Rules of the road.

IndieHQ Awards is operated by Creative Bohemian LLC (“we”, “us”, “our”), an Oregon limited liability company, at 15768 SW Bristlecone Way, Tigard, Oregon 97223. IndieHQ Awards is a product of Indie Agency News. The platform runs on the Juried engine at juried.is.

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are a legal agreement between you and Creative Bohemian LLC. By creating an account, submitting an entry, or otherwise using the platform (the “Service”), you agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy.

You need an account to submit entries. Signing up requires a valid email address; authentication is handled by our identity provider (Clerk).

You’re responsible for keeping your credentials secure and for any activity that happens under your account. Tell us right away if you think your account has been compromised.

Accounts are for individual humans, not shared logins. When an agency buys a Pre-Paid Pack, credits attach to the Organization (domain-level), and any teammate on that Organization — including pre-approved external collaborators like PR agencies — can spend them on entries.

You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service. The Service is intended for advertising agencies, marketing organizations, brand teams, and their authorized representatives.

You represent that you have the authority to enter work you submit — either because you or your agency created it, or because you have the client’s written permission to submit it. If a client later objects, we may withdraw the entry from judging and public display; we are not responsible for resolving that dispute.

When you submit work to a category, you attest that:

• The work is original to you or your agency, or you have secured all necessary rights to submit it (including third-party contributor rights, music licenses, and stock imagery).
• The work was actually produced during any eligibility window stated for the show.
• Your client (where applicable) has approved the submission, including permission to publicly display and promote the work if it is named a finalist or winner.
• You have permission from every person credited in the entry.

You’re responsible for the accuracy of everything you submit, including nominee names, credits, category selection, and the content of your case narrative and media.

Category migration. We may move an entry to a more suitable category if it’s clearly in the wrong one. When you submit, you consent to this. We’ll notify you if we make a change.

Our judging model is honor-based, but we reserve the right to verify anything in your entry. If we ask, you agree to provide reasonable evidence to support the claims you made — a signed statement from your client, results data, media plans, launch dates, or other backup that confirms the entry is accurate.

If we ask for verification and you can’t produce it within ten (10) business days, we may withdraw the entry from judging, reject it, or revoke an award — without a refund. We don’t do this casually; the credibility of every winner depends on the honesty of every entrant.

You keep ownership. You retain all intellectual property rights in the work you submit. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of your creative work to us.

What you grant us. For the sole purpose of operating the Service, judging your entry, and (if applicable) promoting finalists, winners, and shortlisted work, you grant Creative Bohemian LLC a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense to our editorial partners and event production partners solely for coverage of the show) to:

• Store, reproduce, transmit, and display your entry within the platform for judging.
• Publicly display finalist and winning work on juried.is, Indie Agency News, our newsletters, our social channels, event livestreams, and the physical / hosted archive we maintain for each show cycle.
• Excerpt your case narrative, video, and imagery in editorial coverage of the show (with attribution).

This license lasts as long as your work remains publicly displayed in our archive and for any editorial or promotional use tied to the show cycle it entered. If you want a specific piece removed after your work is publicly announced, contact us — we’ll consider requests case-by-case, but public winner archives are part of the permanent record of the show.

Some work isn’t ready to be public even if it wins. When you mark an entry Confidential at submission time, we agree that:

• Only judges assigned to that category will see the entry during scoring.
• If the entry wins, we’ll notify you privately and coordinate any public reveal on a timeline you agree to (subject to reasonable event deadlines).
• We won’t excerpt confidential entries in editorial coverage without your explicit written permission.

Entry fees vary by show, category, and tier (Early Bird / Main / Final). Hall of Fame and Pet of the Year categories are flat-priced. Prices are shown at checkout in your local currency (via Stripe Adaptive Pricing) and finalized in US dollars.

All sales are final. Once payment completes and your entry is submitted for judging, we do not issue refunds. This policy is loud on purpose — entries take real reviewer time, and pricing tiers reward early commitment. Please review your cart carefully before you pay.

Accidental duplicate purchase. If you paid in clear error (duplicate charge, wrong entry submitted twice) and tell us within forty-eight (48) hours of payment, we’ll refund the duplicated amount minus a $25 processing fee. Ask via the Support widget or email top40@indieagency.news.

Entry credits are evergreen. Every entry credit on your Organization — purchased in a pack, comped by us, or granted as part of a launch gift or partner benefit — never expires, rolls over across every show cycle, and can be spent by any teammate or pre-approved collaborator. We may change future prices or discontinue future packs, but we will not sunset or invalidate credits you already have.

Pre-Paid Pack purchases. Pack purchases are non-refundable, but the credits themselves fall under the evergreen rule above — they do not expire.

Discount codes. We may issue promotional codes (co-marketing, sponsor benefits, comps). Codes are subject to any restrictions we list (validity dates, use limits, applicable categories). We may revoke or change a code at any time before it is used. Codes cannot be exchanged for cash and, once redeemed, are non-refundable.

Currency and tax. Stripe collects tax where required. You are responsible for any additional local or business tax obligations on your entry fees.

Judging is conducted by independent jurors we select for each show. Scoring uses a rubric published for each category. Round 1 narrows the field to a Final 40; Round 2 selects Top 10 winners plus category recognitions.

