Conformity Assessment and Mark Rules

Foreword. This Standard governs the conduct of assessments and the use of the Veyrum mark and rating claims by rated parties. Because a Veyrum rating is an opinion above the compliance floor, not a certification (VRS-GEN-003), this Standard borrows the protection mechanics of established conformity-mark regimes — UL’s mark-plus-surveillance model, the Bluetooth SIG trademark-as-enforcement-lever, the USB-IF lesson that a claim must state what was rated, when, to which edition, and at which tier, and the mark-issue-and-use discipline of ISO/IEC 17030:2021 — without asserting that VRS is a third-party certification scheme. Ratings and the mark are not yet published: this Standard states the rules that take effect when the first ratings are issued, so that no claim can be made before the regime exists. Requirements use “shall”; recommendations use “should”.

Introduction

A rating is only as trustworthy as the claims made about it. A Veyrum rating carries a tier — Unverified, Verified, or Certified (VRS-GEN-005 §6) — and an edition stamp, and both must travel with every claim: a reader who cannot see the tier cannot tell how much evidence stands behind the number. If a rated party can quote a withdrawn rating as current, overstate its tier, cross-apply one sector’s letter to another, or display the mark on an unrated variant, the rating stops predicting loss and starts misleading the underwriter or lender who prices on it. This Standard fixes what a claim must say, who may show the mark, how Veyrum verifies public claims against the registry, and what happens when a claim is wrong — the discipline that lets an insurer or lender treat a Veyrum number as evidence rather than marketing.

1 Scope

This Standard defines: assessment conduct requirements across the three tiers (Clause 4); claim requirements including tier and edition (Clause 5); mark usage and entitlement (Clause 6); surveillance of published claims (Clause 7); misuse and withdrawal handling (Clause 8); a worked example (Clause 9); and the relationship to third-party certification (Clause 10). It excludes scoring and tier eligibility (VRS-GEN-005/006), the issued-rating lifecycle — refresh, re-assessment, and withdrawal mechanics (VRS-GEN-008) — evidence grading (VRS-GEN-012), and mark visual identity (a Communications-owned brand guideline, referenced from Clause 6).

2 Normative references

• VRS-GEN-003, Governance Charter and Independence Statement (undated) — assessor independence and the equivalent Certified routes.
• VRS-GEN-005, IR Scheme (undated) — tiers and edition stamps.
• VRS-GEN-006, AR Scheme (undated) — applicability display and per-tier letter ceilings.
• VRS-GEN-008, Application of Ratings (undated) — refresh, re-assessment and withdrawal.
• VRS-GEN-009, Robot Risk Passport and Registry Schema (undated) — the authoritative record.
• VRS-GEN-012, Evidence Grades and Data Requirements (undated).

3 Terms and definitions

Per VRS-GEN-001. Locally: claim (any public statement by a rated party that a product holds a VRS rating); claimant (the rated party making a claim); mark (the Veyrum rating mark and associated wordmarks); tier (the evidence basis of a rating — Unverified, Verified, or Certified, per VRS-GEN-005 §6); rating-washing (presenting a rating so as to imply a scope, currency, tier, or sector suitability it does not have).

4 Assessment conduct

4.1 An assessment shall be performed against the declared edition of the governing documents (VRS 2026 unless a later edition is stated), recorded in the rating record (VRS-GEN-009).

4.2 Every rating shall carry a tier, recorded with the rating. The tier states the evidence basis: Unverified rests on public evidence assessed by Veyrum; Verified adds a manufacturer information pack with an officer attestation; Certified adds a witnessed demonstration. The tiers are cumulative — the Certified basis contains the Verified basis, which contains the public evidence, and no Certified evidence exceeds the Verified scope. The per-tier AR letter ceilings are defined in VRS-GEN-006 and are not restated here.

4.3 Assessors shall meet the independence requirements of VRS-GEN-003 §6. The witnessed demonstration supporting a Certified rating may be performed by any of the equivalent routes of VRS-GEN-003 §6; this Standard does not assume that Veyrum itself conducts the demonstration.

