Terms of Use

About these terms

Patchly Gold is published by Patchly Labs Pty Ltd (ACN 700 700 474, ABN 27 700 700 474), a company registered in Australia. These terms cover the Patchly Gold app, listed on the App Store and Google Play as Patchly, and the Patchly Pro subscription. Installing or using the app means accepting them. If you do not accept them, do not install the app, and delete it if it is already installed.

The store the app was installed from decides which of the two licence sections below applies. Everything after those two sections applies however the app was installed.

Who can use Patchly Gold

Using the app requires being old enough to enter a binding agreement where you live. If you are under that age, a parent or guardian must accept these terms for you and is responsible for your use of the app. Patchly Gold is a general-audience app for recreational prospectors and is not directed at children.

Installed from the App Store

On iPhone and iPad, Patchly Gold is licensed under Apple's standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement, published at apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula. Read it there for the full licence terms.

That agreement runs between you and Patchly Labs Pty Ltd as the licensor. Apple is not a party to it and is not responsible for the app or its content. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you.

Where the standard agreement and these terms differ about the licence to install and use the app, the standard agreement governs. The sections below covering the subscription, map and land-access information, safety, consumer rights and liability apply in addition to it.

Installed from Google Play

On Android, Patchly Labs Pty Ltd grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to install and use Patchly Gold on devices you own or control.

That licence does not extend to redistributing, selling, renting or sublicensing the app, or to copying, modifying, decompiling or reverse-engineering it, except where the law gives you a right to do so that cannot be excluded by agreement. Google Play's own terms apply to the download and to anything bought through it.

How you may use the app

Patchly Gold is licensed for your own prospecting, on your own devices. The curated map layers are licensed for use inside the app only.

Using the app does not extend to:

• Anything unlawful, or anything that breaks the access, permit or fossicking rules that apply where you are
• Extracting, copying, republishing, reselling or redistributing the curated map layers or the data behind them
• Bulk or automated downloading of map tiles or layers, or any use that places an unreasonable load on the services the app relies on
• Working around the checks that verify a genuine copy of the app or an active Patchly Pro subscription
• Sharing a Patchly Pro subscription beyond what the App Store or Google Play family-sharing rules allow

Your recordings and your data

What you record and log in Patchly Gold stays yours. Patchly Labs Pty Ltd claims no ownership of it, holds no copy of it, and cannot read it.

Because there is no Patchly copy, keeping your data safe is up to you. The app can back up to your own cloud storage and can export a portable file you keep yourself. Data lost from your device, for example through device loss, damage, reset or deleting the app, cannot be recovered by Patchly. How the app handles data is set out in the Privacy Policy.

Maps, layers and land access

Patchly Gold shows geology, mining tenements, land tenure and areas where prospecting or fossicking may be permitted. That information is compiled from third-party sources, mostly government datasets, each under its own licence, with attribution shown in the app.

It is a guide only. It is not a legal authority, it is not legal advice, and it is not a determination that you may enter or prospect anywhere. It can be incomplete, out of date or wrong, boundaries are approximate, and a tenement, park boundary, permit area or access rule can change at any time without the app reflecting the change.

Before entering any land or prospecting anywhere, it is your responsibility to:

• Confirm the current position with the relevant state or territory mining register and land authority
• Hold every permit, licence or fossicking authority that applies to you and to that ground
• Obtain the permission of the landholder, occupier or pastoral lessee before entering
• Follow every condition attached to that access, including any condition about equipment, digging or backfilling

Do not rely on Patchly Gold to decide whether you are allowed to be somewhere or to detect there. Responsibility for trespass, for prospecting without a required permit, and for any fine, prosecution, loss or claim that follows, rests with you.

Some tools in Patchly Gold, such as the section 40E permit builder and its Form 1A export, prepare an application to a government regulator from the answers you give. What they produce is a draft for you to check. It is not legal advice and it is not an official form. You supply every answer, check the licence, its status and the blocks against the regulator’s own register, and lodge the application yourself. Patchly Gold lodges nothing and does not act for you, and the regulator alone decides the application. A permit covers only the ground and the conditions it grants.

Heritage and trespass

Prospecting is rewarding when it is done safely, legally and respectfully. Fossicking in the wrong place can be both dangerous and illegal.

Using Patchly Gold means agreeing to all of the following.

• Check land access rules before entering Crown or private land, so that you go only where fossicking is permitted. Never enter a prohibited area, a heritage site or an active mining tenement.
• Use the Victorian Heritage Database to identify and avoid known sensitive areas.
• Do not remove or disturb heritage items, and do not dig around heritage places. The same protections apply where a site is not recorded: you must not touch, damage or interfere with heritage items. Strong penalties apply.
• In Victoria, recreational fossicking is strictly limited to hand tools.

