Terms of service

Catchword is provided by the sole proprietorship below. Full provider information under Section 5 DDG is on the Impressum page.

Contact: hello@catchword.me. In these terms, "we", "us" and "our" mean that business, and "you" means the person using Catchword.

These terms apply to your use of the Catchword apps, this website, and everything we provide through them. They are our general terms and conditions within the meaning of Section 305(1) BGB.

Your own differing or additional terms do not become part of the contract unless we agree to them in writing. Where you deal with us as a consumer under Section 13 BGB, nothing in these terms limits or excludes rights that consumer law does not allow to be limited or excluded — and where a clause here and a mandatory statutory right conflict, the statutory right wins.

Catchword lets you capture a word you have heard, turns it into a vocabulary card, and schedules that card for review over time. Cards are written by an AI language model from the word you captured and the context you gave it.

It is a study aid. It is not a dictionary of record, a translation service, a certification, or professional language tuition, and it does not promise any particular learning outcome, exam result, or level of fluency.

Creating an account forms a free contract of use on these terms. Where you buy a subscription, the contract for that subscription is formed as follows.

• On this website: the display of plans is an invitation to treat, not an offer. You make the offer by completing checkout and pressing the order button, which is labelled to make clear that the order carries an obligation to pay, as Section 312j(3) BGB requires. We accept by confirming the subscription by email or by unlocking the paid features, whichever happens first.
• Through the App Store or Google Play: the purchase contract is between you and Apple or Google, not between you and us. See B9.

We store the contract text and send it to you with your order confirmation on a durable medium, as Section 312f BGB requires. The contract language is English.

You must be at least 16 years old to use Catchword. If you are under 18, you may only use it with the consent of a parent or guardian, and only they can enter into a paid subscription. We may ask for confirmation of age and may suspend an account where we have reasonable grounds to believe this clause is not met.

You sign in with an email address and a one-time code sent to it. That has a consequence worth stating plainly: anyone who can read your inbox can sign in as you. Keeping your email account secure is therefore your responsibility, and you should treat sign-in codes as you would a password.

One account is for one person. Do not share it, sell it, or let anyone else use it. Tell us at security@catchword.me as soon as you suspect someone else has access, and we will help you secure it.

You agree not to:

• use Catchword to break the law, or to infringe anyone else's rights;
• upload or capture content that is unlawful, or that you have no right to submit to us;
• scrape, crawl, bulk-download, resell or redistribute the service or the cards it generates;
• reverse-engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except so far as Sections 69d and 69e UrhG expressly permit despite an agreement to the contrary;
• circumvent usage limits, entitlement checks, rate limits or paywalls, or use automated means to generate cards at a volume no individual learner would;
• probe or attack the service or its infrastructure, or interfere with anyone else's use of it.

Responsible security research is welcome. Report findings to security@catchword.me and give us a reasonable chance to fix the issue before disclosing it; we will not pursue you for good-faith testing that respects other users' data and does not degrade the service.

The words you capture and the notes you write stay yours. We claim no ownership of them.

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, transmit and process that content strictly to the extent needed to run the service for you — generating your cards, syncing them to your devices, backing them up, and providing support. The licence lasts as long as the content is in your account and ends when you delete the content or your account, subject only to backup rotation and to retention we are legally required to observe.

We do not use your content to train AI models, whether our own or anyone else's, and we send it to our model provider under terms that prohibit training on it. See the privacy policy for what actually leaves your device.

You are responsible for having the right to submit what you submit, and for keeping your own copies of anything you would be sorry to lose. Our own backups are for our operational resilience and are not a substitute for that.

Cards are produced by a large language model. Language models are usually right and sometimes confidently wrong: a definition may be inaccurate, an example may be unidiomatic, a register may be misjudged, and a translation may be plainly incorrect.

Treat every card as a study prompt to be checked, not as an authority. Do not rely on Catchword where being wrong would cause harm or cost — including in medical, legal, safety-critical, financial, immigration, academic or professional-translation contexts. Within the limits of B18, we are not liable for consequences of relying on generated content in that way.