4.4 An assessment shall be repeatable: a second competent assessor, given the same evidence and the same edition, shall reach the same IR and AR results. Any point requiring judgement shall be resolved by a rule recorded in the rating record, not left to discretion.

4.5 A Verified or Certified assessment shall rest on a complete information pack; an incomplete pack shall not yield a Verified or Certified rating (all-or-nothing). A pre-launch Verified or Certified rating shall be bound to a named hardware revision and software version range and assessed on a production-representative unit.

4.6 Manufacturer QMS conformance is assessed as an input to the manufacturer-support category (VRS-GEN-106) and product-specification conformance as an input to specification integrity (VRS-GEN-104) — never as a separate certification or a manufacturer rating.

4.7 The evidence and reasoning supporting an assessment, including any officer attestation, shall be retained for at least 6 years, so that a claim can be audited for as long as it may be displayed.

5 Claim requirements

5.1 Every claim shall state, minimally: what was rated (model designation, and sector for an AR); the rating in its canonical form with edition — IR 92 (VRS 2026) for an IR and Industrial AR: AA (VRS 2026) — Verified for an AR; the tier (Unverified, Verified, or Certified); and the assessment date.

5.2 A claim shall not: present a withdrawn or Under-Edition-Review rating as unqualified current; present an IR as sector suitability; present one sector’s AR as another’s; imply a rating for an unrated or not-applicable sector; or state a tier higher than the one issued (each is rating-washing).

5.3 The applicability display rules of VRS-GEN-006 §5 shall apply to a claimant’s own materials, not only to Veyrum’s.

5.4 A machine-readable claim should carry the passport record identifier (VRS-GEN-009) so that a reader can resolve the claim to the authoritative registry entry.

6 Mark usage

6.1 The mark may be used only by a claimant holding a current rating, only in respect of the rated model, and only accompanied by a conforming claim (Clause 5); the mark shall display the rating’s tier and edition.

6.2 Mark visual standards — colour, clear space, minimum size, legibility and durability — are defined in the Veyrum brand guideline; this Standard governs entitlement and the guideline governs appearance. The durability and legibility precedent is UL 969:2025 (marking and labeling systems); the digital- and machine-readable-mark precedent is ISO/IEC 17030:2021.

6.3 The Certified tier is a rating tier, not a safety certification. Neither the mark nor any claim shall present a Certified rating as a certification of compliance, safety, or fitness for use. A VRS rating is a graded opinion above the compliance floor (VRS-GEN-003), and Certified denotes the highest evidence tier, not a pass/fail certificate.

6.4 Mark entitlement lapses automatically with rating withdrawal or lapse (VRS-GEN-008); continued use after lapse is misuse (Clause 8). A claimant shall remove or withdraw the mark within 30 days of a lapse.

6.5 A digital mark shall link to, or embed, the passport record identifier so that its currency and tier can be verified at the point of display (VRS-GEN-009, ISO/IEC 17030:2021).

7 Surveillance of claims

7.1 Published claims and marks are subject to the surveillance regime of VRS-GEN-008 (re-assessment and, in continued-validity sectors, scheduled obligations).

7.2 Veyrum may verify any public claim against the registry at any time; the registry record is authoritative and prevails over any conflicting claim.

7.3 Veyrum shall operate a routine surveillance sweep sampling at least 5% of active public claims per quarter, plus every claim that is the subject of a complaint.

7.4 A claimant shall respond to a surveillance query within 10 business days with the evidence or correction requested; a non-response is treated as an uncorrected non-conforming claim (Clause 8).

8 Misuse and withdrawal

8.1 Misuse — non-conforming claims, use without entitlement, use after lapse, tier overstatement, or rating-washing — shall be handled by a graduated escalation, recorded at each step in the registry.

