees it.
Only your own account and the staff here who review submissions can see a draft. You can run a draft through the fit map to see which bowling styles it would suit, which is modelled from the catalog and the engine and uses no bowler's data.
You submit a draft for approval on or after its release date. Approval is what publishes it, and from then it is an approved submission like any other.
We keep your drafts confidential. We do not show a draft to another brand, to a pro shop or to a bowler, and we use it only to run the preview for you and to review it when you submit it, unless the law requires us to disclose it. You can delete a draft at any time.
Rights in what you submit
You keep ownership of your specifications, spec sheets, names, and trademarks. You confirm that you hold the rights to everything you submit and that the specifications are accurate to the best of your knowledge.
You grant LayoutQ LLC a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, display, and adapt approved submissions in the catalog and in the recommendations the app computes from them, and to use your ball and brand names to identify your products. Approved submissions stay in the catalog after the account closes, because bowlers and shops rely on them.
If someone claims that a submission you made infringes their rights or is false, you handle the claim and cover our reasonable costs from it.
Our review
Nothing you submit reaches the catalog until we approve it. We check each submission against the attached sheet and public sources, and we may approve it, reject it, or ask you to revise it. Our decision is emailed to the account that submitted. We may also correct an obvious error, mark a specification as brand verified, keep a third-party value alongside yours, or remove a specification later if we find it wrong.
We aim to review within a few business days but do not promise a time.
What you receive
A manufacturer account can see totals about its own balls, computed on the first of each month:
- How many arsenals contain each of your balls, per ball and per brand, with monthly history.
- For each arsenal slot, how many arsenals across the app hold one of your balls in that slot compared with all balls in that slot.
- How your balls are typically drilled, as counts of layouts across pro shop drill sheets. Nothing is shown for a ball until five or more sheets record it. Within that, the breakdown shows the most common layouts, each with its own count, so one layout may account for a single sheet.
- How often shops change a ball's factory finish when they drill it, and to what grit, as counts across pro shop drill sheets. Nothing is shown for a ball until five or more sheets record it. Within that, the breakdown shows the most common finishes, each with its own count, so one finish may account for a single sheet.
- How many arsenals still hold one of your balls that you have retired and named a successor for. Nothing is shown for a ball until five or more arsenals hold it.
What you may do with the data
The totals identify nobody, and you agree to keep it that way.
- Use the totals for your own product, sales, and marketing planning, and share them inside your company.
- Do not try to identify any bowler, pro shop, or account from the totals, alone or combined with other data, and do not ask us to.
- Do not sell the totals or pass them to another company.
- If you publish a number from the totals, say it is from LayoutQ users, not from the market as a whole.
No sponsorship of recommendations
The app's ball recommendations, layouts, and surface suggestions are computed from the bowler's numbers, the catalog, and LayoutQ's own models. We do not take payment or anything else of value to favor a brand or a ball, and a brand verified specification does not change where a ball ranks. The brand agrees not to offer anything for placement. The app carries no advertising.
Your balls appear alongside other brands' balls wherever the numbers put them.
Acceptable use
The acceptable use rules in the Terms of Use apply. In addition, do not use the account to submit specifications that misstate a competitor's product, to copy the catalog, or to probe the totals for individual users.
Disclaimer and limitation of liability
The account and the totals are provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, express or implied. The totals depend on what users enter and may be incomplete.
To the fullest extent the law allows, LayoutQ LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits or lost business, arising from the account or the totals. Because the account is free, our total liability to the brand for all claims is limited to 50 US dollars.
Termination
Either of us may close the account at any time by email. We may suspend or close it at once for a breach of these terms. On closure, access to the totals stops, pending submissions are discarded, approved specifications stay in the catalog under the license above, and we keep the record of who submitted what.
Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. For a change that matters, we email the account at least 30 days before it takes effect and update the effective date. Continued use after that date means the brand accepts the new terms.
Governing law and disputes
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Alabama, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute that cannot be settled informally will be brought in the state or federal courts serving Jefferson County, Alabama, and both of us consent to their jurisdiction. Before filing, email us and we will try to resolve the issue within 30 days.
Contact
Questions about these terms or a submission: smartbowlingapp@gmail.com or (205) 578-2055. Mail: LayoutQ LLC, Hoover, Alabama, USA.