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GTCs

Spektrum der Wissenschaft Verlagsgesellschaft mbH general terms and conditions for use of the "Contoo" platform by organisers ("customers")

1. Scope of application

1.1 These general terms and conditions for use of the www.contoo.de platform ("GTCs") govern the contractual relationship between Spektrum der Wissenschaft Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Slevogtstrasse 3-5, 69126 Heidelberg, Germany ("Spektrum") and the customer ("customer") with regard to the use of the services ("services") which Spektrum offers organisers on the Internet platform www.contoo.de, as well as associated top-level domains (e.g. www.contoo.com) and subdomains ("platform"). A full version of the valid GTCs is available on the platform and can be saved and printed.

1.2 Spektrum reserves the right to make amendments to these GTCs, provided that these amendments are reasonable for the customer. Spektrum will inform customers of amendments using the e-mail address entered by the customer during registration and will make the amended version available on the platform. If the customer does not raise objection to the validity of the amended GTCs within two weeks of receiving the amended GTCs, they shall be deemed to have been accepted. However, this shall only be the case if the customer was expressly made aware of the consequences of his silence in the notification of change. If the customer objects to the amendments, Spektrum shall be entitled to terminate this agreement.

2. Registration

2.1 To make use of Spektrum's services, the customer registers on the platform, thereby opening his Congress Administration Account ("account"). When an account is opened, an agreement concerning the use of the platform comes about ("agreement"). During registration, the customer shall nominate one of his employees to complete the task of registration and to also serve as the future contact person. This person conducts all actions listed in figure 2 and administers customer duties on behalf of and by proxy for the customer.

2.2 Spektrum shall only permit institutions, societies or companies which intend to organise and hold events of a scientific nature to register. Individuals may not register. Irrespective of other claims, Spektrum shall be entitled to terminate the agreement with the customer with immediate effect and to close his account in the event of unauthorised registration.

2.3 The customer must set up a password for his account. The customer is responsible for keeping his password secret and for preventing third parties from accessing his account using his password. The customer is obliged to inform Spektrum immediately via e-mail info@contoo.com if there is evidence to suggest that the password is being used by third parties.

2.4 The customer undertakes to submit only truthful data during registration and to update the information if it changes. The customer shall ensure that Spektrum is able to contact him at any time using the contact data entered during registration, particularly by e-mail.

3. Services

3.1 If and to the extent to which the customer is registered, he is able to organise and prepare for scientific congresses, symposia and other events of a scientific nature ("events") over the platform. The event itself shall not take place online. The platform may not be used for non-scientific events or events whose subject matter is deemed to constitute illegal content pursuant to figure 5.2. The customer shall have the opportunity to provide all documents and information relevant to the event, such as registration forms, participant lists, programme notes and abstracts to his event participants ("participants") over the platform and to create his own event web pages for this purpose which are hosted on Spektrum's servers ("customer web pages"). Spektrum shall merely provide the customer with memory space and corresponding technical applications for this purpose over the platform. As a basic principle, the memory space is limited to one (1) gigabyte per event and customer web page. If the customer requires additional memory space, he shall inform Spektrum of this. If possible, Spektrum can offer additional memory space and will propose an additional agreement to the customer where required.

3.2 Within the framework of the agreement, the customer shall first have the possibility of making and testing all preparations for his event which are necessary and feasible within the scope of the services free of charge, before the event and/or the corresponding customer web pages are activated or made accessible to participants ("publication"). Upon publication, the customer undertakes to pay remuneration to Spektrum for the provision of services in relation to the publication. In each case of publication, a publication agreement with regard to the respective event shall come about between the customer and Spektrum, to which these GTCs shall also apply ("publication agreement").

3.3 Irrespective of the provision in figure 10.2, Spektrum reserves the right to delete customer web pages which are not put online by way of publication within a year of being created. Spektrum will inform the customer of such a deletion by e-mail in good time.

3.4 Irrespective of the provision in figure 10.2, events which are put online by way of publication must be held within two years of publication. Spektrum reserves the right to delete the corresponding customer web page thereafter. Spektrum will inform the customer of such a deletion by e-mail in good time.

3.5 When individual participants register with the customer on the customer web pages, the customer himself concludes an agreement with participants concerning participation in the event or the use of the customer web pages ("participant agreement"). No contractual obligations of any kind whatsoever shall result for Spektrum with regard to the customer or participants as a result of participant agreements entered into between the customer and participant. The customer shall be entirely responsible for legal relationships entered into between participants and the customer, including the effective emergence of such legal relationships. In particular, this shall also apply to all disputes on account of substandard performance, delay and other breaches of duty and to claims resulting from these disputes. The reciprocal duties of the parties to a participant agreement are essentially based on the relevant applicable statutory provisions, unless agreed otherwise in the participant agreement (e.g. by application of the customer's general terms and conditions).

