Legal

Terms of Service

Version 1.0, effective 16 September 2026

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

Provider. Nils Knäpper, Brand-Pipe, c/o Online-Impressum 10839, Europaring 90, 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany (“Brand-Pipe”, “we”). Contact: support@brand-pipe.com.

Scope. These terms govern your use of the Brand-Pipe API, the API key issued to you and the website brand-pipe.com (together the “Service”). The API documentation on this website describes the Service in technical detail and forms part of these terms. If the documentation and these terms conflict, these terms prevail.

Purchases. Credits are sold by Polar Software Inc. as merchant of record. The purchase contract, invoicing, VAT and Polar's refund handling are governed by Polar's own terms. These terms govern what the credits entitle you to and how you may use the Service.

2. Business customers only

The Service is offered to businesses, self-employed professionals and operators of channels or accounts run for a commercial purpose (entrepreneurs within the meaning of § 14 of the German Civil Code, BGB). It is not offered to consumers. By claiming an API key you confirm that you act in a commercial or professional capacity and that you are at least 18 years old. If you do not meet these conditions, do not use the Service.

3. How the contract is formed

The contract for the Service is formed when you accept these terms on the key claim page and we issue your API key. The same applies to the free starter credits; no payment is required for them. We may refuse to issue a key without giving reasons, in which case any amount paid to Polar for unclaimed credits is refunded.

4. The Service

What it does. Brand-Pipe takes a video you make available at a public URL and returns a re-encoded file fitted to a vertical 9:16 frame, with your logo overlaid, loudness normalised and, on request, captions burned in from an SRT or WebVTT file you supply. Results are made available at a download link. The exact behaviour, including duration and file size limits, supported formats, rate limits, how silent input is handled, and error codes, is described in the documentation. That description is the agreed specification of the Service.

What it does not do. Brand-Pipe does not transcribe, generate, review, moderate for quality or publish content. It does not check whether a video complies with the rules of any platform or with any law.

Retention. Results are kept for 24 hours and each download link is valid for one hour. You are responsible for downloading and keeping your own copy within that time. Source files are not retained after processing.

Changes to limits and features. We may change technical limits, add or remove features and change the documentation for good reason, such as legal requirements, security, platform changes or improvements to the Service. Changes will not reduce what a credit you have already purchased buys, see section 5.

Subcontractors. We operate the Service with the help of Google Cloud (processing, Frankfurt region), Cloudflare (result storage, EU jurisdiction), Unkey (key verification and credit counting) and Polar (payments). We may replace or add subcontractors of equivalent standard.

5. Credits

  • Price of a video. One credit per successfully processed video regardless of its length, two credits if we burn in captions. Credit costs are shown in the documentation before you send a request.
  • What counts as successful. A request is successful when the API returns a result URL (a 200 response on /v1/process or a job in status succeeded on /v1/jobs). If a request is refused before processing, or if download, encoding or upload fails after your key was charged, the credit is returned automatically and the error response says so. Whether the result meets your expectations of quality is a warranty question (section 10), not a question of whether the credit was due.
  • Retries. Requests sent with the same Idempotency-Key within 24 hours return the first result and are not charged again.
  • No expiry. Purchased credits do not expire. They are tied to the key and the email address used at checkout, are not transferable and cannot be exchanged for cash except where these terms provide for a refund.
  • Free credits have no cash value and are never refunded.
  • Price changes apply to future purchases only. If we ever change what a credit buys, we will announce this at least 30 days in advance by email, and you may request a refund of the purchase price of your unused purchased credits during that period.
  • Lost keys. Keys are shown once and are not stored in plain text on our side. On request from the email address used at checkout we issue a replacement key carrying your remaining balance and disable the old one.

6. Your content

Your rights stay yours. You keep all rights in the videos, logos, caption files and other material you submit (“Content”). You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to download, store, reproduce, adapt and re-encode the Content, including reformatting, cropping, overlaying, loudness processing and subtitling, solely to the extent needed to provide the Service to you and for the retention period in section 4.

Your warranties. You warrant that you hold all rights and permissions needed to submit the Content and to have it processed as described, including copyright, trademark, personality and image rights of any person shown or heard, and any licence terms of the AI tools you used to create it; that the Content and its intended use are lawful; and that the Content contains no personal data of third parties for which you lack a legal basis.

Indemnity. You will indemnify us against all claims, damages and reasonable costs of legal defence that third parties or authorities raise against us because of your Content or your use of the Service in breach of these terms, unless you are not responsible for the breach. We will inform you of any such claim without delay and will not acknowledge it without your consent unless required by law.

7. Acceptable use

You must not submit Content that is illegal, that infringes rights of others, that depicts sexual abuse, or that is intended to defraud, harass or deceive; use the Service to remove, obscure or forge labels, watermarks or provenance information; attempt to access other customers' keys, results or data; circumvent rate limits, credit counting or security measures; or resell the Service as such without our consent. Automated use through pipelines such as n8n or Make is expressly permitted.

Keep your API key secret. You are responsible for all requests made with your key until you tell us it has been compromised, and we will then issue a replacement.

