Terms of Service

Agreement

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of Stead, including our website, applications, features, integrations and related services (collectively, the “Service”).

Stead is operated by Stead Systems Inc.. In these Terms, “Stead,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to Stead Systems Inc., the operator of the Service.

By creating an account, accessing or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and acknowledge our Privacy Policy.

If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Who can use Stead

The Service is intended primarily for students and others involved in university and campus life.

You must be legally permitted to use the Service where you live. If you have not reached the age of majority in your jurisdiction, you may use Stead only with the permission of a parent or legal guardian where required by law.

You may not use the Service if applicable law prohibits you from doing so.

Your account

You are responsible for your account and activity conducted through it.

You agree to:

• provide accurate information;
• keep your login credentials secure;
• not share access to your account in a way that compromises security;
• promptly notify us if you believe your account has been accessed without authorization.

You are responsible for ensuring that the email address and other information associated with your account remain current.

We are not responsible for losses caused by your failure to secure your account, except where applicable law provides otherwise.

What Stead does

Stead is an organizational and productivity platform designed to help users bring together information relating to student life.

Depending on the features available to you, Stead may help organize or display things such as courses, calendars, tasks, assignments, deadlines, files, university information, news, student deals and opportunities, communications, student content, documents you upload, and information from calendar feeds you add.

Features may differ between users, universities, devices or versions of the Service.

Universities and other organizations

Stead is an independent service.

Unless expressly stated otherwise, Stead is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or operated by any university, college, student government, educational institution or third-party service displayed or connected through the Service.

References to universities, products, organizations or trademarks are used for identification and interoperability purposes.

Stead is not an official university information system.

Stead is currently free to use, including syllabus import. There is no subscription or payment required for the currently available features. Usage and storage limits can still apply.

If we introduce optional paid features in the future, we will explain the price and applicable terms and require your agreement before charging you. Using the free Service does not enroll you in a paid subscription. External services you choose to use may have their own charges.

The liability limits below apply to this free Service to the extent allowed by law. They do not remove rights or remedies that cannot legally be excluded.

Academic information and accuracy

Stead may import, extract, parse, organize and display information from syllabi, timetables, calendars, calendar feeds, course materials, files and information supplied by users.

Stead is not an official university system or academic record.

Information shown in Stead may be incomplete, delayed, incorrectly interpreted, outdated or inaccurate.

You are responsible for independently confirming important academic information through the appropriate official source, including:

• assignment and examination dates;
• deadlines;
• course schedules;
• room locations;
• grades;
• academic requirements;
• registration information; and
• university announcements or policies.

No information in Stead is guaranteed to be correct, current or complete. That includes deadlines, examination dates and locations, assignments, grades, class schedules, room locations, registration information, and anything imported or parsed from a syllabus, timetable, calendar feed or other document.

Your university’s own systems and communications, and your instructors, remain the authoritative source for all of it. Where Stead and an official source disagree, the official source governs.

You should not rely solely on Stead for information where missing or incorrect information could result in academic, financial or other consequences.

Stead is an organizational tool and does not replace communications or systems provided by your university, instructors or other official sources.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Stead is not responsible for academic consequences arising from your reliance on information in the Service, including missed deadlines, missed examinations or classes, late or incomplete submissions, or decisions made on the basis of what Stead displayed.

Syllabus imports and AI

Syllabus import uses automated readers and Google Gemini to extract course details. The document or its text can be sent to Google during import, before you approve the result. Read the AI disclosure in our Privacy Policy before uploading.

You must have permission to submit the document. Do not submit sensitive, confidential or personal information to the AI importer. You can enter course information manually instead. Review every proposed date, assessment and course detail before saving it; automated extraction can omit or invent information.

External providers apply their own eligibility and usage restrictions. Google's Gemini terms include restrictions concerning users under 18. This policy does not represent parental permission as overriding a provider's restrictions.

Stead lets you add calendar information by giving it a calendar feed link - an ICS or webcal URL you obtain yourself from a service such as Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook or your university’s calendar system.

