1. Who we are and what this is

Paralegaless ("Paralegaless", "we", "us") is software operated by Changmin Choi, from Seoul, Republic of Korea. It prepares Information Disclosure Statements: it fills the USPTO's PTO/SB/08 form, gathers reference copies, and produces a filing packet.

Paralegaless is not a law firm. It does not give legal advice, does not represent anyone before the USPTO, and no attorney-client relationship arises from using it. The operator is licensed to practise law in the District of Columbia and is not registered to practise before the USPTO. You remain the practitioner of record: what to cite, when to file, the timing statement under 37 CFR 1.97(e) and the signature are your decisions, and you are responsible for the filing you make.

2. Your account

• You must be at least 18 years old and give a real email address, which we may ask you to confirm by following a link we send.
• An account is for one person. Do not share a password. Tell us through the message board if you think it has been used by someone else.
• You are responsible for everything done through your account.
• You may close your account at any time from Account > Profile. Closing it deletes your data, as described in the Privacy Policy.

3. What you may and may not do

Use Paralegaless to prepare IDS submissions for matters you are entitled to work on. Do not:

• resell, sublicense or provide the service to others as your own;
• automate access outside the interface, scrape it, or place load on it beyond ordinary practice use;
• upload documents you have no right to use, or use the service to get around a paywall or licence;
• try to break, probe or circumvent the security of the service, or access another customer's data;
• use the service where doing so would break the law or a professional rule that applies to you.

4. Fees and credits

• One credit is spent the first time an SB/08 is generated for an IDS. Looking up references, fetching copies, editing fields and detecting families cost nothing. There is no subscription.
• Editing and re-downloading the same IDS is free for 30 days after it is first generated.
• Credits do not expire. Free credits, including the first IDS and credits earned for feedback, have no cash value.
• Prices are shown on the fee schedule. We may change prices for future purchases; credits you already hold are never repriced.
• USPTO fees are not ours: you pay them to the USPTO. Fee amounts shown in the service are a calculation aid, not a guarantee.

Payments are processed by Paddle.com Market Ltd, our merchant of record. Paddle handles the payment, tax and invoicing, and its terms apply to that transaction. We never see your card details.

5. Refunds

The Refund Policy forms part of these terms.

6. Your data and content

Your matters, references, uploads and prepared forms remain yours. You give us only the permission needed to run the service for you: to store your work, fetch the reference copies you ask for, produce your packet, and keep it available in your account.

We do not use your data to train AI models, and we do not sell it or share it for advertising. We may use statistics that cannot identify you or your matters (such as how many IDS were prepared in a month) to run and describe the business.

7. Documents from outside sources

Reference data and copies come from the European Patent Office's Open Patent Services, Google Patents, OpenAlex, arXiv and similar public sources. Those sources set their own terms and can change or be unavailable. We fetch only what a source makes available; we do not defeat paywalls, and where no free copy exists you upload your own. You are responsible for checking that a copy is complete, correct and permitted for the filing you make.

8. Availability and changes

We aim to keep the service running and to warn you before anything disruptive, but we do not promise a particular level of uptime, and we may change, suspend or withdraw features. If we withdraw the service entirely, we will give reasonable notice, let you export your data, and refund unused credits.

9. Disclaimers

The service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We do not warrant that a prepared IDS complies with 37 CFR 1.97, 1.98 or any other requirement in your particular case, that a reference has been correctly identified, or that any submission will be accepted or considered by the USPTO. Every IDS must be reviewed and signed by the practitioner who files it.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost business or lost data, even if warned they were possible.

Our total liability arising out of or relating to the service is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) US$100. This limit does not apply to liability that cannot be limited by law, or to our fraud or wilful misconduct.

This allocation of risk reflects the price of the service: it costs a small fraction of the value of a patent application, and the professional judgement, review and signature stay with you.

11. Your indemnity

You will indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from your use of the service, the submissions you make, your breach of these terms, or your breach of a professional or ethical duty owed to your client.

12. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close an account for non-payment, for abuse of the service, or where required by law, with notice where practical. You may close yours at any time. Sections 6 and 9 to 14 survive the end of these terms.

13. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the District of Columbia, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Before starting proceedings, write to us on the message board and give us 30 days to resolve it: almost everything is resolved that way. Otherwise the courts of the District of Columbia have exclusive jurisdiction. Nothing here removes a consumer right you have under the law of your own country.

14. Changes to these terms

We will post a changed version here with a new date, and for material changes we will email account holders at least 14 days beforehand. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept it.

15. Contact

Write on the message board, or from Account > Messages if you are signed in. Our business address is available on request through the same board.

1. Who is responsible

Changmin Choi, operating Paralegaless from Seoul, Republic of Korea, is the controller of the personal data described here. Contact us through the message board.

2. What we hold

• Account. Email address, password (stored only as a scrypt hash), and what you choose to save in your profile: name, firm, USPTO registration number.
• Your IDS work. Application details, reference lists, uploaded and fetched PDF copies, prepared forms and fee calculations.
• Billing. A record of the credits you bought and spent. Card details are handled by Paddle and never reach us.
• Messages and feedback. What you write on the message board or in a feedback review, with your email address.
• Technical. Your IP address, briefly, to rate-limit sign-ins, signups and messages; and server error logs, which may contain the address of a failing request.

