Last updated: September 14, 2026
The Franchise Builder US platform, including its software, source code, design, interface, graphics, logos, branding, and underlying technology, is owned by Grant Search US, Inc. (which operates under the trade names Franchise Builder US and Franchise Builder Global) and is protected by United States and international intellectual property laws, including copyright, trademark, and patent laws.
All trademarks, service marks, and trade names displayed on the platform — including "Franchise Builder US" and "Franchise Builder Global" — are the property of Grant Search US, Inc. or their respective owners. Nothing on the platform grants you any right or license to use any trademark, service mark, or trade name without the prior written consent of the owner.
Content you create using the Service — including franchise manuals, FDD drafts, business plans, marketing materials, financial models, and training programs — is owned by you. You retain all intellectual property rights in your user-generated content.
By using the Service, you grant Franchise Builder US a limited, non-exclusive license to process, store, and display your content solely as necessary to provide and improve the Service. We do not claim ownership of your content, and we will not use your content for any purpose other than providing the Service to you without your consent.
Content generated by the Service's AI tools is provided to you as a starting point for your review and customization. To the extent permitted by law, you own the AI-generated content you create through the Service, subject to your compliance with these Terms. However, the underlying AI models, algorithms, and training methods remain the intellectual property of Franchise Builder US and its technology providers.
Important Notice Regarding Patent Protection of AI-Generated Output: Novel business processes, methods, or systems generated by the platform's AI tools (including the AI manual builder, FDD builder, and business plan generator) may lack the necessary human inventorship required for patent protection under current United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) guidance and judicial precedent.
Under the USPTO's guidance following Thaler v. Vidal, 43 F.4th 1207 (Fed. Cir. 2022), a patent application must name at least one natural person as the inventor. The USPTO has held that an artificial intelligence system cannot be named as an inventor on a patent application. Content created solely by an AI tool — without significant human contribution to the conception of the invention — may not be eligible for patent protection.
Franchisors should not assume that AI-generated operational processes, methods, or systems described in franchise manuals, FDD drafts, or business plans are automatically patentable. If you wish to seek patent protection for any process or method described in AI-generated content, you must ensure that a natural person has made a significant contribution to the conception of the invention, and you should consult a registered patent attorney before filing any patent application.
This notice does not constitute legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. For specific guidance on patentability of AI-assisted inventions, consult a qualified patent attorney.
When you upload proprietary manuals, FDDs, training materials, or other documents to the Service for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) indexing, the platform generates vector embeddings — mathematical representations of the semantic content of your documents — to enable AI-assisted content generation, search, and similarity matching. This section defines the ownership and licensing of these vector embeddings.
Ownership of Vector Embeddings: Vector embeddings generated from your proprietary documents are considered derivative works of your original content and are the property of the Franchisor (or the user who uploaded the source documents). To the extent that vector embeddings encode, represent, or derive from trade secret information contained in your source documents, such embeddings are treated as trade secrets subject to the same protections as the underlying source documents under applicable trade secret law (including the Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1836).
Platform License to Embeddings: You grant Franchise Builder US a limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive, revocable license to store, process, and compute against your vector embeddings solely as necessary to provide the Service to you — including generating AI-assisted content, performing semantic search, and matching relevant context from your indexed documents. This license is limited to service delivery and does not permit Franchise Builder US to: (a) share, transfer, or disclose your vector embeddings to any third party; (b) use your vector embeddings to train, fine-tune, or improve general-purpose AI models for other users; (c) reverse-engineer your vector embeddings to reconstruct the underlying source documents; or (d) use your vector embeddings for any purpose other than providing the Service to your account.
Deletion of Embeddings: Upon deletion of your source documents from the RAG index or upon termination of your account, Franchise Builder US shall permanently delete all vector embeddings associated with your content within thirty (30) days, except where retention is required by law or legal hold. You may request immediate deletion of all vector embeddings at any time through the Support section of the platform.
No Cross-User Embedding Sharing: Vector embeddings generated from one user's documents are never shared with, combined with, or used to serve another user's AI instance. Each user's vector embedding space is logically isolated and access-controlled to prevent cross-tenant data leakage.
