IP Claim Service
Terms Of Use
THIS IS A LEGALLY
BINDING AGREEMENT BETWEEN TUCOWS, INC. (“REGISTRAR”) AND
YOU, THE OWNER OF A REGISTERED OR COMMON LAW TRADEMARK OR
SERVICE MARK (“OWNER”) OR THE DULY AUTHORIZED AGENT OF AN
OWNER (“AGENT”) (COLLECTIVELY, “YOU”). THESE TERMS OF USE
ARE THE COMPLETE AND EXCLUSIVE STATEMENT OF THE TERMS OF USE
REGARDING USE OF THE REGISTRAR’S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CLAIM
SERVICE (THE “SERVICE”).
BY SELECTING “I
AGREE,” BY USING THE SERVICE OR BY SIGNIFYING ACCEPTANCE IN
ANY OTHER WAY, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS OF USE.
IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH ALL OF THESE TERMS OF USE, YOU ARE
NOT AUTHORIZED TO USE THE SERVICE AND YOU MUST DISCONTINUE
ANY FURTHER USE.
- The Service. Registrar
provides the Service to holders of both registered and
common law trademarks or service marks (collectively
“Trademarks”). During the domain name application
process, applicants for a .biz domain name
(“Applicants”) will be notified of an Owner’s alleged
intellectual property rights in a Trademark if the
domain name contained in the domain name application is
an exact match of the Trademark identified in an IP
Claim (as defined below) submitted by Owner. You may
review frequently asked questions regarding the Service
by reviewing our FAQs.
- Registration, Password and
Security. You must provide accurate, complete and
current registration information and must update this
information promptly if it changes.
You represent and warrant that You are
at least eighteen (18) years of age or older and are
either an Owner or an Agent duly authorized to represent
an Owner(s) in connection with the Service and
submitting an IP Claim on behalf of an Owner(s). Agent
will indemnify and hold harmless Registrar and its
officers, directors, employees, agents, affiliates and
subcontractors for any claims brought by Owner or Third
Parties relating to the use of the Service.
- License to Use Data / Privacy.
By submitting an IP Claim, You hereby grant Registrar,
as well as any of its agents or subcontractors, a
limited, royalty-free, non-exclusive worldwide license
to use all of the data contained in the IP Claim solely
for the purposes of implementing the Service, processing
Your IP Claim, notifying Applicants of Your IP Claim,
and for notifying You of changes to the Service, for
archival purposes.
- The IP Claim Process. In order
to submit a claim with respect to a Trademark or
Trademarks (“IP Claim”) through the Service, You
must complete an IP Claim form for each Trademark. For
each IP Claim, You must submit complete contact
information, representative contact information and
notification details, and the details regarding the
Trademark. You may specify in the representative field
that an Agent may receive legal correspondence regarding
the IP Claim. Once You have submitted an IP Claim, you
will receive a confirmation email and a claim number.
You must retain the claim number for each IP Claim You
submit.
Registrar will accept IP Claims until
July 9, 2001, or such later date as it may determine in
its sole discretion (“Close of Phase I”) and no IP
Claims will be accepted after that date.
From the Close of Phase I until
September 25, 2001 (“Phase 2”), or such other later date
as Registrar may choose, in its sole discretion, the
domain name applications from ICANN-approved registrars
(“Applications”) will be compared with the database of
IP Claims processed through the Service (“IP Claim
Database”). For each exact match between an IP Claim in
the IP Claim Database and a domain name application, the
Registry Operator for .Biz (“Registry Operator”) will
notify the Applicant that a third party or third parties
have submitted an IP Claim for the exact Trademark. The
email notification to the Applicant will include, among
other things, the information provided by Owner in the
IP Claim, instructions on how to proceed with the
registration process, and that if selected during the
randomized name selection phase (“Name Selection
Phase”), the domain name will be placed on a temporary
thirty (30) day hold when the Registry goes “live.” The
Applicant will have the option to proceed with the
Application or cancel the Application. If the Applicant
does not respond to the email notification, or elects to
cancel the Application, the Applicant’s domain name
application will not be processed during the Name
Selection Phase. If the Applicant chooses to proceed
with the registration process and the name is selected
during the Name Selection Phase, that domain name
automatically will be placed on a thirty (30) day “hold
period” when the name is registered.
After Name Selection, the Owner will
be notified by Registry Operator if an Applicant has
successfully registered the domain name. The Owner will
then have the option of contacting the Applicant and
finding a solution or using the guidelines set forth by
a special dispute resolution process called the Start-up
Trademark Opposition Policy (“STOP”) (formerly referred
to as the Start-up Dispute Resolution Policy or “SUDRP”)
(“information available at
http://www.neulevel.com/countdown/stop.html, or the
Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Procedures
(“UDRP”) (information is available at
http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm).
You will not be notified if there are
no Applications that exactly match an IP Claim You
submitted in the IP Claim Database.
USE OF THE SERVICE DOES NOT
GUARANTEE THAT AN OWNER WILL BE AWARDED THE .BIZ
EXTENSION FOR ITS TRADEMARK. AN OWNER THAT WISHES TO
OBTAIN A .BIZ EXTENSION FOR ITS TRADEMARK MUST FILE A
DOMAIN NAME APPLICATION.
DOMAIN NAME APPLICANTS WILL ONLY BE
NOTIFIED OF APPLICATIONS THAT ARE EXACT MATCHES WITH A
TRADEMARK IDENTIFIED IN AN IP CLAIM FORM. REGISTRAR WILL
NOT VERIFY WHETHER A TRADEMARK CLAIMED ON AN IP CLAIM
FORM CORRESPONDS WITH AN ACTUAL, LEGAL OR VALID
TRADEMARK, NOR WILL REGISTRAR PROVIDE ANY LEGAL
OVERSIGHT OR ADJUDICATION FOR ANY DISPUTED INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY IMPLICATED BY THE SERVICE.
