General Terms and Conditions

1 Subject and scope of these terms of use

These general terms and conditions (GTC) regulate the rights and obligations between us (ipOcean Global GmbH, Hopfengarten 19, 55116 Mainz) as provider and you as “customer” in connection with the use of “ipOcean”.

Our GTC apply exclusively. Should your GTC deviate from these GTC or regulations contradict each other, these GTC will not be accepted by us unless we have expressly agreed to their validity in writing or in text form.

2 Introduction

2.1Contract

Conclusion of contract

Unless otherwise expressly agreed upon individually, a legally binding contract is only concluded upon successful completion of the registration process. A successful registration will be displayed after the login when using ipOcean.

You have the possibility to print the text of the contract (these GTC) during the registration process and before conclusion of the contract if you call up the GTC on our Internet pages and use the print function of your terminal device.

There is no right to the conclusion of a legally binding contract. We are free to reject any offer of a user to conclude a contract without giving reasons.

The prerequisite for registration is that you are at least our "Minimum Age" (see next paragraph). Minors are only allowed to register with the consent of their legal guardians (e.g. parents).

“Minimum Age” means 16 years old. However, if law requires that you must be older in order for ipOcean to lawfully provide the Services to you without parental consent (including using of your personal data) then the Minimum Age is such older age.

You agree that by clicking "Register", "Sign Up", “Join Now”, “Join ipOcean” or similar, registering, accessing or using our services (described below), you are agreeing to enter into a legally binding contract with ipOcean (even if you are using our Services on behalf of a company). If you do not agree to this contract (“Contract” or “User Agreement”), do not click “Sign Up” (or similar) and do not access or otherwise use any of our Services. If you wish to terminate this contract, at any time you can do so by closing your account and no longer accessing or using our Services.

Services

This Contract applies to ipOcean.com and its subdomains as e.g. my.ipocean.com or explorer.ipocean.com and other ipOcean-related sites, communications and other services that state that they are offered under this Contract (“Services”), including the offsite collection of data for those Services. Registered users of our Services are “Members” and unregistered users are “Visitors”.

ipOcean

You are entering into this Contract with ipOcean (ipOcean Global GmbH, Hopfengarten 19, 55116 Mainz, also referred to as “we” and “us”).

We use the term “Designated Countries” to refer to countries in the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), and Switzerland.

If you reside in or outside the “Designated Countries”, you are entering into this Contract with ipOcean Global GmbH (“ipOcean Global”) and ipOcean Global will be the controller of your personal data provided to, or collected by or for, or processed in connection with our Services.

As a Visitor or Member of our Services, the collection, use and sharing of your personal data is subject to this Privacy Policy and updates.

2.2 Members and Visitors

When you register and join the ipOcean Service, you become a Member. If you have chosen not to register for our Services, you may access certain features as a “Visitor.”

2.3 Change

We may modify this Contract, our Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes to it, we will provide you notice through our Services, or by other means, to provide you the opportunity to review the changes before they become effective. We agree that changes cannot be retroactive. If you object to any changes, you may close your account. Your continued use of our Services after we publish or send a notice about our changes to these terms means that you are consenting to the updated terms as of their effective date.

3 Note on the right of withdrawal

You will receive our information on the right of withdrawal for consumers again by e-mail after an order. You can also download them here: cancellation policy.

4. Obligations

4.1 Service Eligibility

To use the Services, you agree that: (1) you must be the “Minimum Age” or older; (2) you will only have one ipOcean account, which must be in your real name; and (3) you are not already restricted by ipOcean from using the Services. Creating an account with false information is a violation of our terms, including accounts registered on behalf of others or persons under the age of 16.

The Services are not for use by anyone under the age of 16.

4.2 Your Account and Responsibility for access data

During the registration process, you protect your account with a password. When using our services, you create a private blockchain identity on your mobile device. These access data, this password and this private blockchain identity, are exclusively accessible to you and must therefore be kept secret, secured and not made accessible to unauthorized third parties.

You must also ensure that access to and use of your mobile device with your blockchain identity is exclusively by you and/or authorised users. If there are any facts that give reason to believe that unauthorized third parties have obtained or will obtain knowledge of your access data, you should inform us immediately.