This section documents the Chain of Title for AI-generated content, establishing the flow of intellectual property rights from the underlying Large Language Model (LLM) provider through the Franchise Builder US platform to the end-user (franchisor).
LLM Provider Grant: The AI generation capabilities of the Service are powered by third-party LLM providers (collectively, "InvokeLLM"). Pursuant to the provider's terms of service and output ownership policies, the LLM provider assigns, transfers, or licenses to Franchise Builder US all right, title, and interest in and to the raw AI-generated output produced in response to user prompts submitted through the Service, to the extent permitted by applicable law. The LLM provider retains no ownership interest in the specific output text, structure, or formatting generated in response to user prompts.
Platform Pass-Through to User: Franchise Builder US hereby assigns and transfers all right, title, and interest it receives from the LLM provider in and to the AI-generated output produced through your account — including the text, structure, formatting, and arrangement of AI-generated manual chapters, FDD sections, marketing copy, business plans, and social media content — to you, the user. This pass-through assignment is intended to create an unbroken chain of title from the LLM provider → Franchise Builder US → You, eliminating any potential "cloud on title" for FDD and manual ownership.
No Retained Interest: Franchise Builder US retains no ownership interest in the specific AI-generated output produced through your account, other than (a) the underlying AI models, algorithms, and training methods, which remain the property of Franchise Builder US and its technology providers, and (b) the platform's templates, prompt engineering logic, and software infrastructure, which are covered by the platform ownership provisions of Section 1. The pass-through assignment covers only the output content generated in response to your specific prompts, not the platform's general technology or methodology.
Chain of Title Documentation: Upon request, Franchise Builder US will provide a written "Chain of Title Certificate" documenting the flow of rights from the LLM provider through the platform to the user, suitable for inclusion in FDD filing packages, franchise agreement exhibits, or intellectual property audit records. This certificate confirms that the AI-generated content in your franchise documentation is free of any retained ownership claims by the LLM provider or the platform.
Limitations: This flow-through assignment does not extend to content that the LLM provider's terms explicitly reserve (if any), nor does it warrant that AI-generated content is copyrightable or eligible for copyright registration, as addressed in Section 3a. The assignment is subject to the AI Output Non-Infringement and Similarity Warranty provisions set forth in the Terms of Service.
We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the platform for your business purposes in accordance with our Terms of Service. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, or reverse-engineer the platform or any part of it.
Franchise listings published on the Franchise Builder US marketplace remain the intellectual property of the listing owner. By publishing a listing, you represent that you own or have the right to use all logos, images, descriptions, and other content included in your listing. You grant Franchise Builder US a limited license to display your listing on the marketplace for the purpose of promoting your franchise opportunity.
If you believe that content on the platform infringes your intellectual property rights, please submit a notice through the Support section of the platform. For copyright claims, please refer to our DMCA / Copyright Policy. We will investigate and take appropriate action in accordance with applicable law.
All intellectual property rights not expressly granted to you in these Terms or our Terms of Service are reserved by Franchise Builder US. No license is granted by implication, estoppel, or otherwise.
The Franchise Builder US marketplace contains proprietary, curated franchise listing data — including franchise fee structures, royalty rates, investment ranges, unit counts, financial performance figures, and franchisor-supplied marketing content — that has been compiled, formatted, and enriched through significant platform investment. Unauthorized automated extraction (scraping) of this marketplace data by competitors or third parties for commercial advantage constitutes a breach of these Terms and causes measurable harm to Franchise Builder US and the franchisors who have entrusted their data to the platform.
Prohibition on Automated Scraping: You may not use any automated means — including bots, web scrapers, crawlers, spiders, data extraction tools, or API scraping scripts — to extract, copy, harvest, or replicate marketplace listing data (including franchise fees, royalty structures, investment ranges, unit counts, and listing descriptions) for any commercial purpose, including but not limited to populating a competing franchise directory, building a lead generation database, or providing competitive intelligence to other franchisors or brokers.