8. Platforms, labelling and provenance

Platform rules. You are responsible for complying with the terms of YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and any other platform where you publish results. We do not promise that any platform will accept, distribute or monetise a video processed by Brand-Pipe.

AI labelling. Any duty to mark or disclose AI-generated or manipulated content, including under Article 50 of the EU AI Act and platform disclosure rules, rests with you as the person who generates and publishes the content. Brand-Pipe does not generate content and does not make content compliant.

Provenance metadata. Re-encoding a video drops embedded C2PA manifests and other container metadata, and may not preserve invisible watermarks. Brand-Pipe does not target or remove labels intentionally, but you must re-apply any disclosure or Content Credential that you are required to attach before publishing.

9. Results, illegal content and moderation

Results are yours. We claim no rights in the processed video. We do not review results; check them before publishing.

Hosting and notices. For the 24 hours in which a result is stored, Brand-Pipe acts as a hosting service within the meaning of the EU Digital Services Act. Anyone may report content they believe to be illegal by email to support@brand-pipe.com, stating the URL, why the content is considered illegal and their contact details. We review reports without undue delay, may remove the content or suspend the key, and inform the reporting party and the customer concerned of our decision and the reasons. This address is also our single point of contact for authorities and users; we communicate in English and German.

Our right to act. We may refuse, delete or block Content or results and suspend keys where we have reasonable grounds to believe that they breach these terms or the law. We apply this proportionately and without automated decision-making.

10. Availability and warranty

Availability. We operate the Service with reasonable care but do not guarantee any particular availability, response time or throughput. Requests beyond capacity may be queued or answered with 429; maintenance may interrupt the Service. Because you pay per successful video, an interruption does not cost you credits. If the Service is unavailable for an extended period we will tell you via email or the website.

Warranty. We warrant that results conform to the specification in the documentation. If a result does not, tell us within 14 days of the request with the job id. We will re-process the video or return the credit, at our choice. We make no warranty that a result is suitable for a particular platform, channel, audience or purpose, and none as to the quality of the source material you submit. Statutory warranty rights beyond this remain unaffected to the extent they cannot be excluded.

11. Liability

  1. We are liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act, under any guarantee we have expressly given, and for fraudulently concealed defects.
  2. For slight negligence we are liable only for the breach of an obligation whose fulfilment is essential to the proper performance of the contract and on which you may regularly rely (a material contractual obligation). In that case our liability is limited to the damage that is typical for this kind of contract and was foreseeable when the contract was formed.
  3. In all other cases liability for slight negligence is excluded. In particular, subject to paragraph 1, we are not liable for lost profit, lost revenue, loss of followers or reach, platform strikes, demonetisation or account suspensions, missed publication windows, or other indirect or consequential loss.
  4. For loss of data our liability under paragraph 2 is limited to the cost of restoring the data from a backup you could reasonably have kept. Results are stored for 24 hours only; keeping your own copies of sources and results is your responsibility.
  5. For use of the Service with free credits we are liable only under paragraph 1.
  6. These limitations also apply to our employees, agents and subcontractors and to claims in tort.

12. Suspension, termination and end of Service

Your termination. You may stop using the Service at any time and ask us to delete your key and data. Purchased credits are not refunded merely because you stop using the Service.

Our ordinary termination. We may terminate the contract with 30 days' notice by email to the address used at checkout. In that case we refund the purchase price of unused purchased credits.

Suspension for cause. We may suspend your key immediately and terminate for cause if you materially breach these terms, submit illegal Content, endanger the security or integrity of the Service, or if a payment to Polar is reversed. If the suspension is caused by your culpable material breach, we may withhold unused credits to cover our damage and costs, and refund any excess. Otherwise unused purchased credits are refunded.

End of the Service. If we discontinue Brand-Pipe, we give at least 30 days' notice and refund the purchase price of unused purchased credits.

13. Data protection

Our privacy policy explains what we process and why. Where the Content you submit contains personal data of other people, we process it on your behalf and on your instructions as your processor under Article 28 GDPR, and you are the controller. A data processing agreement, including the list of subcontractors in section 4, is available from support@brand-pipe.com and is deemed part of these terms once countersigned or accepted on the claim page. Video content is processed and stored in the EU. Only your customer id, email address and credit balance are shared with Unkey and Polar in the United States, on the basis of the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or standard contractual clauses.

14. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms for good reason, such as changes in law, new features, security or changes at our subcontractors. We will send you the new version by email at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you do not object before that date and continue to use the Service, the new terms apply. If you object, either party may terminate the contract and we refund the purchase price of unused purchased credits. We will never change the number of credits a purchased video costs, the no-expiry rule or the liability rules to your detriment through this procedure without the refund option in section 5.

15. Final provisions

  • Law. German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.
  • Venue. If you are a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law, or if you have no general place of jurisdiction in Germany, the courts of Bonn, Germany have exclusive jurisdiction. We may also sue at your seat.
  • Language. These terms are written in English. A German translation may be provided for convenience; the English version prevails.
  • Severability. If a provision is invalid, the rest remains in force and the invalid provision is replaced by the statutory rule.
  • Entire agreement. These terms, the documentation and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between you and Brand-Pipe on the Service. Polar's terms govern the purchase of credits.