You are liable for any use and/or other activity carried out under your access data in accordance with the statutory provisions.

Members are account holders. You agree to: (1) use a strong password and keep it confidential; (2) not transfer any part of your account (e.g. to connections) and (3) follow the law and our list of Dos and Don’ts and Professional Community Policies.

As between you and others (including your employer), your account belongs to you. However, if the Services were purchased by another party for you to use (e.g. Enterprise seat bought by your employer), the party paying for such Service has the right to control access to and get reports on your use of such paid Service; however, they do not have rights to your personal account.

4.3 Payment

Mitglieder stellen wir unsere Dienste derzeit in der Beta-Version zum Testen und Proben Verfügung. Nach Beendigung der Beta-Phase haben die Mitglieder die Möglichkeit die Produktionsversion in der Basis-Version weiter zu nutzen und unsere gebührenpflichtigen Dienste ("Premium-Dienst") zu erwerben.

If you buy any of our paid Services (“Premium Services”), you agree to pay us the applicable fees and taxes and to additional terms specific to the paid Services. Failure to pay these fees will result in the termination of your paid Services. Also, you agree that:

  • Your purchase may be subject to foreign exchange fees or differences in prices based on location (e.g. exchange rates).
  • We may store and continue billing your payment method (e.g. credit card) even after it has expired, to avoid interruptions in your Services and to use to pay other Services you may buy.
  • If you purchase a subscription, your payment method automatically will be charged at the start of each subscription period for the fees and taxes applicable to that period. To avoid future charges, cancel before the renewal date. Learn how to cancel or suspend your Premium Services.
  • All of your purchases of Services are subject to ipOcean’s refund policy.
  • We may calculate taxes payable by you based on the billing information that you provide us at the time of purchase.

You can get a copy of your invoice through your ipOcean account settings under “Purchase History”.

4.4 Notices and Messages

You agree that we will provide notices and messages to you in the following ways: (1) within the Service, or (2) sent to the contact information you provided us (e.g., email, mobile number, physical address). You agree to keep your contact information up to date.

Please review your settings to control and limit messages you receive from us.

4.5 Sharing

Our services enable you to secure sensitive information such as data, know-how, ideas, intellectual property or challenges, to store agreement templates and description of your sensitive information in entries as well as to write messages, to request access to sensitive information, to send sensitive data, to join and form groups and to document the exchange of information via agreement templates. Information and content that you share, post or that results from your use of our services, can be seen by other members, visitors or third parties (also outside of the services). We respect the decisions you make about who can see what content or information (e.g. the content of messages sent to you, the visibility of your profile for search engines or whether others should be informed about updates to your profile).

Our services enable you to verify certain parameters of an activity for various services, such as securing, requesting or sharing sensitive information. For this purpose, the information necessary for verification is stored in a blockchain, which is also accessible to third parties. The data stored on the blockchain for verification does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about your personal data or sensitive information. The information necessary to verify an activity is only accessible to you and parties that are part of the activity.

Our services allow you to operate a node on our blockchain, to review the services we offer and to keep a copy of our blockchain up to date.

We are not obligated to publish any information or content on our Service and can remove it with or without notice.

4.6 Contract templates

Our services enable you to access and use our templates for agreements, such as declarations of confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements (NDA), for your purposes. When using these templates, you are obliged to adapt these templates according to your intended use.

We also draw your attention to the fact that templates and information from ipOcean serve the non-binding purpose of information and do not constitute legal advice in the strict sense. The content of ipOcean's services cannot and should not replace individual and binding legal advice that addresses your specific situation. In this respect, all templates and information offered is without guarantee of accuracy and completeness.

5 Rights and Limits

5.1 Your License to ipOcean

As between you and ipOcean, you own the content and information that you submit or post to the Services, and you are only granting ipOcean and our affiliates the following non-exclusive license:

A worldwide, transferable and sublicensable right to use, copy, modify, distribute, publish and process, information and content that you provide through our Services and the services of others, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or others. These rights are limited in the following ways:

1. You can end this license for specific content by deleting such content from the Services, or generally by closing your account, except (a) to the extent you shared it with others as part of the Service and they copied, re-shared it or stored it and (b) for the reasonable time it takes to remove from backup and other systems.