Liquidated Damages: Because the actual damages caused by unauthorized commercial scraping of marketplace data are difficult to ascertain and prove, the parties agree that any party found to have engaged in unauthorized automated scraping of marketplace listing data shall pay Franchise Builder US liquidated damages in the amount of Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000) per scraped listing record, not as a penalty but as a reasonable estimate of the actual harm caused, including lost platform investment, lost listing revenue, competitive injury, and the cost of detecting and mitigating the scraping activity. This liquidated damages amount represents a genuine pre-estimate of loss and is not a penalty. Franchise Builder US reserves the right to seek injunctive relief to stop ongoing scraping activity in addition to liquidated damages, and to pursue actual damages where they exceed the liquidated amount.
Technological Protection Measures: Franchise Builder US may employ rate-limiting, bot detection, CAPTCHAs, IP blocking, and other technological protection measures to prevent automated scraping. Circumventing or attempting to circumvent these measures constitutes a violation of these Terms and may additionally constitute a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030) and state computer trespass laws.
Authorized Access Exception: Notwithstanding the foregoing prohibition, the following forms of automated access are expressly permitted and do not constitute a violation of these Terms or the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: (a) search engine indexing by recognized search engines (including Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and similar) that obey the platform's robots.txt directives and index only publicly available marketplace listing pages for the purpose of making those pages discoverable via search; (b) government regulatory auditing by federal or state regulatory agencies (including the FTC, SBA, NASAA, and state franchise registration authorities) conducting official compliance audits, examinations, or investigations using automated tools to access publicly available franchise disclosure data; (c) accessibility auditing by recognized accessibility evaluation tools and services (including W3C validators, screen reader testing tools, and WCAG compliance scanners) that access publicly available pages for the sole purpose of evaluating compliance with accessibility standards; and (d) academic research conducted by accredited academic institutions using publicly available marketplace data for non-commercial, peer-reviewed research, provided that the research does not republish or commercialize the scraped data. This Authorized Access Exception is consistent with the "without authorization" standard of the CFAA as interpreted in Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374 (2021), and is intended to preserve legitimate automated access while prohibiting unauthorized commercial exploitation of the platform's proprietary marketplace dataset.
Basis for Liquidated Damages: The liquidated damages amount of Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000) per scraped listing record reflects a reasonable estimate of the actual harm caused by unauthorized commercial scraping, based on the following factors: (a) the estimated cost of data integrity audits required to detect, investigate, and remediate unauthorized scraping incidents, including forensic analysis, log review, and security consultant fees (estimated at $1,500 per incident); (b) the market value of the proprietary marketplace dataset, which has been compiled through significant platform investment in franchise discovery, AI enrichment, SBA verification, and manual curation (estimated at $2,000 per listing record based on comparable franchise directory licensing rates); (c) competitive injury from the misappropriation of curated franchise data for use in competing directories or lead generation services (estimated at $1,000 per listing record); and (d) mitigation costs including rate-limiting upgrades, bot detection enhancements, and IP blocking infrastructure (estimated at $500 per incident). The parties agree that this amount bears a reasonable relationship to the actual harm anticipated and is not a penalty. If the actual damages proven at trial exceed the liquidated amount, Franchise Builder US reserves the right to recover the higher actual damages. This basis statement is provided to satisfy the reasonableness requirements for liquidated damages under California Civil Code § 1671(b) and the laws of other jurisdictions that require liquidated damages to bear a reasonable relationship to actual anticipated harm.
To maintain DMCA safe harbor protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. § 512(i), Franchise Builder US maintains and reasonably implements a policy for terminating repeat infringers who repeatedly post infringing content on the platform's marketplace, resource hub, or social media tools.
Three-Strike Policy: The platform implements a "three-strike" termination policy for marketplace brokers, franchisees, and users who repeatedly post infringing content:
Repeat Infringer Log: Franchise Builder US maintains an internal log of all DMCA takedown notices received and the corresponding actions taken. This log is retained for a minimum of three (3) years and is available for inspection by copyright owners and their authorized representatives upon reasonable request.
Appeal Process: A terminated user may appeal their termination by submitting a written appeal to the platform's designated DMCA agent within 14 days of the termination notice. The appeal will be reviewed by a platform administrator who was not involved in the original termination decision.
The Service provides machine translation capabilities (including Google Translate and similar translation APIs) to generate multi-language versions of franchise manuals, FDDs, training materials, marketing content, and other user-generated documents. This section defines the ownership of machine-translated outputs.