Where you provide one, Stead may use that link to retrieve, synchronize, process, store and display the information the feed makes available. Stead does not ask for your password for those services and does not sign in to your Google, Apple, Microsoft or university account on your behalf through this feature.

The feed is published and controlled by the external provider, not by us. That means:

• the provider decides what a feed contains and when it updates;
• a feed can be delayed, incomplete, inaccurate, changed, restricted or withdrawn without notice;
• a provider may stop supporting ICS or webcal feeds altogether; and
• your use of that provider remains governed by its own terms and privacy practices.

We do not guarantee that:

• a calendar feed will remain accessible;
• an external provider will continue to support ICS or webcal feeds;
• synchronization will always happen immediately; or
• imported calendar information will always be complete, current or accurate.

You are responsible for checking important dates against the authoritative source, and for making sure you are permitted to give us any feed or content you provide.

Some calendar feed links, including private or “secret” ones, let anyone holding the link read the calendar. Treat them as sensitive.

Where supported, you may remove a calendar from Stead. Removing it stops future synchronization from that feed.

Third-party content, news and deals

Stead may display news, articles, student deals, discounts, offers, opportunities and other information obtained from third-party or publicly available sources.

We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, availability, price, eligibility, quality, legality or terms of any of it. An offer can expire, change or be withdrawn without our knowing.

Unless we expressly say otherwise, Stead is not a party to any transaction between you and a third party, and displaying a company, product, article or deal is not necessarily our endorsement of it.

Following an external link may take you outside Stead and subject you to that provider’s own terms and privacy policy.

Third-party services generally

Third-party services, feeds and content may change, become unavailable, experience delays or stop working without notice because of circumstances outside our control.

We are not responsible for:

• third-party services, feeds, content or websites;
• information supplied by third parties;
• outages, delays or changes to third-party services or feeds;
• actions taken by third-party providers; or
• losses resulting from a third-party service, feed or offer becoming unavailable, changing or being inaccurate,

except where applicable law requires otherwise.

Your content

You retain ownership of content you submit, upload, create or share through Stead (“User Content”).

To operate the Service, you grant Stead a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, process, transmit and display your User Content only to the extent reasonably necessary to operate, provide, secure, maintain and improve the Service and the features you choose to use.

This licence ends when your content is deleted from our systems, subject to reasonable backup, legal and technical retention requirements.

You are responsible for your User Content and represent that you have the rights necessary to submit or share it through Stead.

You may not upload, post or distribute content that:

• violates applicable law;
• infringes intellectual property, privacy or other rights;
• contains malware or malicious code;
• unlawfully exposes another person’s personal information;
• facilitates harassment, threats or abuse;
• consists of unauthorized examinations, answer keys or other restricted academic materials; or
• violates applicable academic-integrity requirements.

We may remove or restrict access to User Content when reasonably necessary to enforce these Terms, protect users, protect the Service or comply with law.

This licence does not transfer ownership of your content to Stead. Our use and disclosure of personal information remains subject to the Privacy Policy, including the disclosure about syllabus processing by Google.

Shared and public content

Certain Stead features may allow information to be shared with classmates, groups, friends or other users.

You are responsible for choosing what you share and with whom.

Information you intentionally make visible to other users may be viewed, copied or shared by those users outside of Stead. We cannot control what another person does with information you choose to share with them.

Profile discovery and public file links have their own visibility rules; restricting a personal page does not make every associated file URL private. Review who can see your information before publishing or sharing it.

You may not misuse the Service.

In particular, you may not:

• violate applicable law;
• infringe another person’s rights;
• access accounts or data that you are not authorized to access;
• impersonate another person or misrepresent your affiliation;
• harass, threaten or abuse other users;
• distribute spam or unsolicited communications;
• upload malicious software or harmful code;
• interfere with or disrupt the Service;
• bypass or attempt to bypass security or access controls;
• probe, scan or test vulnerabilities without our written permission;
• scrape or systematically extract information from the Service except where we expressly allow it;
• use automated systems to access the Service in a manner that creates unreasonable load or circumvents normal functionality;
• reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to extract source code except where applicable law expressly permits it;
• resell, sublicense or commercially exploit access to the Service without our permission;
• use the Service to unlawfully obtain, distribute or facilitate access to restricted academic material; or
• attempt to help another person do any of the above.