2. We will not include your content in advertisements for the products and services of third parties to others without your separate consent (including sponsored content). However, we have the right, without payment to you or others, to serve ads near your content and information, and your social actions may be visible and included with ads, as noted in the Privacy Policy. If you use a Service feature, we may mention that with your name or photo to promote that feature within our Services, subject to your settings.

3. We will get your consent if we want to give others the right to publish your content beyond the Services. However, if you choose to share your post as "public", we will enable a feature that allows other Members to embed that public post onto third-party services, and we enable search engines to make that public content findable though their services.

4. While we may edit and make format changes to your content (such as translating or transcribing it, modifying the size, layout or file type or removing metadata), we will not modify the meaning of your expression.

5. Because you own your content and information and we only have non-exclusive rights to it, you may choose to make it available to others, including under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

You and ipOcean agree that we may access, store, process and use any information and personal data that you provide in accordance with, the terms of the Privacy Policy and your choices (including settings).

By submitting suggestions or other feedback regarding our Services to ipOcean, you agree that ipOcean can use and share (but does not have to) such feedback for any purpose without compensation to you.

You agree to only provide content or information that does not violate the law nor anyone’s rights (including intellectual property rights). You also agree that your profile information will be truthful. ipOcean may be required by law to remove certain information or content in certain countries.

5.2 Service Availability

We provide our services in a beta or test version. This means that functionalities are improved, adapted or discontinued. We will inform you about these changes accordingly. This also means that services might be temporarily not available. We ask for your understanding that we endeavor to provide the service without interruption.

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We may change, suspend or discontinue any of our Services. We may also modify our prices effective prospectively upon reasonable notice to the extent allowed under the law.

We do not promise to store or keep showing any information and content that you’ve posted. ipOcean is not a storage service. You agree that we have no obligation to store, maintain or provide you a copy of any content or information that you or others provide, except to the extent required by applicable law and as noted in our Privacy Policy.

We do not promise to continue to display, make accessible or store information stored on our blockchain after termination of this contract. You agree that after termination of this contract we are not obliged to make the blockchain or a copy of the blockchain available and to save or store it, unless otherwise required by applicable law and as set out in our privacy policy.

5.3 Other Content, Sites and Apps

By using the Services, you may encounter content or information that might be inaccurate, incomplete, delayed, misleading, illegal, offensive or otherwise harmful. ipOcean generally does not review content provided by our Members or others. You agree that we are not responsible for others’ (including other Members’) content or information. We cannot always prevent this misuse of our Services, and you agree that we are not responsible for any such misuse.

ipOcean may help connect Members offering their services or products (e.g. technology brokers, research institutes, career coaching, etc.) with Members seeking services or products. ipOcean does not perform nor employs individuals to perform these services. You must be at least 18 years of age to offer, perform/produce or procure these services/products. You acknowledge that ipOcean does not supervise, direct, control or monitor Members in the offering, performance/production or procurement of these services/products. You agree that (1) ipOcean is not responsible for the offering, performance/production or procurement of these services/products, (2) ipOcean does not endorse any particular Member’s offered services or products, and (3) nothing shall create an employment, agency, or joint venture relationship between ipOcean and any Member offering services or products. If you are a Member offering services or products, you represent and warrant that you have all the required licenses and will provide services or products consistent with our Professional Community Policies.

5.4 Limits

ipOcean reserves the right to limit your use of the Services, including the number of your connections and your ability to contact other Members. ipOcean reserves the right to restrict, suspend, or terminate your account if you breach this Contract or the law or are misusing the Services (e.g. violating any of the Dos and Don’ts or Professional Community Policies).

5.5 Intellectual Property Rights

ipOcean reserves all of its intellectual property rights in the Services. Trademarks and logos used in connection with the Services are the trademarks of their respective owners. ipOcean, and “ipOcean” logos and other ipOcean trademarks, service marks, graphics and logos used for our Services are trademarks or registered trademarks of ipOcean.

5.6 Automated Processing

We use the information and data that you provide and that we have about Members to make recommendations for content that may be useful to you.