Translated Outputs as Derivative Works: All translated versions of your content generated through the platform's translation tools are considered derivative works of your original content and are owned by you (the user who created the original content). You retain all intellectual property rights in both the original content and the translated versions, subject to the platform's limited license to process and store the translations as necessary to provide the Service.
Platform License to Translations: You grant Franchise Builder US a limited, non-exclusive, revocable license to store, process, and display your translated content solely as necessary to provide the Service — including rendering translations in the platform interface, exporting translated documents, and performing quality assurance on translation accuracy. This license does not permit Franchise Builder US to use your translated content for any purpose other than providing the Service to you.
Translation Quality Disclaimer: Machine translations are generated by automated translation APIs and may contain errors, inaccuracies, or culturally inappropriate phrasing. You are solely responsible for reviewing and verifying all machine-translated content before relying on or distributing it. Franchise Builder US does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or cultural appropriateness of any machine-translated output. For legally binding documents (including FDDs and franchise agreements), you must engage a qualified human translator or certified translation service to verify the translation before use.
No Ownership Claim by Translation Provider: To the extent permitted by applicable law, the translation API provider (e.g., Google) retains no ownership rights in the translated output beyond the raw machine translation process. The intellectual expression, formatting, and domain-specific terminology in the translated content are contributed by you through your original content, and the resulting derivative work is owned by you.
This section applies to franchisors operating in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the United Kingdom. The collection, verification, and presentation of marketplace listing data on the Franchise Builder US platform constitutes a database within the meaning of Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the legal protection of databases (the "Database Directive") and the Database Right (Intellectual Property) Regulations 1997 (SI 1997/3032) as retained in UK law.
Maker of the Database: Franchise Builder US, as the entity that has made substantial investments (qualitative and/or quantitative) in the obtaining, verification, and presentation of the marketplace database contents, is the "maker" of the database within the meaning of Article 7(1) of the Database Directive. Franchise Builder US holds the sui generis database right — the right to prevent extraction and/or re-utilization of the whole or of a substantial part, evaluated qualitatively and/or quantitatively, of the contents of the database.
Franchisor Database Rights: Where a franchisor has compiled, verified, and organized a substantial collection of its own franchise system data (including unit-level financial performance data, territory assignments, franchisee rosters, and operational metrics) through the platform, that franchisor is the "maker" of its own franchise system database, and the sui generis database right in that franchisor-specific database is held by the franchisor. Franchise Builder US acknowledges the franchisor's database right and does not claim any database right in the franchisor's proprietary data collections.
Prohibition on Extraction and Re-utilization: Without prejudice to the Authorized Access Exception in Section 8, no person may extract or re-utilize a substantial part of the marketplace database contents — including by systematic and repeated extraction of insubstantial parts — for purposes that conflict with the normal exploitation of the database or unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of Franchise Builder US as the maker of the database. "Extraction" means the permanent or temporary transfer of all or a substantial part of the contents of a database to another medium by any means or in any form. "Re-utilization" means making available to the public all or a substantial part of the contents of a database by the distribution of copies, by renting, by online or other forms of transmission.
Term of Protection: The sui generis database right lasts for fifteen (15) years from the date of completion of the database, as provided by Article 10(1) of the Database Directive. A substantial change to the contents of the database — including a substantial new investment in the obtaining, verification, or presentation of the contents — qualifies the database resulting from that change for its own term of protection.
The following amendment is incorporated into the platform's Intellectual Property Notice:
Prompt Ownership Clarification
Notwithstanding any other provision of this Notice, users retain all ownership rights, including all intellectual property rights, in and to the specific prompts, prompt sequences, and prompt engineering methodologies they create, submit, or use in connection with the platform's AI generation features.
The platform does not claim ownership of, and obtains no license to, user-created prompts or prompt sequences, including but not limited to prompts used to train RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) models, generate brand-strategy content, or produce franchise documentation. User prompts are the sole and exclusive property of the user who created them.
This clarification applies to all prompts created by franchisor administrators, franchisee users, and any other platform users. The platform's ownership rights are limited to the underlying software, algorithms, and infrastructure — not to the user-authored prompts that direct content generation.