Safety in the field

Prospecting takes people into remote country. Patchly Gold is not a safety device, not a navigation system and not an emergency service, and must not be relied on for any of those purposes. Position accuracy varies, a device can lose signal, run out of battery, be damaged or fail outright, and map data can be wrong.

Carry proper navigation and communication equipment, tell someone where you are going and when you expect to return, and follow the safety advice that applies to the area. Your safety, and the safety of anyone with you, is your responsibility.

Patchly Pro subscription

Patchly Pro is an auto-renewing subscription. It unlocks the curated map layers and the enriched recording detail described on the subscription screen in the app. What Pro includes can change over time as layers are added, updated or withdrawn.

Pro is offered on an annual plan or a monthly plan. Prices vary by country and currency, and the price and billing period shown in the App Store or Google Play at the time of purchase are the ones charged.

A subscription renews automatically at the end of each period until it is cancelled. Cancel at any time in your App Store or Google Play subscription settings. Cancelling takes effect at the end of the period already paid for, and Pro features stay available until then.

Payment is charged to your App Store or Google Play account. Patchly operates no billing of its own and never sees your payment details.

Victoria LiDAR Relief add-on

Victoria LiDAR Relief is a separate auto-renewing subscription, offered on an annual plan in its own subscription group. It adds one bare-earth terrain layer over surveyed parts of Victoria, supplied under licence from the State of Victoria.

It requires an active Patchly Pro subscription to have any effect. Held on its own, or kept after Pro ends, it unlocks nothing. Cancelling the add-on leaves Pro untouched, and cancelling Pro stops the add-on's layer as well.

The price and billing period shown in the App Store or Google Play at the time of purchase are the ones charged. The add-on renews automatically at the end of each period until it is cancelled in your App Store or Google Play subscription settings.

Refunds

Subscriptions are sold and billed by the App Store or Google Play, so refunds are requested from them and are handled under their policies, not by Patchly. Your rights under the consumer law described below are not affected by this.

Availability and changes to the app

Recording and viewing your own data works offline. Some parts of the app need a network connection, including map tiles and imagery, downloading curated layers, the gold price, and the check that confirms a genuine copy of the app.

Curated layers may be added, updated or withdrawn, including where a data provider changes or ends its licence, and third-party services the app depends on may change. Reasonable efforts go into keeping the app and those services available, but uninterrupted availability is not guaranteed. Support is by email at contact@patchly.gold, without a guaranteed response time. Apple has no obligation to provide support or maintenance for the app.

Your consumer rights in Australia and New Zealand

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any right or guarantee that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law, in Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, or, for consumers in New Zealand, under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993. Those guarantees apply alongside these terms and prevail over anything here that conflicts with them.

Where a guarantee applies and the law allows liability for breaching it to be limited, liability is limited, at Patchly Labs Pty Ltd's option, to supplying the services again or to paying the cost of having them supplied again. If you acquire the app in New Zealand for the purposes of a business, the Consumer Guarantees Act does not apply.

Disclaimers

Except for the consumer guarantees described above, and to the extent the law permits, Patchly Gold and the map and land-access information it shows are provided as they are and as available, without warranty of any kind.

In particular, there is no warranty that the app or its data are accurate, complete, current or free of error, that the app will be uninterrupted or fit for a particular purpose, that any ground is prospective or contains gold, or that any area may lawfully be entered or prospected.

Limitation of liability

Except for the consumer guarantees described above, and to the extent the law permits, Patchly Labs Pty Ltd is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, for lost profit or lost opportunity, for lost or corrupted data, or for loss arising from reliance on the map, tenement or land-access information the app shows, including trespass, prospecting without a required permit, and any resulting fine, prosecution or claim.

To the extent the law permits, total liability for all claims connected with the app or these terms is limited to the greater of the amount you paid for Patchly Pro in the twelve months before the claim arose, or AUD $100.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

Ending these terms

You can stop at any time by cancelling any subscription in your store settings and deleting the app. Deleting the app removes the data it stored on your device.

If these terms are seriously or repeatedly breached, the licence granted here may be ended, in which case you must stop using Patchly Gold and delete it. The sections covering your data, land access, disclaimers, limitation of liability and governing law continue to apply after these terms end.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of the Australian Capital Territory, Australia, where Patchly Labs Pty Ltd is registered. The courts of that territory have non-exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from these terms or from the app.

If you are a consumer, you keep the benefit of any mandatory consumer-protection law of the country you live in, and nothing here prevents you from bringing proceedings in the courts of the place where you live.

Changes to these terms

These terms may be updated from time to time, for example when features, prices or data sources change. When they change, the effective date above changes, and continuing to use the app after that date means accepting the updated terms. Material changes are noted in the app's release notes.

Privacy

Patchly Gold works without an account, and what you record while prospecting is not sent to a Patchly server or to any third-party server by Patchly. What the app does send, and why, is set out in the Privacy Policy.

Contact

For anything in these terms, contact contact@patchly.gold.