Acceptable Use Policy

1. Purpose

This Acceptable Use Policy protects the Pattern Pony Platform, its infrastructure, and its Members. It applies to all use of the Platform and is incorporated into our Terms of Service. Capitalized terms have the meanings given there. The Community Guidelines govern content and behavior toward other Members; this Policy governs technical use and misuse of the Platform itself.

2. Unlawful and Harmful Use

You may not use the Platform:

• for any unlawful purpose or in violation of any law or regulation;
• to infringe intellectual property or other rights;
• to commit fraud, impersonate others, or misrepresent your identity or authority;
• to harass, exploit, or harm any person; or
• to interfere with any other person's use of the Platform.

3. Security Abuse

You may not:

• introduce malware, viruses, or other malicious code;
• attempt to steal credentials, phish, engage in credential stuffing, or gain unauthorized access to any Account, system, or data;
• conduct denial-of-service attacks or otherwise disrupt the Platform;
• probe, scan, or exploit vulnerabilities, or bypass or circumvent authentication or security controls; or
• perform security testing, scanning, or penetration testing of the Platform, or publicly disclose vulnerabilities, except through an authorized program or with our prior written permission.

Good-faith vulnerability reports are welcome. If you discover a vulnerability without conducting prohibited testing, report it to support@patternpony.com with enough detail for us to reproduce it, and do not access, modify, or retain data belonging to others or disclose the issue publicly before we address it. We do not operate a paid bug-bounty program.

4. Scraping and Automated Access

Except as expressly permitted by us in writing, you may not:

• scrape, crawl, harvest, mirror, or bulk-extract content or data from the Platform;
• collect or harvest personal information about Members, or extract Member data for solicitation;
• index the Platform or build datasets from Platform content, including for training machine-learning or AI models;
• use Platform content to create a substantially competing pattern library or service;
• use bots, scripts, headless browsers, or other automation to access the Platform, including automated account creation;
• manipulate rankings, saves, attribution, or discovery features; or
• access or use any Pattern Pony API in a way that bypasses interfaces, rate limits, authentication, paid-access requirements, or subscription checks.

5. Reverse Engineering

You may not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to discover the source code, underlying structure, algorithms, or models of the Platform, or circumvent any technical protection measure, except to the extent applicable law prohibits enforcement of this restriction.

6. Resource Abuse

You may not:

• send excessive requests or otherwise consume resources in a way that degrades the Platform;
• abuse upload or storage features, including storing material unrelated to the Platform's purpose;
• send spam or unsolicited bulk communications through the Platform; or
• interfere with the infrastructure, hosting, or Third-Party Services that support the Platform.

7. Account and Content Misuse

You may not:

• share, sell, rent, sublicense, or transfer your Account, credentials, or Subscription access;
• use multiple Accounts to evade limits, restrictions, or enforcement;
• resell or commercially exploit Platform access or Pattern Pony's content or materials except as authorized;
• copy or republish Marketplace content outside the Platform except as permitted by the Terms of Service, the Marketplace Policy, or Platform features designed for that purpose;
• remove, obscure, or falsify attribution, lineage, or rights notices;
• frame or embed the Platform in a deceptive or misleading way; or
• circumvent restrictions on cancelled, suspended, or terminated Accounts, including by creating new Accounts to evade enforcement.

8. Enforcement

We may monitor for violations, impose technical limits (such as rate limits and storage limits), and enforce this Policy at any time without advance notice — including by restricting features, removing content, suspending or terminating Accounts, blocking access, and preserving or disclosing information as described in the Privacy Policy and permitted by law. We may also pursue any other remedy available to us, including reporting unlawful activity to authorities.

9. Questions

To ask whether a use is permitted, or to request written authorization, contact legal@patternpony.com.