Hybrid Prompt Ownership — Joint Authorship Carve-Out
Where a user modifies a platform-provided prompt template by adding unique variables, custom instructions, or proprietary business logic, the resulting "Hybrid Prompt" contains two distinct layers of intellectual property: (a) the platform-provided prompt engineering logic (the template structure, system instructions, and AI methodology), which remains thePlatform IP of Franchise Builder US; and (b) the user-added variables, custom instructions, and unique modifications, which remain the User IP of the user who created them.
This joint-authorship carve-out means that neither party may claim sole ownership of a Hybrid Prompt. The user may freely use, modify, and export the user-added portions of a Hybrid Prompt for use with other AI tools or platforms. Franchise Builder US retains ownership of the template structure and engineering methodology, which the user may not extract, republish, or sublicense as a standalone product. The specific AI-generated output produced by a Hybrid Prompt is owned by the user under the Flow-Through Rights provision of this Notice, regardless of the hybrid nature of the prompt that generated it.
Similarity Warranty: Franchise Builder US warrants that the AI models used for core manual generation, FDD drafting, and business plan creation are trained on licensed datasets and public domain materials to the maximum extent practicable, reducing the risk that AI-generated output will be substantially similar to copyrighted training data in a manner that would constitute an infringing derivative work.
Non-Infringement Commitment: If AI-generated content produced through your account is found to infringe a third party's copyright by reason of substantial similarity to the AI model's training data, Franchise Builder US will, at its option: (a) provide a replacement generation using an alternative model, (b) refund the AI generation credits used for the infringing output, or (c) defend and indemnify you against the infringement claim to the extent permitted by the Terms of Service liability cap.
Limitations: This warranty does not extend to infringement caused by user-provided RAG data, user prompts that direct the AI to reproduce specific copyrighted material, or content generated using models selected by the user that are known to use unlicensed training data. This warranty supplements, and does not replace, the AI Output Non-Infringement Liability Cap set forth in the Terms of Service.
When the platform processes franchisee customer data to generate AI-enriched insights — including propensity scores, churn predictions, lifetime value estimates, and customer segmentation analysis — the ownership of such AI-enriched insights is allocated as follows:
Franchisee Ownership of Derived Insights: AI-generated insights derived from a franchisee's customer data remain the property of the franchisee upon termination of the franchise agreement or the platform service. The franchisee retains all right, title, and interest in AI-enriched insights, predictive scores, and analytical outputs generated from their customer data, including the right to export, transfer, and use such insights in competing systems after termination.
Platform License During Active Service: During the term of active service, the franchisee grants Franchise Builder US a limited, non-exclusive license to process customer data for the sole purpose of generating AI-enriched insights and delivering them to the franchisee. This license terminates upon cessation of service, at which point all AI-enriched insights are exportable by the franchisee in industry-standard formats (including IFX) as provided in the Data Portability provisions of the Terms of Service.
No Platform Ownership of Derived Insights: Franchise Builder US does not claim ownership of AI-enriched insights generated from a specific franchisee's customer data. The platform retains ownership only of the underlying AI models, algorithms, and general analytical methodology, not of the specific insights, scores, or predictions derived from any individual franchisee's data.
Franchise Builder US may use anonymized, aggregated, or de-identified platform usage data to optimize the platform's user interface, user experience, and AI-assisted workflows. This optimization process is designed to improve the general performance and usability of the platform for all users.
No Impact on User Ownership: Platform-side AI optimization of user interface elements, workflow suggestions, or template improvements does not constitute a waiver of the user's right to patent human-authored business methods, processes, or systems documented through the platform. The user retains full ownership of all human-authored business processes, operational methods, and systems described in manuals, FDDs, business plans, or other user-generated content, regardless of whether the platform has provided AI-assisted optimization suggestions for the presentation or formatting of such content.
Separation of Optimization from Invention: Platform optimization operates on the presentation and formatting of user content, not on the underlying business methods or processes themselves. Any human-authored business method, process, or system documented by the user remains the user's intellectual property, and the platform's optimization of how that content is displayed or organized does not diminish the user's ownership or patent rights in the underlying invention.
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