Validation Programme Terms
Last updated 30 September 2026
These terms (the "Terms") explain how Altt Productions Limited ("Altt", "we", "us") will treat the material you send us for our process for testing and validating story ideas (the "Validation Programme"). By submitting material to the Validation Programme, you agree to these Terms. In these Terms, "your material" means everything you share with us for the Validation Programme, including any variants described under Variants.
In short: You keep all rights to your ideas. We only use your material to test it with audiences, without your name on it. We never use it to train AI. You can withdraw at any time. If we ever want to develop your idea, we'll agree a separate contract with you first.
Your Rights
You keep all rights in your premise and in everything you create for it, whether on your own or at our request. Nothing in these Terms transfers any of those rights to us. Rights only transfer if we both sign an IP Assignment Agreement in the future.
To the extent we own them, any notes, suggestions, or wording we contribute that end up in your material become part of your material, and we assign our rights in them to you. This does not include anything drawn from our own or our partners' projects, formats, or material. We keep our own formats, templates, methods, and tools.
We own any materials we create to test your premise, such as posters or trailers. Because they are based on your premise, neither of us will use them outside the Validation Programme unless we both agree in writing.
How We Use Your Material
By submitting your material, you give us a free, non-exclusive licence to use it for the Validation Programme only. That means we may:
read, store, and review it, and share it with our team and advisers
reformat, reword, excerpt, and prepare alternative versions of it for testing
create test materials based on it
show it to test audiences
share it with testing partners who are bound by confidentiality duties at least as strict as these Terms
Test audiences will see your material without your name. They must agree not to copy, record, share, or put it into AI tools. We can't guarantee no one breaks those terms, but that doesn't excuse us if we fail to require them. If we learn of any misuse, we'll tell you promptly and help you act on it.
You're welcome to change the names of characters, locations, or any other identifying details in your material before you share it with us. Please don't include details that identify real living people unless they have agreed. That is your responsibility, and we will test your material as you send it.
Writing samples are for our internal review only and will not be shown to test audiences.
We will not use your material for anything else. We won't publish it, use it in marketing, pitch it to financiers or distributors, or use it in our own development work, unless we agree otherwise in writing.
Variants
We will always try to give you the first opportunity to make edits to your material yourself. There may be times when we want to test variants, such as alternative wordings or angles on your premise, and our internal writers may make small adjustments to prepare them. Any variant will keep your core premise and will not add characters or story events that are not present or reasonably implied in your material. Our writers will never be credited for those adjustments.
Every variant forms part of your material and belongs to you, including any variant that performs better than your original. If we later sign an IP Assignment Agreement for your premise, those variants will be listed in it alongside the rest of your material, so they are covered by the same reversion terms.
Artificial Intelligence
We will not use your material, or anything that reproduces it, for the purpose of building or improving AI without your written consent. That means we won't use it to train, fine-tune, or otherwise improve any AI model, and we won't include it in any prompt, example, dataset, or test set used to build or tune our tools. We may keep notes on how our tools performed on your material, as long as those notes don't reproduce it.
Our team may use AI tools in the course of our work with your material, for work that could otherwise be done without AI, such as analysis, summarising, or exploring alternative wordings. This includes our own analysis tools, which process your material to produce a result in the same way as any other analysis software, and do not keep it. Our team reviews every result before we rely on it.
We will only store and process your material in tools we have approved and set up so that the provider does not use it to train its AI models. Some providers keep inputs for a short period for security checks under their terms.
Our AI Statement, linked below, sets out how our team and collaborators use AI.
Test Results
We own the results of our testing and our analysis of them.
We aim to let you know how your material performs in testing, and you can ask us for an update at any time. What we share, and when, is up to us. You're welcome to share anything we send you.
We may publish or present anonymised findings, but we will not identify you, reproduce your material, or describe your premise in a way that would identify it, without your written consent.
You're welcome to say publicly that you're taking part in the Validation Programme.
Similar Ideas
We receive many submissions, develop our own premises, and work in a genre where ideas, settings, and themes often overlap, and where similar ideas can emerge independently at the same time. These Terms do not give ideas, themes, or genre conventions any more protection than the law already does, and similarity between your material and other material we hold is not, by itself, evidence that we have used yours.
