Terms of Use

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using Open Gov ("open-gov.usebase.io"), operated by Base ("we", "us", "our"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Use. If you do not agree with any part of these terms, you may not access the service.

2. Description of Service

Open Gov is a maritime trade intelligence platform that aggregates, enriches, and cross-references publicly available government data from multiple jurisdictions. The platform provides tariff lookup, sanctions screening, vessel tracking, port intelligence, and related compliance tools.

3. Government Data Sources

Much of the underlying data displayed on this platform originates from public government sources (USITC, CBP, OFAC, FMC, USCG, BSEE, EU, UN, and others). We do not claim ownership over raw government records. However, our aggregation, cross-source linking, entity resolution, intelligence analysis, and presentation constitute original works protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights.

4. Acceptable Use

You may:

• Access and use the platform for personal, professional, or commercial research purposes
• Share links to individual pages
• Use our REST API and MCP endpoints within the rate limits of your subscription tier

5. Prohibited Use — Automated Scraping

You may not:

• Use automated tools, scripts, bots, or crawlers to systematically access, download, or scrape content from this platform, except as expressly permitted below
• Reproduce, redistribute, or republish our aggregated data, cross-source intelligence, entity-resolved profiles, or enriched content in bulk
• Mirror, frame, or create derivative databases from the content on this platform
• Circumvent rate limits, access controls, or technical protection measures
• Use the platform to build a competing product or service

Permitted Automated Access

The following automated access is expressly permitted:

• Search engine crawlers that comply with our robots.txt directives (Googlebot, Bingbot, DuckDuckBot, Applebot)
• AI search and answer engines that comply with our robots.txt directives (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot)
• Authenticated API access within your subscription rate limits

6. Intellectual Property

The platform's original elements — including cross-source intelligence, entity resolution, aggregated company profiles, enrichment analysis, visual design, page structure, and proprietary data watermarking — are protected by copyright and constitute trade secrets. Unauthorized reproduction of these elements may result in legal action under applicable copyright, trade secret, and computer fraud laws.

7. Data Accuracy

While we strive to keep data current and accurate, government source data may be delayed, incomplete, or contain errors. This platform is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as the sole basis for compliance decisions. Always verify critical information against authoritative government sources.

8. Limitation of Liability

The platform is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. We are not liable for any damages arising from your use of the platform, including but not limited to compliance decisions made based on data displayed here.

9. Changes to Terms

We reserve the right to modify these terms at any time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated "Last updated" date. Your continued use of the platform after changes constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

10. Contact

For questions about these terms, contact us at legal@usebase.io.