No card constitutes a decision about you. We do not carry out automated decision-making producing legal or similarly significant effects within the meaning of Article 22 GDPR.

If you subscribe inside the iOS or Android app, you buy from Apple or Google under their terms, using their payment method, and your subscription is administered by them. In that case:

• cancellation, refunds, price changes and billing disputes are handled by the store, under its policies, and we cannot cancel or refund a store subscription for you;
• your right of withdrawal, where one exists, is exercised against the store as your contracting party, not against us — Part C applies to purchases made on this website;
• we never see or hold your card details.

These terms still govern your use of the service itself, whichever route you paid through.

Catchword is free to try: you can capture a word and see the card it becomes without paying. Features beyond that require a subscription.

• All prices for consumers are final prices in the currency shown. We apply the small-business scheme under Section 19(1) UStG, so no VAT is shown or charged.
• Payment is due in advance for each billing period, by the method you chose at checkout.
• If a payment fails, we may retry it and may suspend paid features until it succeeds. We will tell you before suspending. Statutory default interest under Section 288 BGB may apply, and you may always show that we suffered no loss, or a smaller one.
• Where a free trial is offered, we will state clearly beforehand how long it runs, what it costs afterwards, and when it converts. It converts to a paid subscription at the end unless you cancel before then.
• We may change prices for future billing periods. We will give you at least one month's notice by email before a change takes effect, and you may cancel with effect from the date the new price would start.

A subscription runs for the period you chose. Unless you cancel, it then continues for an indefinite period, and you can cancel it at any time with one month's notice, in line with Section 309 no. 9 BGB. It does not renew for a second fixed term.

• Bought on this website: you may cancel through the cancellation button we provide under Section 312k BGB, which is reachable without signing in, or by any clear statement to hello@catchword.me. No reason is needed and no form is required. We confirm every cancellation by email, on a durable medium, with the date it takes effect.
• Bought through a store: cancel in your Apple or Google subscription settings.

Cancelling stops future billing. You keep the paid features until the end of the period you have already paid for. The right of both parties to terminate for cause under Section 314 BGB is unaffected, and so is your right of withdrawal under Part C.

You can close your account whenever you like by writing to privacy@catchword.me; we action it without undue delay and confirm when it is done. Closing the account does not by itself cancel a store subscription — cancel that with the store as well, or you will keep being billed by them.

We work to keep Catchword available and try to schedule maintenance for quiet hours, but we do not promise uninterrupted availability, and no service level is agreed. Outages at our infrastructure providers, at the app stores, or on the networks in between are outside our control.

We may develop, change and improve the service. Where a change materially reduces the functionality you are paying for, we will give you at least one month's notice by email and you may cancel with effect from the date the change takes effect. Minor changes, bug fixes and security work do not require notice.

We may discontinue the service with at least three months' notice, and will refund the unused part of anything you have paid in advance.

The software, design, brand, wordmark and content of Catchword are ours or our licensors'. Your subscription buys a personal, non-transferable, non-sublicensable right to use the service for your own learning for as long as the contract runs. Nothing more is granted, expressly or by implication.

Catchword relies on third parties — hosting, speech recognition provided by your device's operating system, an AI model provider, the app stores, and payment processing. We choose them with care and bind them by contract where the law requires it, but we do not control them, and we are not responsible for their own services, their terms, or their availability. Which ones receive what is set out in the privacy policy.

How we handle personal data is described in the privacy policy. It is information under Articles 13 and 14 GDPR, not a contractual term, and nothing in these terms restricts your rights under the GDPR.

Catchword is a digital product within the meaning of Sections 327 ff. BGB. Your statutory rights where it does not meet the agreed or objectively required standard — including rights to have it brought into conformity, to reduce the price, and to terminate — apply in full, and we do not limit or shorten them.

We also owe you updates needed to maintain conformity for as long as the contract runs, under Section 327f BGB, and we will tell you about them.

We may suspend or close an account that materially breaches these terms — in particular B6 — or where we must do so by law. Where the breach can be cured, we will warn you and give you a reasonable chance to fix it first, unless the breach is serious enough that waiting is unreasonable.