We keep a dated record of the premises we hold and the submissions we receive. If you ever believe we have used your material outside these Terms, we'll share the relevant parts of that record, in confidence, with an independent reviewer or mediator.
Nothing in this section allows us to use your material, or its specific expression, outside these Terms.
Confidentiality and Your Data
We will keep your material confidential, use and share it only as these Terms allow, and use reasonable endeavours to prevent its unauthorised publication or disclosure, until you make it public. This does not apply to anything we already held before you shared it with us, anything we work out independently without using anything you shared, or anything that becomes public without our fault or that we lawfully receive from another source. A breach by a test audience member or other third party is not a breach of these Terms by us, provided we have required test audiences to agree to the terms described under How We Use Your Material.
We use your name, contact details, and material to run the Validation Programme, and keep our intake record to deal with any dispute. Some of our tools, including AI providers, are based outside the UK and are used under UK transfer safeguards. Your personal data will be processed in line with applicable data protection laws and our Privacy Policy, which explains who we share it with, how long we keep it, and your rights.
Withdrawal and Deletion
You are free to submit, option, or sell your premise elsewhere at any time. If you give someone else rights that conflict with these Terms, let us know and we'll stop using that material as soon as reasonably practical, and within thirty (30) days at the latest.
You can withdraw any premise or material at any time by email. We'll stop using it as soon as reasonably practical, and within thirty (30) days at the latest.
These Terms end automatically for a premise twelve (12) months after we last tested it or contacted you about it, whichever is later.
Within thirty (30) days of withdrawal, a lapse, or us telling you testing has ended for your premise, we will delete or return your material and stop using test materials based on it. We may keep a copy in our intake record for six (6) years after we last tested your premise or contacted you about it, only to deal with any dispute, copies in routine backups until they are overwritten in the ordinary course, and results already collected that don't reproduce your material. Anything we keep stays covered by these Terms.
If we send you a Letter of Intent and you accept it, these Terms continue alongside it, and the Letter of Intent controls where the two differ. If we both sign an IP Assignment Agreement for a premise, that agreement replaces these Terms for that premise. If you also have a Collaborator Agreement with us, the premises covered by these Terms are your own work outside that agreement, and these Terms govern them, except for material created as a Contribution under that agreement, which that agreement governs.
When these Terms end for a premise, however they end, our promises in the Your Rights, Variants, Artificial Intelligence, Similar Ideas, and Confidentiality and Your Data sections, and our promises not to use your material for anything else and to delete it, continue in full force.
General Terms
These Terms are not an option, assignment, or exclusive licence, and they are not a promise to test, advance, develop, or produce any premise. Taking part is voluntary and unpaid, and no fee, deferred pay, profit participation, or credit is payable or implied unless agreed in a later written contract.
By submitting your material, you confirm that, to the best of your knowledge, it is original to you, you have the right to share it with us, you have not given anyone else rights that conflict with these Terms, and it does not include details that identify real living people without their agreement.
These Terms do not create any partnership, joint venture, employment, or joint authorship between us.
We will not transfer your material, or our permission to use it, to any other company without your written consent, including on a sale of our business or a restructure. If we enter liquidation or administration, or are otherwise formally wound up, these Terms end automatically and our permission to use your material ends with it.
Other than for fraud, deliberate misconduct, or infringement of intellectual property rights, neither of us will be liable to the other for any indirect or consequential loss.
We may update these Terms from time to time. The version in force when you submitted your material applies to that material, unless you agree to a later version.
These Terms, and any disputes or claims related to them, are governed by the laws of England and Wales. If a dispute arises, we will both first try to resolve it in good faith. If it cannot be resolved within seven (7) days, we will refer it to mediation through CEDR (or, where we both agree, the Civil Mediation Council) within seven (7) days of either of us asking in writing. Each of us will bear our own legal costs, and we will share the mediator and venue costs equally. If mediation does not resolve it within thirty (30) days, either of us may withdraw, and the matter will be decided only by the courts of England and Wales. Nothing in this clause prevents either of us from applying to the courts for urgent injunctive relief at any time.
If any part of these Terms is found to be invalid, the rest will still apply. If either of us does not enforce a term, that does not stop us enforcing it later.
Accompanying Policies
The following policies are linked for convenience only.
Questions
If you have any questions about these Terms or our validation processes, email info@alttproductions.com.