We may take reasonable steps to investigate suspected abuse and protect the Service and its users.

Stead’s intellectual property

Except for User Content and third-party materials, Stead owns or licenses the Service and its associated software, design, interfaces, graphics, branding, logos and other content.

These Terms do not transfer ownership of Stead’s intellectual property to you.

Subject to these Terms, we give you a limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive and non-transferable right to access and use Stead for its intended purposes.

You may not use Stead’s name, logos or branding in a way that suggests sponsorship, partnership or endorsement without our permission.

Feedback

If you send us suggestions, ideas or feedback about Stead, you allow us to use that feedback without restriction or compensation to you.

This does not give us ownership of your User Content or personal information.

Privacy

Our collection, use and handling of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy.

By using Stead, you acknowledge that information may be processed as described in that policy and as reasonably necessary to provide features you choose to use.

The Service will change

Stead is an early and evolving product.

We may add, modify, replace, limit or discontinue features at any time.

We may also change integrations, storage limits, availability, supported universities, functionality or other aspects of the Service.

We will try to avoid unnecessary disruption, but we do not guarantee that any particular feature will always remain available.

The Service may occasionally be unavailable because of maintenance, technical problems, security incidents, third-party outages or circumstances outside our control.

No professional advice

Information provided through Stead is for organizational and informational purposes.

Stead does not provide legal, financial, medical, academic-advising or other professional advice.

Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” with all faults, and we disclaim all warranties, conditions and representations of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise - including, where they may lawfully be excluded, warranties of accuracy, reliability, availability, quality, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

We do not make warranties or guarantees that:

• the Service will always be available;
• the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free;
• information displayed through Stead will always be accurate, complete or current;
• files or data will be preserved, backed up, recoverable or never lost;
• calendar feeds, integrations or third-party content will remain available, accurate or compatible with the Service;
• the Service will meet every user’s requirements; or
• defects or errors will be found or corrected.

We do not guarantee uninterrupted operation, the preservation of your data, compatibility with any third-party service, or that any error will be corrected.

You are responsible for maintaining copies of information that is important to you and for checking important information against authoritative sources.

Nothing in these Terms excludes warranties, guarantees or other rights that cannot legally be excluded.

Your use of Stead is voluntary and at your own risk.

Stead is a supplementary organizational and productivity tool. It is not an official university system, it is not an authoritative source, and it is not a substitute for the systems, communications and records your university provides.

You are solely responsible for verifying anything that matters against an official source - your university’s systems, your instructor, the course syllabus, or another authoritative source.

You remain responsible for:

• meeting your deadlines;
• attending your classes, examinations and other commitments;
• submitting your assignments and applications on time and in the required form;
• keeping your own copies and backups of anything important to you; and
• complying with your university’s academic requirements and policies.

We have no duty to independently verify information, whether you entered it, it came from a file you uploaded, it arrived through a calendar feed, it came from a third party, or it was imported, extracted, parsed, organized or displayed by the Service.

By using Stead, you acknowledge and agree that you are responsible for independently verifying information that may affect your academic, professional, financial or personal interests, and that you use and rely on the Service at your own risk.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Stead and its founders, operators, affiliates, officers, employees, contractors, licensors, service providers, successors and assigns will not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or any loss of data, profits, revenue, goodwill, academic standing, grades, scholarships, educational opportunities, employment opportunities, business opportunities or other losses arising out of or relating to the Service.

