Terms & Conditions
Thank you for choosing IdeaSafe. We hope that you will find our services helpful.
These terms and conditions set out important information about our services, so please read them carefully.
About us
IdeaSafe is committed to the protection of intellectual property. It is run by Be. which is a law firm regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority under number 401394.
Our VAT registration number is GB 835 2310 36.
Use of this website
- You may access this website solely for the purpose of finding out about, subscribing to and using our services in good faith. You must not use any content of this website for any unauthorised or illegal purpose.
- Subscribing to this website will entitle you to upload files into our servers for the duration of your subscription period up to the maximum stated memory capacity of your online safe and subject to these terms and conditions.
- If you are subscribing on behalf of your employer or any other third party, they will be deemed to have agreed to and be bound by these terms and conditions. If they have not agreed to this, please cease all use of this website on their behalf.
- We reserve the right to suspend this website at any time for operational, regulatory, legal or other reasons. We may terminate your use of this website with immediate effect if you breach any of these terms and conditions.
Payment
- To access your online safe you will be asked to make the appropriate payment via PayPal, which is a secure independent payment agent. VAT will be charged on top of quoted prices where applicable.
- We do not see your payment card details.
- If you request a witness statement, we will send you an invoice for the applicable charge plus any VAT at the same time as sending you the statement. It may be necessary to charge an additional amount if you require the IdeaSafe-protected files to be annexed to the witness statement in any format other than a read-only disc. We will advise you of this before incurring any such charges.
- Our payment terms are 7 days from invoice.
- We reserve the right to charge interest at the statutory rate of 8% above the base rate of the Bank of England on any late payments. In addition to our other remedies, we may also suspend your access to this website if you fail to pay us on time until we receive payment.
Upgrading your safe
- It is possible to upgrade your safe to a larger safe at any time throughout your subscription by paying an additional fee. Follow the website instructions to upgrade your safe.
- A discount may apply to your upgrade if you apply within the first nine months of your subscription period. Any applicable discount will automatically be calculated and shown to you on making an application to upgrade prior to purchase.
- Any files stored in your old safe will automatically be transferred to your new upgraded safe.
Renewal and expiry
- Subscription to this website must be renewed on an annual basis by paying a further fee for the continued use of your size of safe.
- We will remind you by email one month before your subscription expires that you need to make a further payment. Therefore, it is extremely important that you keep your email details up-to-date at all times. If you fail to renew your safe by the renewal date, it will expire and you may lose your protection for all stored files. You access to the members areas of the website will also be blocked.
- If you fail to renew your subscription on time, but wish to do so at a later date, we may be able to help. It may be possible to reinstate your expired safe, but no guarantees can be given in this respect. We may charge an additional fee to you at our discretion for any technical assistance given to you in recovering your expired safe. However, this will be proportionate to the size of your safe and the time that has lapsed since expiry. We will agree any fee with you before incurring such fee.
Best practice
We have a strong commitment to 'best practice' and we expect you to operate according to fair trade practices. We expect you to stick to the following rules at all times:
- Importantly, we expect you to respect the intellectual property rights of third parties.
- You must only upload files that you own or are properly licensed to protect in this way.
- You must not state or imply to anyone that work has been protected by IdeaSafe if it has not been submitted to us.
- Please ensure that all of your registration details and any other information that you submit to us is accurate and true.
- You must not attempt to use our services in order to obtain any unfair advantage over a third party (e.g. by lodging their work under your own name) and we reserve fully our rights against you for any attempted abuse of our services.
- If you become aware of any misuse of our services, please let us know immediately.
- You must not upload any illegal or offensive material to your safe.
Service limitations
- The IdeaSafe service is designed to help you to bolster your rights. It does not create rights and does not purport to be a formal registry of intellectual property rights. We are only able to verify certain facts relating to your storage of work. Please read carefully the information about your legal rights on our website. This information is not exhaustive and only touches upon the two main areas of copyright and confidentiality. We do not refer to patents, trade mark or design registration facilities on our website, because IdeaSafe is solely concerned with providing help in relation to unregistered rights.
- We cannot guarantee that our witness statements will assist you in any legal dispute. Each case turns on its own facts.
- If you are in any doubt about your legal rights, we strongly advise you to consult your legal advisor. Nothing on our website should be used to substitute specific advice and must not be relied on. It is not legal advice, but generic information about this area of law. The www.patent.gov.uk website is an excellent information resource.