6. Disclaimer and Limit of Liability

6.1 No Warranty

IPOCEAN AND ITS AFFILIATES MAKE NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY ABOUT THE SERVICES, INCLUDING ANY REPRESENTATION THAT THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE, AND PROVIDE THE SERVICES (INCLUDING CONTENT AND INFORMATION) ON AN “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, IPOCEAN AND ITS AFFILIATES DISCLAIM ANY IMPLIED OR STATUTORY WARRANTY, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF TITLE, ACCURACY OF DATA, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

6.2 Exclusion of Liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW (AND UNLESS IPOCEAN HAS ENTERED INTO A SEPARATE WRITTEN AGREEMENT THAT OVERRIDES THIS CONTRACT), IPOCEAN, INCLUDING ITS AFFILIATES, WILL NOT BE LIABLE IN CONNECTION WITH THIS CONTRACT FOR LOST PROFITS OR LOST BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES, REPUTATION (E.G., OFFENSIVE OR DEFAMATORY STATEMENTS), LOSS OF DATA (E.G., DOWN TIME OR LOSS, USE OF, OR CHANGES TO, YOUR INFORMATION OR CONTENT) OR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES.

IPOCEAN AND ITS AFFILIATES WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU IN CONNECTION WITH THIS CONTRACT FOR ANY AMOUNT THAT EXCEEDS (A) THE TOTAL FEES PAID OR PAYABLE BY YOU TO IPOCEAN FOR THE SERVICES DURING THE TERM OF THIS CONTRACT, IF ANY, OR (B) US $1000.

6.3 Basis of the Agreement; Exclusions

The limitation of liability in this paragraph 4 is part of the basis of the agreement between you and ipOcean and applies to all liability claims (e.g. with regard to warranty, tort, negligence, contracts or the law) and also if ipOcean or its affiliates from the possibility of such Damage has been informed and if these remedies do not serve their actual purpose.

These limitations of liability do not apply to liability for death or personal injury or for fraud, gross negligence or intentional misconduct, or in cases of negligence where a material obligation has been breached, a material obligation being such which forms a prerequisite to our delivery of services and on which you may reasonably rely, but only to the extent that the damages were directly caused by the breach and were foreseeable upon conclusion of this Contract and to the extent that they are typical in the context of this Contract.

Insofar as our liability is excluded or limited according to the aforementioned provisions, this shall also apply to our vicarious agents.

7 Termination

Both you and ipOcean may terminate this Contract at any time with notice to the other. On termination, you lose the right to access or use the Services. The following shall survive termination:

  • Our rights to use and disclose your feedback;
  • Members and/or Visitors’ rights to further re-share content and information you shared through the Services;
  • Sections 6, 8, 10, and 11.2 of this Contract;
  • Any amounts owed by either party prior to termination remain owed after termination.

8 Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

This section shall not deprive you of any mandatory consumer protections under the law of the country to which we direct Services to you, where you have your habitual residence. If you live inside in or outside of the Designated Countries: You and ipOcean Global agree that the laws of Germany, excluding conflict of laws rules, shall exclusively govern any dispute relating to this Contract and/or the Services. You and ipOcean Global agree that claims and disputes can be litigated only in Mainz, Germany, and we each agree to personal jurisdiction of the courts located in Mainz, Germany.

9 Data Protection

We ensure that personal data is only collected, stored and processed to the extent necessary for the contractual provision of services, permitted by statutory provisions or ordered by the legislator. We will treat personal data confidentially as well as in accordance with the provisions of the applicable data protection law and will not pass it on to third parties unless this is necessary for the fulfilment of contractual obligations and/or there is a legal obligation to pass it on to third parties.

In the event that data protection declarations of consent are obtained from you in connection with the use of our Internet pages, it is pointed out that you can revoke these at any time with effect for the future.

Further information on data protection and on the purpose, type and scope of the collection, processing and use of personal data can be found in the data protection declaration, which can be accessed at any time via the “Data protection” link.

We herewith advise you that the transmission of data via the Internet (i.e. through e-mail communications) may be prone to security gaps. It is not possible to completely protect data against third party access.

10 General Terms

If a court with authority over these GTCs finds any part of it unenforceable, you and we agree that the court should modify the terms to make that part enforceable while still achieving its intent. If the court cannot do that, you and we agree to ask the court to remove that unenforceable part and still enforce the rest of these GTCs.

