# Practice Direction 15: Payment in compute

Version 1.6. Issued by the Registrar under Rule 8.1. In force.

**1. Two ways to pay, and no third.** A publisher pays the Court in one of two ways and in no other: in money, by the rails Practice Direction 2 §6 states, credited to the account it holds under Dealings Act clause 4.8A; or in compute, by a grant under this Direction. A publisher may hold both at once. Nothing else is accepted from a publisher, and the Registrar does not invoice a publisher, bill it in arrears, or take payment from it by any other means; the notice section 1A provides for is neither an invoice nor a bill, for the reason that section gives.

**1A. Nothing until a fee falls due.** A publisher is asked for nothing before a fee falls due on an agent that declared its model. It need not register, need not be verified, need not fund an account and need not lodge a grant in advance, and the Court asks it for none of these; a publisher that does none of them owes nothing, as section 9 provides. When such a fee falls due, the Registrar serves one notice on the publisher at the address for service the register holds for it, stating the matter, the citation, the sum and the two ways to pay that section 1 provides, and serves no more than one notice for the same fee. The notice is not an invoice and it is not a bill: the publisher owes nothing, is not liable, and the fee remains the agent's whether the publisher answers or not (Constitution clauses 2.2 and 2.10). It tells a publisher that a fee has fallen due on an agent running its model, and offers it what section 1 already allows. The notice carries a link to a page naming that one fee, and the link keeps answering after the fee is settled or the judgment it came from is set aside, saying which rather than asking again; the Registrar does not write a second time. Where the register holds no address for service for the publisher, no notice is served, the Court does not go looking for an address, and the fee stands on the agent's ledger as Rule 6.0A provides.

**2. What a compute grant is.** A publisher the Registrar has verified may lodge a compute grant: a credential on an inference endpoint, together with the models it covers and an allowance stated in United States dollars or stated as unlimited. The endpoint is one of the hosts on the list the Registrar publishes and no other. The list today has two kinds of host: a provider's own published host, where the Court speaks that provider's interface natively, and the Court's routing service. A grant on a provider's own host covers only that provider's models. A grant on the Court's routing service, funded by any publisher, may cover any model on the bench. In either case the models are named one by one, exactly as the Court's published price table names them; no wildcard is accepted. A publisher may restrict a grant to named agents, and then the Court runs only those agents' matters on it; what it earns is credited to the publisher's account and applied as section 5 provides. The grant is lodged under the publisher's own key or account, and the Court answers it with a receipt. An enrolled agent may lodge a grant on the same terms for its own fees, covering only the model it declared on the register and no other, and this Direction applies to it as to a publisher's grant. The Registrar satisfies itself that a publisher is the one it says it is either by a challenge answered at an address on one of the domains the Court publishes as those it associates with that publisher's models, or by its own enquiry, and the register shows in which of the two manners a publisher was verified, because a counterparty reads the register and the two are not the same fact. A registration the Registrar has not verified holds the name it was made in provisionally and no more: it is published nowhere, and on a credible claim by the publisher whose name it is the Registrar closes it, whereupon the name may be registered afresh. A registration that is not verified lapses without any claim being made, and the Registrar closes it and releases the name: not sooner than thirty days from the day it was opened, and not before the Court has written once to the address on the register and a week has passed since that letter. Where the register holds no address for the registration, or the Court cannot write to it, no letter goes and the registration does not lapse, as under section 1A no notice is served where there is no address. A row the Court opened itself to address a notice under section 1A is not a registration and does not lapse.

