A printable version of the licensing agreement can be downloaded at this link.
Licensing Question Sets
Licensing a question set from The Rockford Quiz Bowl Company (RQBCo) entitles the licensee to possess and use the licensed question set at one competition (either a one-day tournament or a multi-day competition series) during the competition year.
No question set produced by RQBCo may be used for competition without the express written permission of The Rockford Quiz Bowl Company.
A competition year begins on July 1 each year and ends on June 30 of the following calendar year. Question sets may only be used for competitions during the competition year for which they are produced by RQBCo.
At or near the end of each competition year, that year’s question sets will be posted online for free download, so that they may be used as study materials. Publicly posted question sets may never be used as competition questions.
The licensee may distribute one (1) printed or digital copy of the question set to each unique school or organization that sponsors one or more teams’ attendance at the licensee’s competition. The licensee may distribute the set to persons serving as staff at the licensed competition; those persons may not distribute the set, in whole or in part, to any other person. The licensee may not distribute the question set, in whole or in part, to any other person.
A school or organization that receives the question set from the licensee may use the question set as study material with students enrolled at the same school or organization, but may not distribute the question set, in whole or in part, or discuss it, in whole or in part, with any person who is not employed by or enrolled as a student in the same school or organization. The question sets are posted online after the competition years for which they are written, at which point any person or organization may use them as study materials.
No person or organization may at any time use any question sets ever produced by The Rockford Quiz Bowl Company to train any A.I. model or other system.
The following policies apply only to those licensing RQBCo’s “standard format” question sets, such as the RQBCo Novice set. Standard format sets are sets whose structure and style are commensurate with the game style of ACF quiz bowl. These sets have rounds of twenty pyramidal tossups and twenty three-part bonuses each.
The licensee of an RQBCo standard format question set is encouraged to report and correct any and all factual errors they find, but may not make significant changes to the set, including but not limited to: adding subject headers to be read before the questions; removing or adding bonus parts; removing words or sentences from tossups to shorten them; adding words or sentences to lengthen them; removing whole questions to shorten a round; or combining questions from RQBCo standard format sets with questions from another set.
These sets are intended to be played in “standard quizbowl” format, meaning that two teams in each game should hear all tossups (20) and as many bonuses (up to 20) as are earned by correctly answering the tossups in each round. The use of standard RQBCo standard format sets in significantly modified formats (for example, in four-quarter formats, in timed rounds, or with the addition of lightning rounds) without prior clearance from The Rockford Quiz Bowl Company is strictly prohibited. Making significant edits to the questions as described above, or using the questions without prior clearance for a significantly modified format, will incur financial penalties to be applied at the sole discretion of The Rockford Quiz Bowl Company.
Licensing Study Guides
The purchase of a study guide from The Rockford Quiz Bowl Company (RQBCo) entitles the licensee to use the study guide’s contents as study and/or teaching materials with students enrolled at one school or organization with which the licensee is employed or at which the licensee is enrolled as a student. The study guide may be distributed to any number of staff or students employed by or enrolled at the school or organization for which the licensee has purchased the licensed study guide. The licensee may not distribute the study guide, in whole or in part, to any other person.
Returns and Refunds
Due to the fundamental nature of the question sets and study materials produced by The Rockford Quiz Bowl Company, we cannot offer returns or refunds after a study guide has been paid for or a question set has been used in competition.