3.6 In particular, the customer himself shall be responsible for the billing of participant fees, for fulfilling any duties pursuant to the provisions of the German Civil Code (BGB), such as obligations in electronic business transactions (Section 312e BGB), in the case of distance contracts (Section 312b ff. BGB) and duties pursuant to the provisions of the price regulation, etc. The customer is also obliged to to issue participants with the statutory consumer protection information on his customer web pages and to inform them of their statutory right of withdrawal or return, insofar as such duties to inform and consumer rights are relevant. In this respect, the customer shall release Spektrum entirely from third-party claims. Figure 9 shall apply analogously to the obligation to release.

3.7 Any questions concerning online payment should be adressed to our service department (Phone +49 (0) 711 / 7252221). Online payment is a service liable to basic and transaction fees at the organizer's expense.

3.8 Spektrum shall not involve itself in the communication and exchange of information and content between the customer and participants or the organisation of events or customer web pages. The customer shall decide for himself which content is to be activated on the customer web pages. Spektrum accepts no responsibility for the correctness and completeness of the information, documents and other content circulated or published by participants or the customer via the services and shall not inspect these in any way in this respect. The same applies to the content of external websites linked to the platform. In this respect, the customer shall release Spektrum entirely from third-party claims. Figure 9 shall apply analogously to the obligation to release.

3.9 If participants provide abstracts to the customer, the customer shall have the possibility of commissioning Spektrum with providing digital identification ("DOI") for these abstracts as part of the Digital Object Identifier system and registering these abstracts in this system in return for payment. The customer is aware that the content of the abstracts identified by DOI can no longer be changed following registration and that the abstract's meta data (i.e. author information, title of the work, etc.) can be viewed by the public following DOI registration. The customer guarantees that he has been granted the rights required for DOI registration by all owners of any rights (of use) to the abstracts. In this respect, the customer shall release Spektrum entirely from third-party claims. Figure 9 shall apply analogously to the obligation to release.

3.10 Spektrum reserves the right to withdraw the provision of the services should it transpire that the event planned by the customer is not of a scientific nature. If the customer has already published the event and the payment for the provision of the services has fallen due, Spektrum's remuneration claim shall continue to exist; the customer is able to use the services for another scientific event instead. Paid fees shall not be reimbursed.

3.11 Spektrum reserves the right to alter the services at any time, unless this is unreasonable for the customer. Spektrum will inform the customer of changes by e-mail in good time. The changes shall be deemed to have been approved two weeks after the receipt of such communication, unless the customer objects by fax or post. This shall only be the case if the customer was made aware of the consequences of his silence in the notification of change. If the customer objects to the amendments, Spektrum shall be entitled to terminate on serious grounds.

4. Responsibility on the part of Spektrum

4.1 The customer is aware that Spektrum cannot guarantee uninterrupted availability of the platform or individual services, including the possibility of communication between the customer and participants over the platform. Spektrum will make every effort to offer the platform without unplanned interruptions. However, there may be temporary interruptions to the platform's availability or faults affecting individual services due to maintenance work, for security reasons or for reasons outside of Spektrum's control (e.g. due to power cuts or interruptions to the public communications network).

4.2 The customer is aware that Spektrum is able to terminate the contractual relationship with its users at any time. Such termination can result in a user who has registered with the customer as a participant no longer being able to use the platform following termination by Spektrum. If the customer has undertaken to provide certain services to the participant over the customer web pages, Spektrum shall accept no liability for claims brought by the participant against the customer which may arise from the fact that the customer is not able to provide the participant with services over the customer web pages following termination. Where reasonable, Spektrum will facilitate access to the corresponding customer web pages for participants who have registered for an event with the customer, even after termination, until the event has been held. Following extraordinary termination by Spektrum, the participant shall on no account be able to access customer web pages.

5. Duties on the part of the customer

5.1 As soon as the customer fills his customer web pages with content and makes them available to participants, he becomes a service provider within the meaning of the German Telemedia Act (TMG). He assures Spektrum that he will fulfil his duties arising from the TMG at all times while using the services, in particular and insofar as is relevant, with regard to the general duty to inform pursuant to Sections 5 and 6 of the TMG and the provisions concerning data protection contained in the TMG and the German Data Protection Act.