We do not ask for and never hold your USPTO.gov credentials, card numbers, or any special category of personal data. There are no advertising cookies, no analytics scripts and no third-party trackers on this site.

3. What leaves your browser, and when

• While you fill in an unpublished matter, the application details stay in your browser.
• When you look up a reference, only that reference's identifier goes to our server and on to the source.
• When you detect a family, the application number, filing date and any related numbers you entered go to the European Patent Office.
• When you generate the SB/08, the matter and the reference list are sent to our server, which fills the form and stores the IDS in your account.

4. Why we hold it

To provide the service you asked for (performance of our contract with you); to keep it secure and to prevent abuse of the free credit (our legitimate interests); to bill you and keep records (contract and legal obligation); and to answer your messages (contract and legitimate interests). Where a legal basis is needed and none of those applies, we ask for your consent.

5. Cookies

One cookie, pl_session: it keeps you signed in, is HttpOnly and SameSite=Lax, and lasts 30 days. It is strictly necessary, so there is no cookie banner to click away. There are no other cookies.

6. Who else sees it

• Paddle.com Market Ltd (Isle of Man / United Kingdom) — merchant of record; receives your email and payment details directly from you.
• European Patent Office (Open Patent Services) — receives reference identifiers, and the numbers you give for family detection.
• Google Patents, OpenAlex, arXiv and publisher sites — receive the identifier or URL of a document being fetched. Our server makes those requests, so your address is not exposed to them.
• Our email provider — receives your address and the text of confirmation and password-reset messages.
• Our hosting provider — stores the encrypted server and its backups.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. Your data is never used to train AI models.

7. How long we keep it

• Account, profile and IDS records: until you delete them or close your account.
• Message threads and feedback: until you close your account.
• Server error logs: rotated, and not kept beyond 90 days.
• Billing records: Paddle keeps what it must as merchant of record. Our own copy keeps only an amount, a date and a random identifier, which no longer points to anyone once your account is closed.
• Backups: encrypted, kept 30 days, then overwritten. Deleted data disappears from backups within that window.

8. Your choices and rights

• See and export. Account > Profile has a one-click export of everything we hold, as a JSON file.
• Correct. Edit your profile at any time.
• Delete. Account > Profile closes the account and deletes your data, including your IDS records and any stored copy no other account is using. This cannot be undone.
• If the GDPR or UK GDPR applies to you, you also have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection, and may complain to your supervisory authority. If you are in California, you may exercise the rights of the CCPA/CPRA; we will not discriminate against you for it.

Ask through the message board and we will answer within 30 days.

9. Security

Passwords are stored as scrypt hashes with a per-user salt, never in a readable form. Traffic is served over HTTPS. The operator console is invisible to everyone but the operator. Access to the server is limited to the operator, and backups are encrypted. No system is perfect: if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the relevant authority promptly.

10. Where your data is

Our server and its backups are in the United States. The operator is in the Republic of Korea and reaches the server from there, so your data is accessed from Korea. The European Patent Office is in Europe, and Paddle operates from the United Kingdom and the Isle of Man. Where personal data is transferred internationally it is covered by the safeguards those providers publish, including standard contractual clauses where they apply, and by the Korean Personal Information Protection Act, which applies to us as a Korean controller.

11. Children

Paralegaless is a professional tool, not for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect data from children.

12. Changes

A changed policy is posted here with a new date; for material changes, account holders are emailed at least 14 days beforehand.

1. Unused credits

Credits you have bought and not spent are refunded in full on request within 14 days of the purchase. After 14 days unused credits stay on the account; they never expire, so nothing is lost.

2. A credit already spent on an IDS

A credit is spent when an SB/08 is first generated, which is the moment the work is delivered. We refund it, or replace it, when the result is not what was promised: a form that does not open or fill correctly, wrong data written into a field from our lookup, a missing copy we said we had fetched, or a packet you cannot file for a reason on our side. Tell us what went wrong and we will fix it, replace the credit, or refund it, whichever you prefer.

We do not refund a spent credit only because you changed your mind, because the matter settled or was abandoned, or because a reference turned out not to be needed. The preparation had already been done.

3. Charges that should not have happened

Duplicate charges, a charge you did not authorise, or a charge caused by a fault of ours are refunded in full, whenever you find them.

4. Free credits

The free first IDS and credits earned through the feedback programme have no cash value and are not refundable in money.

5. How to ask

1. 01Write on the message board, or from Account > Messages. Say what you are asking about: the application number, or the date of the purchase.
2. 02We answer within 2 business days, and in most cases decide at the same time.
3. 03Approved refunds are made by Paddle, our merchant of record, to the original payment method. Paddle usually completes them in 5 to 10 business days.

Please ask us before starting a chargeback with your bank. A chargeback freezes the account while it is investigated, and almost every complaint is settled faster on the message board.