Security
- It is your responsibility to keep your log in details and password secret at all times. If you become aware of any unauthorised access to your account, you must let us know immediately on security@theideasafe.com and we will issue you with new access details.
- If someone has accessed your account in this way and deleted any of your stored files, we may be able to recover the original upload data. However, no guarantees are made in this regard.
Intellectual Property Rights
This website and its content are protected by intellectual property rights, including but not limited to copyright and trade marks. Except as expressly authorised by us or relevant third parties, you may not copy, download, adapt, alter, modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, communicate or make available to the public or create derivative works of any content of this website in whole or in part.
IDEASAFE and IDEA SAFE are UK registered trade marks (number 2348112). The IdeaSafe logo is also a trade mark. No unauthorised use may be made of these trade marks and no unauthorised association with us may be stated or implied.
Confidentiality
We respect your confidentiality. We will not look at or disclose any information that you upload, except:
- as is strictly necessary to check our systems for errors, such as files which have failed to upload due to a lack of capacity in your safe;
- as is strictly necessary for the purposes of processing any request by you for a witness statement; or
- as is otherwise required under the terms of a court order.
Availability
We will use our best endeavours to provide a continuously available service, but cannot warrant 100% availability. This website is hosted by Rackspace, managed hosting providers, with an outstanding reputation. If you become aware of any problems with availability, please let us know immediately at urgent@theideasafe.com.
Witness statements
- Our witness statements are in a simple format which conforms with the UK Civil Procedure Rules. A member of our technical staff will verify from our records:
- your name as it appears in our registration records;
- what files you uploaded;
- any other notes relating to the file or files (if you request this) and
- the time and date of upload.
- If you request a witness statement, we will need to get in touch with you to confirm certain information such as:
- what country your witness statement is required for;
- any case headings required at the top of the statement (if legal proceedings have already begun);
- what format of annex you need;
- whether you need separate statements for separate files;
- if you have any special requirements e.g. for the statements to be sworn before a notary public etc; and
- any other relevant information.
- We may not be able to process your application for a witness statement if we are not able to contact you, so please make sure your contact details are complete at all times.
- Please see the payment section above which sets out the payment terms for this witness statement service.
- On requesting a witness statement from us you hereby warrant that we shall be entitled to reproduce the uploaded files for these purposes and indemnify us for any claims made against us for any unauthorised use of third party intellectual property in this respect.
Links
You may not create a link from any other website to any part of this website except our home page.
Legal support terms
- We have close links with London-based intellectual property specialist law firm, Be., which has agreed to give UK-resident IdeaSafe members free initial guidance on what to do if your IdeaSafe-protected files are being misused by any third party. IdeaSafe will forward your legal queries to Be. at our sole discretion. Be. will either send you brief guidance by email or will call you to discuss the matter for up to half-an-hour, free of charge. This assistance is given by Be. on a no-obligation basis. After using this service you are, of course, free to instruct an alternative law firm or to engage Be. on a more formal basis.
- There may be circumstances in which Be. is unable to help you. Their advice is subject to availability and they may not be able to discuss your case with you if they already act for your opponent or if any other conflict of interests arises.
- Be. is an entirely separate business to IdeaSafe. IdeaSafe is not able to give legal advice. Be. is regulated by the Law Society and, whilst we have every faith in its ability to help you, we cannot give any warranties or take on any liability in this respect. Any dealings you have with Be. are on your own behalf and we do not act as your agent.
- It is important that you act quickly if you believe that someone has infringed your copyright or breached your confidentiality. You should not place any reliance on this referral service. If you need to obtain legal advice urgently, use the database at www.lawsociety.co.uk to find a specialist law firm near you.
- We reserve the right to change or add to the law firms participating in this service at any time. Any law firms that we refer you to will be regulated by the Law Society, or equivalent in any non-UK jurisdictions, where appropriate.
- Except in passing on your request for legal support, we will not discuss any case or divulge any of your details to any law firm working with us in this way (other than in the normal course of processing any request by you for an IdeaSafe witness statement). Therefore, Be. and any other participating law firms will be entitled to act against you in a case, unless you have disclosed information to them that would put them into a 'conflict of interests' situation under their standard professional conduct regulations.