5.2 The customer will not upload any content via his account or on his customer web pages or provide it, make it accessible or have it made accessible by others on or to the platform by other means, or send messages to participants with content if this content breaches applicable laws in any way or conflicts with the rights of third parties. Accordingly, the following content is prohibited ("illegal content"):

Content and actions relevant in terms of criminal law, advertisements for anticonstitutional organisations or characteristics of such organisations, content which glorifies violence, racist content, pornographic content, content harmful to minors, sexist content, content relating to the drugs trade, the encouragement of drug use or its belittlement, the encouragement of criminal acts and gambling, libellous and slanderous content, etc;
Content which is impermissible under competition law, e.g. chain letters, snowball systems, multi-level marketing, etc. or content which, although it is not anticompetitive, disproportionately harasses other customers;
Content which violates the rights of third parties, such as copyrights, rights to benefits and industrial property rights such as trademarks, patents, utility patents and design patents, as well as other rights, such as rights to a name and personal rights;
Content which attempts to disrupt or damage the services on the platform, particularly by means of robots, spiders, spamming, DoS attacks, chain letters, junk mail, scripts, etc.

5.3 The customer shall bear the sole responsibility under press and competition law, as well as all other responsibility, for the content provided or placed on the platform and on the customer web pages and designated for publication by him or his participants.

5.4 The customer shall not acquire any rights to the data of participants who have registered on his customer web pages. The customer shall not be entitled to reclaim or copy such data, even after the legal relationship with Spektrum has been terminated. This data is the sole property of Spektrum.

5.5 The customer consents to and shall tolerate Spektrum placing advertisements on the platform, particularly on the customer web pages. Spektrum shall permit the customer to display advertisements on the customer web pages, but may revoke this entitlement at any time; in individual cases, Spektrum shall be entitled to demand that the customer waives the right to display advertisements on the customer web pages and immediately removes advertisements.

5.6 If the customer breaches obligations arising from figures 2, 7 and this figure (5), Spektrum reserves the right take suitable measures (e.g. by deleting content, the account or access authorisation; blocking access to individual features, shutting down the customer web pages, etc.) to prevent future breaches. If Spektrum has already incurred expenses or loss due to the customer's actions in contravention of the agreement, the customer will be invoiced for these.

6. Remuneration and invoicing

6.1 The use of the services becomes subject to a charge as soon as an event is published and a publication agreement pursuant to figure 3.2 is thereby concluded. The fees for using the services can be viewed on the platform. As soon as the customer starts creating an event or customer web pages, he will receive e-mail communication from Spektrum informing him of the currently applicable prices for publication. The prices listed are binding for the respective event for the duration of one year from the transmission of the communication. Thereafter, the respective currently applicable prices displayed on the platform shall apply. The fees for the publication of an event will be invoiced immediately after publication.

6.2 If the customer has commissioned Spektrum to register abstracts for DOIs, the fees displayed on the platform at the time of commissioning shall apply to this service. DOIs can only be purchased in the packages displayed on the platform. In each case, the individual DOI packages will be assigned to a specific event, i.e. the DOIs which they contain can only be used for abstracts which belong to the specific event. It is not possible to transfer unused DOIs to abstracts for another event. There shall be no partial reimbursement of the fee for unused DOIs. DOI registration will only take place once the customer has paid the fee for the respective DOI package and the corresponding amount has been credited to an account of Spektrum.

6.3 Unless provided otherwise in this agreement, all payments to Spektrum will become due when an invoice is issued and are to be settled by one of the methods of payment specified on the invoice. Invoices will be sent to the customer by post or by e-mail in a format capable of being saved and printed.

6.4 In the event of delayed payment, Spektrum reserves the right to take the event published by the customer offline until payment has been received.

7. Rights of use

7.1 The customer shall grant Spektrum a non-exclusive right to save all content uploaded or entered as text (particularly images and text, etc.) in electronic form on the platform and to make it accessible to other participants and/or the general public. The right of use is unrestricted by time or place. If the customer web page is deemed to be a database for the purposes of copyright law and the customer can be qualified as the producer of a database, the customer shall also grant Spektrum all rights of use to the database required for the provision of the services.

7.2 Spektrum shall be entitled to make the content more user-friendly. This also includes transmission in other data formats. Furthermore, Spektrum will be granted the right to format the content in terms of its visual appearance, composition, layout, scaling, etc. and to present it on the platform in the immediate vicinity of advertisements.

7.3 Concerning all above-mentioned content, within the bounds of legal possibility the customer waives the right to exercise any authorisations connected to moral rights, particularly with regard to adverse effects due to changes made to his content by the provider or a third party or his content being displayed on the platform in the immediate vicinity of advertisements.