We will tell you the reason unless we are legally prevented from doing so. If we close a paid account for a reason that is not your fault, we refund the unused part of the period you paid for. You can ask us for a copy of your cards in a structured, machine-readable format at any time, before or after you leave, within the retention periods set out in the privacy policy — that is your Article 20 GDPR right and we do not charge for it.

This clause limits what we owe you if something goes wrong. Read it.

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 (ProdHaftG); to the extent we have given a guarantee; and wherever statute otherwise imposes mandatory liability.
2. For slight negligence we are liable only for breach of a material contractual obligation — an obligation whose fulfilment makes proper performance of the contract possible in the first place, and on whose observance you may routinely rely. In that case our liability is limited to the foreseeable damage typical for this kind of contract.
3. Any further liability for slight negligence is excluded.
4. Where we are liable for loss of data, that liability covers the effort typically required to restore the data from backups you have properly maintained.
5. The above limits apply equally to the personal liability of our employees, representatives and agents.
6. None of this limits your rights under Section 327 ff. BGB for a defective digital product, or any other right that consumer law does not permit to be limited.

If a third party brings a claim against us because of content you submitted or because you used Catchword in breach of these terms or of the law, you will compensate us for the resulting loss, including reasonable legal costs — but only to the extent you are at fault for it. We will tell you promptly about any such claim, will not settle it without consulting you, and will give you a fair chance to defend it.

We may change these terms where there is a valid reason: a change in the law or in case law, a court or regulator's requirement, a change to the service, a new feature, a new provider, or to close a gap or fix an imbalance.

We will send the new version to you by email at least six weeks before it takes effect, alongside a plain summary of what changed. If you do not object before that date, the change takes effect; we will say so expressly in that email. If you do object, either of us may terminate the contract with effect from the date the change would apply, and we refund the unused part of anything paid in advance.

Changes to the main obligations of the contract require your agreement.

You may set off only claims that are undisputed or have been finally determined by a court, or that arise from the same contractual relationship. We may transfer this contract to a successor in connection with a transfer of the business, provided you are no worse off; if you are, you may terminate with effect from the transfer.

German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

If you are a consumer habitually resident in another EU or EEA state, that choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory rules of your own country (Article 6(2) Rome I Regulation), and you may bring proceedings in the courts of your own country of residence. We may only sue you in the courts of the country where you live.

Where you are a merchant, a legal person under public law or a special fund under public law, the exclusive place of jurisdiction is Berlin, Germany.

If a provision of these terms is or becomes invalid, the remainder stays in force, and the invalid provision is replaced by the statutory rule that applies in its place.

Full provider details are on the Impressum page, including the statement on consumer arbitration under Section 36 VSBG.

Part C applies if you are a consumer under Section 13 BGB and you bought a subscription on this website. For purchases made inside the iOS or Android app, your contracting party is Apple or Google and any withdrawal is exercised against them — see B9.

A subscription is only useful if it starts at once, so at checkout we ask you to confirm expressly that you want us to begin providing the service before the fourteen days are up. That confirmation does not take your withdrawal right away. It has one effect: if you then withdraw, you pay for the part of the period you actually had, calculated proportionately, and we refund the rest. That is the reasonable-value payment under Section 357(8) BGB, and we can only ask for it because it is set out here and confirmed by you at checkout.

Complete and return this form only if you wish to withdraw from the contract. Sending an email in your own words works just as well.

To: Oleksandr Yasko, Mindware, Kolonnenstr. 8, 10827 Berlin, Germany — hello@catchword.me

I/we (*) hereby give notice that I/we (*) withdraw from my/our (*) contract for the supply of the following service:

Ordered on (*) / received on (*):

Name of consumer(s):

Address of consumer(s):

Signature of consumer(s) (only if this form is notified on paper):

Date:

(*) Delete as appropriate.

Anything unclear in any of this: hello@catchword.me. We would rather explain a clause than have you agree to something you have not understood.