This includes, without limitation, any loss arising from:

• inaccurate, incomplete, delayed or outdated information;
• incorrect information imported, extracted, parsed, organized or displayed by Stead;
• incorrectly parsed syllabus or timetable information;
• calendar feed errors, or feeds that are stale, delayed, incomplete or unavailable;
• missed assignments, deadlines, classes, examinations, applications, meetings or events;
• errors in syllabi, timetables, calendars, schedules, grades or course information;
• news, deals, offers or other third-party information, including offers that are changed, expired, unavailable or inaccurate;
• third-party websites you reach from Stead;
• reliance on information displayed by Stead;
• service interruptions, downtime, outages, bugs or technical failures;
• loss, deletion or corruption of data;
• unauthorized access to an account;
• third-party services, calendar feeds or university systems;
• changes to or discontinuation of any feature; or
• any decision or action taken based on information obtained through Stead.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the total aggregate monetary liability of Stead and the parties described above for all claims arising from or relating to the Service or these Terms will not exceed the total amount you paid directly to Stead for the Service during the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

If you paid Stead nothing during that period then, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Stead and the parties described above will have no monetary liability arising out of or relating to your use of the Service.

These limitations apply regardless of whether the claim is based in contract, tort, negligence, statute or another legal theory, and even if Stead was advised that damages were possible.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability or legal rights that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

Indemnification

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Stead and its founders, operators, affiliates, officers, employees, contractors, licensors and service providers from and against third-party claims, liabilities, damages, losses and reasonable costs, including reasonable legal fees, arising from:

• your User Content;
• your unlawful use or misuse of the Service;
• your violation of these Terms;
• your infringement of another person’s rights;
• unauthorized academic materials you upload, share or distribute;
• your misconduct toward another user; or
• your use of the Service in violation of your university’s rules or applicable law.

This section does not require you to indemnify us for liability that cannot lawfully be shifted to you, or for losses caused solely by our own unlawful conduct.

Suspension and termination

You may stop using Stead at any time.

You can delete your account in Stead's account settings or contact us for help.

We may suspend, restrict or terminate your access if we reasonably believe:

• you violated these Terms;
• your account creates a security risk;
• your activity could harm Stead or another person;
• we are required to do so by law; or
• continued access could expose us or others to legal or technical risk.

We may also discontinue the Service entirely.

Where reasonable, we will try to provide notice before taking significant action, but immediate action may be necessary in security, safety, abuse or legal situations.

Provisions that by their nature should continue after termination will survive it - including assumption of risk and user responsibility, the disclaimers, the limitation of liability, indemnification, Stead’s intellectual property, governing law and the general terms below.

Those provisions continue to apply after your account is deleted, after your access ends, and after the Service is discontinued.

Account deletion does not remove every shared message, room attachment, recipient copy, support email, provider record or device cache. A failed deletion can leave some steps completed and others unfinished. See retention and account deletion for what is removed, what can remain and how to ask for help.

Copyright and rights complaints

If you believe content available through Stead infringes your intellectual property or other legal rights, contact us with enough information for us to identify and review the material.

We may remove or restrict access to content where appropriate.

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as Stead develops or when our legal, technical or business requirements change.

When we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” date and, where appropriate or required by law, provide additional notice.

Your continued use of the Service after updated Terms take effect means you agree to the updated Terms, except where applicable law requires another form of consent.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable in Ontario, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.

Subject to any rights or remedies that cannot legally be waived, disputes relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved before the courts located in Ontario, Canada.

Nothing in these Terms removes or limits any mandatory statutory right or remedy available to you under Ontario or Canadian consumer protection law. Where such a right conflicts with anything in these Terms, that right prevails.

General terms

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions will continue in effect.

Our failure to enforce a provision does not waive our right to enforce it later.

You may not transfer or assign your rights under these Terms without our consent. We may assign these Terms as part of a financing, restructuring, merger, acquisition, sale of assets, incorporation or transfer of the Stead business.

These Terms, together with any additional terms that expressly apply to a particular Stead feature, constitute the agreement between you and us concerning your use of the Service.

Contact Stead Systems Inc. at info@steadstudent.com with questions, rights complaints or requests for help with your account.

This revision clarifies that Stead is free, explains syllabus AI processing and links to the account-deletion limits. The liability and indemnification clauses are presented in full above.