8.2 Independently of claim misuse, a rating shall be downgraded or withdrawn on any of: a materially false officer attestation; retraction of evidence the rating depended on; or an unremediated major safety incident. A withdrawal shall be recorded publicly with its reason (VRS-GEN-008).

8.3 The model’s public field record (incidents, recalls) is displayed alongside the rating and updated independently of the rating. A field-record annotation does not by itself change the rating, but a major safety incident so recorded triggers the review of 8.2.

8.4 Misuse and withdrawal handling shall be recorded in the passport history; a persistent-misuse or safety-triggered withdrawal is public.

8.5 Escalation shall never be resolvable by commercial pressure or fee arrangements (VRS-GEN-003 §6).

9 Worked example

A manufacturer holds a Verified IR and a Verified Industrial AR for Model R-9: IR 88 (VRS 2026) and Industrial AR: A (VRS 2026) — Verified; it holds no Medical AR. It publishes: “R-9 — Veyrum Industrial AR: A (VRS 2026) — Verified, assessed 2026-05.” Conformance check:

• Clause 5.1 — subject (R-9, Industrial), rating + edition (A, VRS 2026), tier (Verified) and date (2026-05) all present → pass.
• Clause 5.2 — no withdrawn, cross-sector, IR-as-suitability, or tier-overstatement misstatement → pass.
• Clause 6.1 — current rating, rated model, conforming claim showing tier and edition → entitled to the mark.

The manufacturer then adds “Veyrum-Certified safe for hospitals.” This claim carries three faults: it asserts a Medical suitability never assessed (rating-washing, 5.2); it states the Certified tier where only Verified was issued (tier overstatement, 5.2); and it presents the rating as a safety certification (6.3) → fails. The quarterly sweep (7.3) samples the claim and issues a Stage-1 notice with a 30-day correction window (Table 8.1). The manufacturer removes the offending line within the window, so no annotation or withdrawal follows. Had it not, the claim would have been annotated in the registry (Stage 2) and, on persistence, the R-9 rating withdrawn (Stage 3), with the mark entitlement lapsing.

10 Relationship to third-party certification

10.1 VRS is not a product-certification scheme and does not accredit assessors as a certification body; a Veyrum rating — at any tier, Certified included — is a graded opinion, not a pass/fail certificate (VRS-GEN-003, and 6.3 above). This Standard therefore draws on the discipline of the ISO/IEC conformity-assessment series — ISO/IEC 17000:2020 (vocabulary), ISO/IEC 17065:2012 (bodies certifying products), ISO/IEC 17067:2013 (certification schemes) and ISO/IEC 17011:2017 (accreditation) — as precedent for impartiality, records and surveillance, without claiming equivalence.

10.2 Where a manufacturer already holds certification under one of these regimes, the supporting records (impartiality declarations, surveillance-audit reports, technical files) shall be accepted as evidence toward the corresponding VRS assessment-conduct requirement (VRS-GEN-012), so that adoption costs a mapping rather than new audits.

Bibliography

• ISO/IEC 17000:2020, Conformity assessment — Vocabulary and general principles (Ed. 2.0). https://www.iso.org/standard/73029.html
• ISO/IEC 17030:2021, Conformity assessment — General requirements for third-party marks of conformity. https://www.iso.org/standard/78283.html
• ISO/IEC 17065:2012, Conformity assessment — Requirements for bodies certifying products, processes and services (First edition, 2012-09-15). https://www.iso.org/standard/46568.html
• ISO/IEC 17067:2013, Conformity assessment — Fundamentals of product certification and guidelines for product certification schemes (supersedes ISO/IEC Guide 67:2004). https://www.iso.org/standard/55087.html
• ISO/IEC 17011:2017, Conformity assessment — Requirements for accreditation bodies accrediting conformity assessment bodies. https://www.iso.org/standard/67198.html
• UL 969:2025, Standard for Marking and Labeling Systems (6th edition, issued 2025-07-24). https://webstore.ansi.org/standards/ul/ul969ed2025

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