- This service is an additional discretionary benefit for our members, which you do not pay for as part of your subscription fees. Because we are reliant on a third party for this service, it may be withdrawn at any time.
- Finally, please only use this service where you genuinely need legal help. The time of specialist lawyers is very valuable and the continued availability of this service will depend on responsible use by IdeaSafe members.
Disclaimers
- Your use of this website is at your sole risk. The website is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis and we do not guarantee that the website will be suitable for your purposes and requirements.
- The content of the website has been compiled from a variety of sources and is subject to change without notice. We use reasonable care in compiling and presenting the content of the website, but we can give no guarantee that the content is complete, accurate or up to date.
- So far as permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, conditions and other terms of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to any implied term of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, and any standard of care and skill.
Limitation of liability
- So far as permitted by law, and except in respect of death or personal injury arising from negligence, we exclude any liability for loss or damage of any kind resulting from the use of this website or any information, content, advertisements or products provided or distributed through this website including, without limitation, economic loss or any special, indirect, incidental or consequential loss or damage, whether or not the possibility of such loss has been notified to us.
- The foregoing will apply whether such loss or damage arises in contract, negligence, under statute or otherwise.
- Nothing in these terms and conditions affects any liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.
Termination and breach
- These terms and conditions (as amended by us from time to time) shall apply to all use that you make of this website.
- If you wish to terminate your agreement with us, simply cease all use of this website and do not renew your subscription. Refunds will not be given, except in particular circumstances and at our sole discretion.
- Your subscription will expire if you fail to renew it at the appropriate time.
- We shall be entitled to terminate your subscription if we reasonably believe that you have breached any of these terms and conditions and (if capable of being remedied) have failed to remedy such breach within 14 days of us giving you notice of such breach.
- On termination or expiry of your subscription:
- all of our obligations to you under these terms and conditions (except confidentiality and our privacy policy) shall cease immediately. For the avoidance of doubt, we shall be entitled to delete any files uploaded by you during your subscription period; and
- you must cease all use of our logo, trade marks and labels on any of your work and must not make any claims to have your work protected by IdeaSafe; and
- you must not make any further use of the IdeaSafe non-disclosure agreement.
General Information
- If you have any questions, please email help@theideasafe.com.
- Neither of us shall be liable to the other for any failure or delay to perform its obligations under these terms of conditions if caused by problems beyond its reasonable control (e.g. act of God, industrial action, terrorism etc).
- Your use of this website and subscription to any of our services is conditional on your unqualified acceptance of these terms and conditions.
- Your use of this website constitutes your binding acceptance of these terms and conditions in their entirety.
- These terms and conditions may be updated by us from time to time without notice to you. You should review this website periodically for changes.
- These terms and conditions constitute the entire agreement between you and us.
- Any failure by us to exercise or enforce any provision of these terms and conditions shall not constitute a waiver of such provision.
- These terms and conditions and the relationship between you and us shall be governed by the laws of England and any dispute will be decided by the English courts.
Privacy Policy
- This is a UK-based website and is subject to the UK Data Protection Act 1998.
- To use our services you must be a registered user. The registration process asks you provide certain information about yourself, so that we may establish an account for you.
- We use a security system that protects your information from unauthorised use.
- We will not sell, distribute or disclose information about you as an individual or your personal usage of this website without your consent or unless required or permitted to do so by law - or, of course, in order to our services to you.
- This website contains links to other websites, which may not be governed by this privacy policy. Your use of such links to visit such websites is at your own risk.
- It is important that the information we have about you is kept up-to-date. You may change any of the basic information that we keep about you (except your name) at any time by visiting the registration page.
- We monitor website traffic patterns, site usage and related site information in order to optimise our services. We may give aggregated statistics to a reputable third-party, but these statistics will include no personally identifying information.
- We may also need to contact you to notify you about important functionality changes and alterations to the website, or offers of products and services that might be of particular interest to you. We view this as integral to our services to you, but in order to reduce any irritation or inconvenience to you, we will keep such communications to a minimum. By subscribing to use our services you are agreeing to this. However, if at any time you wish to stop receiving information from us, please send an email to unsubscribe@theideasafe.com or by using the 'Contact' section of the website.
- Finally, we treat your privacy seriously. If at any time you have any feedback or suggestions about improving our procedures, please let us know, using the Contact section of the website.