Judge NDA and conflict of interest. Every judge is bound by a Non-Disclosure Agreement covering every entry they review, regardless of the entry’s confidentiality level. Judges recuse themselves from any category or entry where they have a conflict of interest — client relationship, employment, personal involvement in the work, or any relationship that could compromise objectivity. If we discover after the fact that a judge scored an entry they had a conflict on, their score is voided and the entry is re-scored by the rest of the jury.

Scores are aggregated across judges; outlier scores may be reviewed but final decisions rest with the jury and IndieHQ Awards leadership.

All judging decisions are final. There is no formal appeal process. If you believe there was a procedural error (e.g., category assignment mistake, missing media at judging time), tell us promptly and we’ll investigate; but subjective disagreements with a score are not grounds for reconsideration.

If your entry is named a finalist or winner, you agree that:

• We may publish your entry title, agency and client names, credits, case narrative excerpt, and media on juried.is and in editorial coverage.
• We may use your agency name and logo (as supplied in your entry) to identify you as a winner in promotional materials for the current and future show cycles.
• You will provide any physical shipping details we need to send award trophies. Shipping to certain jurisdictions may involve customs fees, which are your responsibility.
• Winners of cash-prize categories may be asked to provide a W-9 or equivalent tax form before payment; unclaimed prizes may be forfeit after a reasonable period.

Award revocation. If we revoke an award after announcement — for fraud, plagiarism, verification failure, or a material breach of these Terms — the license to describe the work as an IHQ finalist or winner ends immediately. You must remove references to the honor from any materials you control (website, social, press, sales decks) within fourteen (14) days of written notice. We’ll issue a public correction where the original announcement appeared.

You may not use the Service to:

• Submit work you don’t have the rights to submit, including plagiarized or stolen creative.
• Submit fake or spec work — including work created solely to enter an awards show, work for fictitious or non-existent clients, or work that ran once purely to satisfy an eligibility tear sheet with no real commercial deployment.
• Falsely attribute credits, misrepresent client involvement, or backdate work outside the eligibility window.
• Interfere with judging, attempt to identify or influence judges outside sanctioned channels, or coordinate to skew public voting on categories that use it (e.g., Pet of the Year).
• Reverse-engineer, scrape, or attempt to access parts of the platform you’re not authorized to access.
• Upload malware, spam, or content that is unlawful, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise harmful.

Violations may result in disqualification of entries (without refund), suspension of your account, and where appropriate, referral to law enforcement.

If a show cycle is materially delayed, restructured, or cancelled because of circumstances beyond our reasonable control — including natural disaster, public-health emergency, government action, service outages at a critical vendor, or similar — we may adjust deadlines, move judging online, reschedule announcements, or in extreme cases pause a cycle.

Entry fees remain non-refundable in these cases. Pack credits will be honored in the rescheduled cycle. We’ll communicate any changes as soon as they’re confirmed.

We can suspend or terminate your account if you violate these Terms, if we’re required to by law, or if we determine in good faith that continued access poses a risk to other users, judges, or the integrity of the show.

You can close your account at any time by contacting us. Closing your account does not entitle you to a refund of entry fees or unused pack credits, and does not remove entries already submitted for judging or published as winners.

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied. We disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement, to the fullest extent permitted by law. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, or that any judging outcome will meet your expectations.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event will Creative Bohemian LLC, its affiliates, or their respective officers, employees, agents, or licensors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits or revenues, whether incurred directly or indirectly, or any loss of data, use, goodwill, or other intangible losses, resulting from your use of or inability to use the Service.

Our total cumulative liability arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will not exceed the total fees you paid to us in the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Creative Bohemian LLC and its affiliates from any claim, demand, loss, or damage (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or related to (a) your breach of these Terms, (b) work you submit that infringes the rights of any third party, or (c) any content, credit, or claim in your entry that is false or misleading.

We may update these Terms from time to time. We’ll post the revised version on this page and update the effective date. If we make material changes, we’ll notify you by email and/or a prominent notice on the platform. Continued use of the Service after the effective date of a revised version means you accept the changes.

We respect the intellectual property of others and expect users to do the same. If you believe that any content on the platform infringes your copyright, please email top40@indieagency.news with:

• A description of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed.
• A URL or description of where the infringing material appears on the platform.
• Your contact information (name, email, mailing address, phone).
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner’s behalf, and that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized.
• Your physical or electronic signature.

It is our policy to terminate accounts of repeat infringers.

Indie Agency News is a member of Stripe Climate and contributes 1% of every purchase made through the platform to fund high-quality carbon removal technology. This applies to entry fees, pack purchases, and any other paid transaction. You’ll see the Climate badge on your Stripe receipt.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Oregon, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in the State of Oregon, and you and we consent to personal jurisdiction and venue there.

You and Creative Bohemian LLC each waive the right to a trial by jury in any action or proceeding arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service.

Any claim arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service must be brought within one (1) year after the cause of action arises (or, if there are multiple causes, within one (1) year of the date the first cause arose); otherwise, the claim is permanently barred.

These Terms are not governed by the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, which is expressly excluded, and the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act does not apply.