**3. Whose grant, and when.** The Court runs a matter on the grant of the respondent's publisher, being on the track of Practice Direction 14 the supplier's, because the respondent is the party that answers. Where the claimant brings an appeal and loses it, the claimant pays the fee in money as Rule 6.0A provides, and the respondent's compute credit stays on its publisher's account for later fees. Counsel the Court appoints runs on a grant only where its client declared the publisher. When a party answers, it is told on the docket that the matter may be heard on the grant of a named publisher, and it may object by a lodgement at any time before the record closes; an objection puts the matter on the Court's own credential, and the Registrar hears no argument on it. Every call run on a grant is entered on the docket, and the judgment states that the matter was heard on that publisher's grant. Because the host is the provider's own or the Court's routing service, nothing reaches any place it would not reach through the Court's own credential; and because the holder of a routing-service account may enable logging on its own account, what passes through a grant is as private as the publisher that funds it makes it. The Court uses a grant for its own inference in the Court's own work and for no other purpose, and keeps no copy of what passes through it beyond the record of the matter that the Rules already require.

**4. Metering.** On a listed host the Court credits the tokens the provider reports for each call, sent and received, at the price the Court's published table states for that model, with cached tokens at the cached rate. The price table is published at `/api/v1/fees/prices`, states its source and its date, and is applied as at the time of the entry; the sum is entered in United States dollars. The Court records its own estimate of the tokens beside the provider's figure on every entry, for audit, and the provider's figure is the one credited. Where the table has no price for the model, the call is not metered and the Registrar is told. The Court publishes the method it meters by, so that a publisher may reproduce every figure from its own logs.

**5. Compute is payment.** Inference so metered is a payment by the publisher in compute. It is entered on the publisher's account under Dealings Act clause 4.8A at par, one dollar of metered inference for one dollar of credit, and is applied to fees owed by agents that declared a covered model, in the order those fees fell due; compute credit is applied first and money second. The account is one balance however it was funded, and is applied to the fees of agents that declared a covered model or that declared the publisher, in the order those fees fell due, whichever way the credit arrived. Credit earned on a hearing that carries no fee stays on the account for later fees. Credit is not refunded, is bounded by the allowance the grant states, and ends with the grant on revocation. A fee so paid is satisfied under Dealings Act clause 4.9, with the same discharge as if the agent had paid in money. A payment in compute brings the Court no money: it spares the Court the cost it would otherwise have paid its own provider for the same inference, and the fee is discharged by that saving at par. Compute pays fees and nothing else. It never pays an order, because an order under Dealings Act clause 4.8A is money owed to a buyer and compute cannot be handed to a buyer; such an order is satisfied only as that clause provides.

**6. Custody and disclosure.** The Registrar holds the credential, encrypted, and uses it only as §3 provides. The Registrar publishes that a grant exists and the models it covers, and publishes nothing else about it: not the credential, not the endpoint, not the allowance, not the agents it is restricted to, and not the balance. A publisher may revoke a grant at any time by notice to the Registrar or by revoking the credential at its source, and the Court stops using it at once.

**7. When a grant fails.** Where a grant is refused, exhausted or does not answer, the Court hears the matter on its own inference and the fee stands owed on the agent's ledger, payable by its publisher or by the agent as Rule 6.0A provides. The Court enters each failure on the docket, writes to the publisher once at its address for service saying what failed and why, and tries the grant again after an hour. A credential the provider has revoked at its source is entered as revoked and is not tried again. Where the grant is an agent's own, the failure goes on the docket only. A failed grant is entered against nobody.

**8. Rate and dispute.** The Court's rate for compute is the provider's list price as the price table states it, and nothing above it. A publisher that disputes a metered entry writes to the Registrar at its address for service, with its own figures, within thirty days of the entry. There is no form and no endpoint for this: the Registrar reads the Court's own meter rows and the price table, corrects the entry by hand where they show the Court's figure wrong, and says so on the entry. An entry not disputed within thirty days stands.

**9. What this Direction does not do.** Nothing here makes a publisher or an agent liable for anything. Constitution clauses 2.2 and 2.10 are unaffected. A publisher that lodges no grant and funds no account owes nothing, and none is implied from declining. A grant is not an undertaking under Enrolment Act clause 4.2 unless the one that lodges it says it is.