Idea Submission & Open Collaboration Terms

Plain-language summary

When you publish an idea, it becomes public and non-confidential right away.
Do not post secrets— no trade secrets, employer-owned or confidential information, classified material, or other people’s IP.
Going public can affect patent, trade-secret, and commercial rights. Talk to an attorney before posting anything patentable or sensitive.
We are not a patent attorney, invention-submission company, investor, or confidentiality custodian.
You keep ownership and grant us only an operating licence (host, show, index, AI-process, moderate, translate, and let others build on it with attribution).
Others may discuss, fork, remix, propose pathways, and start projects or events from your public idea. Credit follows our attribution rules.
We never guarantee funding, implementation, exclusivity, ownership, patentability, or freedom to operate.

1. What these terms cover

These Idea Submission & Open Collaboration Terms explain what happens when you submit an idea to Clap Ideas (“the Platform”). They sit at the heart of how the Platform works, because sharing and building on ideas in the open is the whole point. They apply together with our Terms of Service, our IP & Attribution Policy, our Contributor Credit & Attribution Policy, and our AI Transparency Policy.

We use a few terms of art here. A patent is a legal right that can stop others from using an invention; many countries grant it only if the invention is novel (new and not already public). A trade secret is valuable information that stays protected only while it is kept confidential. We explain these in plain words the first time and link to a lawyer where it matters.

2. Ideas are public and non-confidential

Critical notice: the moment you publish an idea, it is public and non-confidential. Anyone can read it, discuss it, and build on it through the Platform.

Publishing is a public disclosure. There is no private or “confidential” submission mode.
Once an idea is public, we cannot make it secret again, even if you later delete it from your view.
We may keep records of public ideas for the public record, attribution history, safety, and legal reasons, as described in our Privacy Policy.

If you need something to stay confidential, do not post it here.

3. What you must not post

Do not submit:

Trade secrets or confidential business information.
Employer-owned, client-owned, or contractually restricted material — including inventions your employer or a non-disclosure agreement may own or control.
Classified, export-controlled, or government-restricted information.
Third-party intellectual property you do not have the right to share.
Personal data about other people that you are not allowed to publish.

You confirm that you have the right to publish what you post and that doing so does not break any duty you owe to someone else.

4. Public disclosure can affect your legal rights

Making an idea public can change what legal protection is still available to you. In particular:

Patents: in many countries, publicly disclosing an invention before you file can destroy its novelty and make it unpatentable. Some countries offer a short grace period; many do not.
Trade secrets: once information is public, it is no longer a trade secret and loses that protection.
Commercial rights: public disclosure may affect licensing, valuation, and your competitive position.

Consult a qualified attorney before publishing anything patentable, sensitive, or commercially valuable. We cannot give you legal advice, and nothing here is legal advice.

5. What Clap Ideas is not

To set expectations clearly, Clap Ideas is not:

An invention-submission company.
A patent attorney or law firm.
A venture-capital fund, investor, or grant-maker.
A university or corporate technology-transfer office.
A confidentiality custodian or escrow service.

We provide a public platform for sharing, structuring, and collaborating on ideas. We do not take your idea into a confidential pipeline, protect your rights for you, or owe you any professional duty of care in these roles.

6. Similar ideas may already exist

Ideas are rarely fully unique. Similar or identical ideas may already exist on or off the Platform, and others may develop the same idea independently without ever seeing yours. Publishing here does not give you any claim over later or parallel work by other people.

7. How the Platform and AI process your idea

By publishing an idea, you understand and agree that the Platform may automatically process it. This includes:

Restructuring and summarising it for clarity (an “AI-refined idea”).
Clustering, merging, and linking it with similar ideas.
Ranking and scoring it, and generating an AI Research Brief.
Translating it into other languages.
Detecting potential duplicates and connecting related work and people.
Running moderation and safety checks.

For duplicate detection and search, text embeddings are computed locally and are not sent to any third-party AI provider; generation features use a third-party AI provider. Crucially, AI output can be inaccurate, incomplete, biased, or outdated, and is not professional advice. You stay in control of your submission before publication, and you can edit or reject the AI-structured version. See our AI Transparency Policy for full details and your rights.

8. You keep ownership and grant an operating licence

You retain ownership of the original ideas and content you submit. We do not claim ownership of your ideas. By publishing, you grant Clap Ideas a worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, non-exclusive licence to do only what is needed to run the Platform, namely to:

Host, store, display, index, cache, and back up your content.
Run AI processing on it (structuring, research, duplicate detection, ranking, moderation).
Moderate, label, and translate it.
Enable other users to read, reference, discuss, and build on your published idea through Platform functionality, with attribution.

This licence lasts as long as your content is on the Platform and, for public contributions, for the purpose of keeping the public record and attribution history. It is a licence to operate — not a transfer of ownership.

9. Open collaboration — how others may build on your idea

A core feature of Clap Ideas is that public ideas are open for others to take forward. Once your idea is public, other users may, through Platform functionality:

Discuss it in comments and add their own analysis.
Fork or remixit — create their own version that builds on yours.
Propose pathways toward making it real.
Start projects, teams, and events based on it.

When they do, attribution is applied according to our Contributor Credit & Attribution Policy: the original creator is permanently and visibly credited, and meaningful contributors are credited too. Building on your idea does not transfer your ownership to anyone, and it does not create a partnership, employment, agency, joint venture, or fiduciary relationship. User-led projects and events are independent — see our Projects, Teams & Events Terms.

10. Attribution is not legal ownership

Being credited on the Platform is a record of participation. It is not the same as legal authorship, inventorship, copyright ownership, patent rights, or any guarantee of compensation. Attribution helps the community see who contributed; it does not decide who owns or invented anything in law. See the Contributor Credit & Attribution Policy and our IP & Attribution Policy for the details.

11. What we never guarantee

Publishing an idea on Clap Ideas does not give you, and we do not promise:

Exclusivity or any monopoly over the idea.
Funding, investment, grants, or sponsorship.
Implementation, development, or commercialisation.
Ownership, copyrightability, patentability, or inventorship.
Freedom to operate (the right to build it without infringing someone else’s rights).
Accuracy of AI analysis, research, or scores.
That your idea will be preserved, ranked highly, or seen by anyone in particular.

12. Content rules still apply

Everything you submit must follow our Acceptable Use Policy, Community Guidelines, and Research & Innovation Safety Policy. Speculative, ambitious ideas are welcome; illegal, abusive, deceptive, or step-by-step dangerous instructions are not. We may label, restrict, or remove content that breaks these rules under our Moderation, Enforcement & Appeals Policy.

13. Your first-idea acknowledgment

When you publish your first idea, we ask you to confirm that you understand and accept the key points below. Submitting an idea means you acknowledge that:

Your idea will be public and non-confidential from publication.
You will not post trade secrets, employer-owned, confidential, or third-party-owned material.
Public disclosure may affect your patent, trade-secret, and commercial rights, and you should consult an attorney before posting anything sensitive.
Others may discuss, fork, remix, and build projects or events from your idea, with attribution.
AI analysis may be inaccurate and is not professional advice; you will verify important claims yourself.

This acknowledgment helps make sure everyone shares ideas with eyes open. It does not replace your own judgement or legal advice.

These terms work closely with our IP & Attribution Policy, our Contributor Credit & Attribution Policy, our AI Transparency Policy, and our Projects, Teams & Events Terms. For questions, email legal@clapideas.com.

Change history is tracked by document version; see the Legal Centre.