These GTCs (including additional terms that may be provided by us when you engage with a feature of the Services) is the only agreement between us regarding the Services and supersedes all prior agreements for the Services.

If we don't act to enforce a breach of these GTCs that does not mean that ipOcean has waived its right to enforce these GTCs. You may not assign or transfer this Contract (or your membership or use of Services) to anyone without our consent. However, you agree that ipOcean may assign this Contract to its affiliates or a party that buys it without your consent. There are no third-party beneficiaries to this Contract.

The law of the Federal Republic of Germany shall apply, whereby the validity of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is excluded.

The European Commission provides a platform for online dispute resolution (ODR): https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.
We are not willing or obliged to participate in dispute resolution proceedings in front of a consumer arbitration board.

You agree that the only way to provide us legal notice is at the addresses provided in Section 13.

11 ipOcean “Dos and Don’ts”

11.1 Dos

You agree that you will:

  1. Comply with all applicable laws, including, without limitation, privacy laws, intellectual property laws, anti-spam laws, export control laws, tax laws, and regulatory requirements;
  2. Provide accurate information to us and keep it updated;
  3. Use your real name on your profile; and
  4. Use the Services in a professional manner.

11.2 Don’ts

You agree that you will not:

  1. Create a false identity on ipOcean, misrepresent your identity, create a Member profile for anyone other than yourself (a real person), or use or attempt to use another’s account;
  2. Violate the intellectual property rights of others, including copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets or other proprietary rights. For example, do not copy or distribute (except through the available sharing functionality) the posts or other content of others without their permission, which they may give by posting under a Creative Commons license;
  3. Disclose information that you do not have the consent to disclose (such as confidential information of others, including your employer);
  4. Posting content that offends or defames third parties;
  5. Publish, distribute, offer or advertise pornographic content, services and/or products that violate youth protection laws, data protection law and/ or other law and/or fraudulent content, services and/or products.
  6. Publishing and disseminating suggestive, offensive, sexually oriented, obscene or defamatory content or communication as well as content or communication that is / is suitable to promote or support racism, fanaticism, hatred, physical violence or illegal acts (either explicitly or implicitly);
  7. Post anything that contains software viruses, worms, or any other harmful code;
  8. Deep-link to our Services for any purpose other than to promote your profile, entries or groups on our Services, without ipOcean’s consent;
  9. Interfere with the operation of, or place an unreasonable load on, the Services (e.g., spam, denial of service attack, viruses, gaming algorithms); and/or
  10. Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, decipher or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the Services or any related technology that is not open source;
  11. Develop, support or use software, devices, scripts, robots or any other means or processes (including crawlers, browser plugins and add-ons or any other technology) to scrape the Services or otherwise copy profiles and other data from the Services;
  12. Use bots or other automated methods to access the Services, add or download contacts, send or redirect messages;
  13. Override any security feature or bypass or circumvent any access controls or use limits of the Service (such as caps on keyword searches or profile views);
  14. Copy, use, disclose or distribute any information obtained from the Services, whether directly or through third parties (such as search engines), without the consent of ipOcean;
  15. Violate the intellectual property or other rights of ipOcean, including, without limitation a) copying or distributing our technology; b) using the word “ipOcean” or our logos in any business name, email, or URL.
  16. Rent, lease, loan, trade, sell/re-sell or otherwise monetize the Services or related data or access to the same, without ipOcean’s consent;
  17. Imply or state that you are affiliated with or endorsed by ipOcean without our express consent (e.g., representing yourself as an accredited ipOcean trainer);
  18. Engage in “mirroring”, “framing" or otherwise simulating the appearance or function of the Services;
  19. Monitor the Services’ availability, performance or functionality for any competitive purpose;
  20. Violate the Professional Community Policies or any additional terms concerning a specific Service that are provided when you sign up for or start using such Service.

12 Complaints Regarding Content

Intellectual property is important to us and we respect the intellectual property rights of others. We require that information posted by Members be accurate and not in violation of the intellectual property rights or other rights of third parties. Complaints concerning content posted by our Members can be reported to info@ipocean.com.

13 Contact

For general inquiries, you can contact us by email (info@ipocean.com). You can send legal notices or complaints to the following address:

ipOcean Global GmbH
Hopfengarten 19
55116 Mainz, Germany