Terms of Service

Last updated: 11 May 2026

These terms govern your use of Orinode's website, APIs, research materials, and any services we offer (collectively, the “Services”). By using our Services you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Services.

1. Who we are

Orinode Ltd is a Nigerian limited liability company, registered under RC 9486856, operating from Lagos, Nigeria.

2. Services covered

• Public website (orinode.ai) and the information published on it
• Maraba API (planned Q3 2026): speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and conversational endpoints
• Open datasets released by Orinode on Hugging Face under their published licenses (e.g., CC-BY 4.0)
• Open-source code released under our GitHub organisation
• Research materials we publish via this site, GitHub, Hugging Face, or arXiv

3. Acceptable use

You agree NOT to use the Services to:

• Generate, distribute, or facilitate fraud, voice impersonation without consent, or deceptive content
• Violate the privacy, dignity, or legal rights of any person
• Generate hate speech, incitement, or content that violates Nigerian law
• Train competing speech AI models using outputs of our APIs (without a separate licence)
• Reverse-engineer our models or attempt to extract proprietary training data
• Resell, sublicense, or redistribute API access without a written agreement

4. Intellectual property

Our IP: all software, models, voices, brand assets, and content created by Orinode remain our property unless explicitly released under an open licence.

Open releases: datasets and models we publish under permissive licences (e.g., CC-BY 4.0, Apache 2.0, MIT) are governed by those licences. The text of each licence controls.

Your IP: if you submit content to us (e.g., audio for transcription via Maraba), you retain ownership. You grant Orinode a limited licence to process that content to provide the Service. We do not use customer audio to train released model checkpoints without explicit consent.

Maraba Voices: the synthetic voices in our TTS layer are owned by Orinode under perpetual commercial buyout from their original voice talent. Voices may not be copied, reverse-engineered, or used to create cloning datasets.

5. Pilot & commercial access

Pilot and commercial API access is governed by separate written agreements that take precedence over these general terms. Reach out to [email protected] for pilot enrolment.

6. Service availability

We provide the Services on a best-effort basis. We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability, error-free operation, or specific transcription accuracy in any non-contracted use. Contracted SLAs are documented in the relevant pilot or commercial agreement.

7. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by Nigerian law, Orinode is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the Services. Our aggregate liability for any direct damages will not exceed the fees paid by you to Orinode in the preceding 12 months, or NGN 100,000, whichever is greater.

8. Disclaimer

The Services are provided “as is”. We make no warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement, except as required by applicable Nigerian law.

9. Termination

We may suspend or terminate access if you breach these terms, particularly section 3 (Acceptable Use). You may stop using the Services at any time.

10. Governing law & dispute resolution

These terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Any dispute will be resolved first by good-faith negotiation, then by arbitration in Lagos under the Nigerian Arbitration and Conciliation Act, with English as the language of arbitration.

11. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as our practices and offerings evolve. Material changes will be announced on our Updates page. Continued use of the Services after changes constitutes acceptance.

12. Contact

Questions about these terms:
Legal: [email protected]
Partnerships: [email protected]