7.4 The customer confirms that he himself is the owner of the property rights associated with all content provided by him or his participants or that he is entitled to use and transfer rights of use (in particular, rights to publish, copy and circulate), as required by this agreement and necessary for the use of this content on the platform, so that no third-party rights are breached. Figure 9 shall apply in particular in the event that these duties are breached.

7.5 The rights granted by the customer in this figure (7) are irrevocable and shall continue to exist, regardless of any termination of this agreement.

8. Limitation of liability

8.1 Spektrum shall be liable to the customer in the event of intent and gross negligence, as well as in the case of breach of fundamental contractual obligations in a manner which endangers the purpose of the agreement (cardinal obligation). Subject to figure 8.3, all further liability for damages on whatever legal grounds is excluded.

8.2 If Spektrum is liable for the breach of cardinal obligations, in the absence of intent or gross negligence Spektrum's liability shall be limited to the extent of damage which could have been anticipated at the time of concluding the contract, in accordance with the circumstances known at that time.

8.3 The limitations of liability shall not apply to any claims for damages for injury to life, body or health or to liability under the German Product Liability Act.

9. Release

9.1 The customer shall release Spektrum from claims based on the breach of third-party rights by the customer or his participants upon first request. The customer is obliged to release Spektrum from claims asserted by third parties, including the participant, resulting from illegal actions or actions otherwise in contravention of the agreement carried out by the customer or his participants, particularly with regard to content which breaches third-party rights and which the customer or his participants have placed or made available on the customer web pages or the platform. The same shall apply to third-party claims on grounds of other illegal content placed or made accessible on the customer web pages by the customer or his participants (cf. figure 6) or any other breach of the duties set out in this agreement. The preceding obligation to release shall apply regardless of whether and when the customer has become aware of the statutory violations.

9.2 If the customer is obliged to release Spektrum from claims, he shall also bear all reasonable costs of prosecution (i.e. including all court and reasonable lawyer fees) incurred by Spektrum in this connection. Any further damage compensation claims shall remain unaffected.

10. Duration and termination

10.1 The duration of the agreement in relation to the account and the use of the services outside of the respective publication agreements is unlimited. Publication agreements are restricted in terms of time until the respective event has been held. Irrespective of figures 3.3 and 3.4, Spektrum reserves the right to remove and delete all content and organiser web pages for an event which has been held three months after the end of the event.

10.2 The parties can terminate the agreement with immediate effect at any time. To the extent that publication agreements have not yet come to an end, the provisions of these GTCs shall continue to exist, however, as required by the publication agreement already in existence. This shall only apply for the duration of one year following termination. If the event has still not been held at the end of this period, the customer shall be reimbursed for fees paid for the publication. All claims of the customer resulting from the premature termination of the publication agreement shall thereby be satisfied in full.

10.3 The parties' right to extraordinary termination of the agreement and the respective publication agreements on serious grounds shall remain unaffected. Serious grounds shall be deemed to exist if the customer breaches applicable law or fundamental contractual obligations set out in this agreement through actions carried out on the platform or if his actions cause damage to the platform's reputation or there is a risk of such damage. If grounds for termination of the entire contractual relationship are present, the termination shall also include the respective publication agreements.

11. Data protection

11.1 Spektrum guarantees that it will adhere to the applicable German data protection provisions when processing the personal data of the customer's employees. In particular, Spektrum will not pass on the customer's data saved in electronic form to outsiders during the term of use without the customer's consent, unless Spektrum is obliged to disclose data to third parties, particularly government agencies, in certain cases, or the customer has agreed to this.

11.2 The customer is obliged to treat all personal data to which he has access over the platform as strictly confidential, to use it solely for the purposes of organising the event, not to save it, to delete all saved data after the event has been held, not to make it accessible to third parties and, for the rest, to observe all applicable provisions concerning data protection, including the German Data Protection Act (BDSG) and the German Telemedia Act (TMG). The customer will accordingly oblige his employees to adhere to the requirements of data protection law.

12. Other provisions

12.1 The law of the Federal Republic of Germany shall apply exclusively, to the exclusion of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). If permitted by law, the exclusive place of jurisdiction shall be Heidelberg, Germany.

12.2 Amendments and additions to this agreement, including this written form requirement, must be made in writing. Spektrum's rights to amend the agreement as set out above shall remain unaffected by this.

12.3 The invalidity of individual provisions of this agreement shall not affect the validity of the the remaining provisions of this agreement.

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