- Conduct. You may access and
use the Service for lawful purposes only and you are
solely responsible for the knowledge and adherence to
any and all laws, statutes, rules and regulations
pertaining to Your use of the Service. You agree that
You will not (i)use the Service to commit a criminal
offence or to encourage conduct that would constitute a
criminal offence or give rise to a civil liability, or
otherwise violate any local state, Federal or
international law or regulation; (ii)upload or otherwise
transmit any content that You do not have a right to
transmit under any law or contractual or fiduciary duty;
(iii)interfere or infringe with any trademark or
proprietary rights of any other party; (iv)interfere
with the ability of other users to access or use the
Service; (v)claim a relationship with or to speak for
any individual, business, association, institution or
other organization for which You are not authorized to
claim such a relationship; (vi)interfere with or disrupt
the Service or servers or networks connected to the
Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures,
policies or regulations of networks connected to the
Service; or (vii)reproduce, duplicate, copy, use,
distribute, sell, resell or otherwise exploit for any
commercial purposes any portion of the Service.
- Fees. As consideration for the
Service, You agree to pay Registrar, or its agents or
subcontractors, as the case may be, an IP Claim fee for
each IP Claim submitted through the Service by credit
card through its online payment system. Such fee shall
be due immediately and is non-refundable. Registrar, or
its agents or subcontractors, may take all remedies to
collect fees owed. Registrar, or its agents or
subcontractors may require you to submit and pay for
each IP Claim individually or it may allow you store up
a certain number of IP Claims before submitting them for
processing. Once you have stored that number of IP
Claims, you may not be able to store any additional IP
Claims and may need to submit them for processing and
pay the applicable fee before obtaining additional
storage space. No refunds are permitted.
- Agents. You agree that, if
Your agent (e.g., an attorney, employee, etc.) submits
an IP Claim on Your behalf, You are nonetheless bound as
a principal by all Terms of Use herein. Your continued
use of the Services shall ratify any unauthorized
actions of Your agent. By acting on Your behalf, Your
agent certifies that he or she is authorized to use the
Service on Your behalf, that he or she is authorized to
bind You to these Terms of Use and that he or she has
apprised You of these Terms of Use of this Agreement. In
addition, You are responsible for any errors made by
Your agent. Registrar will not refund fees paid by You
or Your agent on Your behalf for any reason, including,
but not limited to, in the event that Your agent fails
to comply with these Terms of Use, Your agent
incorrectly provides information in the IP Claim process
or if Your agent changes or otherwise modifies Your IP
Claim incorrectly.
- Copyright. You acknowledge
that the Service, any underlying technology used in
connection with the Service, and all software, material,
information, communications, text, graphics, links,
electronic art, animations, audio, video, photos, and
other data (collectively, the “Content”) available
within the Service are provided by Registrar or
third-party providers and are the copyrighted works of
Registrar and/or such third parties. Except as expressly
authorized by Registrar or such third parties in these
Terms of Use or as may be posted on the Service, You may
not copy, reproduce, publish, distribute, modify, create
derivative works of, rent, lease, sell, transfer,
display, transmit, compile or collect in a database, or
in any manner commercially exploit any part of the
Content or the Service, in whole or in part. You may not
store any significant portion of any Content or the
Service owned by, or licensed to Registrar in any form,
whether archival files, computer-readable files, or any
other medium. You also may not “mirror” any Content or
the Service on any other server.
Registrar encourages you to download
and print a reasonable number of copies of an IP Claim
for non-commercial, internal use
only; provided that (i)any permitted copies contain, in
unmodified form, any copyright or other proprietary
rights notices and an original source attribution to the
Service; and (ii)no modifications are made except as may
be expressly provided by Registrar.
- Links. Some links on the
Service lead to sites posted by independent site owners.
Because Registrar has no control over these sites, it
cannot be responsible for such sites’ accessibility via
the Internet and does not endorse products, services, or
information provided by such sites. As such, Registrar
shall not be responsible or liable, directly or
indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to
be caused by or in connection with, use or reliance on
any content, goods or services available on or through
any other site. Further, the inclusion of these links
does not imply that the other sites have given
permission for inclusion of these links, or that there
is any relationship between Registrar and the linked
sites.
- Disclaimer of Warranty, Limitation
of Liability. YOU AGREE THAT YOUR ACCESS TO AND USE
OF THE SERVICE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. NEITHER REGISTRAR
NOR ITS PARENTS, SUBSIDIARIES, SHAREHOLDERS, MEMBERS,
OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AFFILIATES, AGENTS OR
SUBCONTRACTORS WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE
UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE; NOR DO THEY MAKE ANY
WARRANTY AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE
USE OF THE SERVICE OR AS TO THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY,
OR CONTENT WITHIN THE SERVICE.
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS,
“AS AVAILABLE” BASIS WITHOUT REPRESENTATIONS OR
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSES AND
NON-INFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT WILL REGISTRAR NOR ITS
PARENTS, SUBSIDIARIES, SHAREHOLDERS, MEMBERS, OFFICERS,
DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AFFILIATES, AGENTS OR
SUBCONTRACTORS BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR
ANY INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGES), ARISING OUT YOUR USE OF OR INABILITY TO ACCESS
OR USE THE SERVICE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, LOSS
OF REVENUE OR ANTICIPATED PROFITS, LOSS OF GOODWILL,
LOST BUSINESS, LOST DATA, COMPUTER FAILURE OR
MALFUNCTION, OR ANY AND ALL OTHER DAMAGES OR LOSSES THAT
RESULT FROM MISTAKES, INACCURATELY ENTERED DATA,
UNAUTHORIZED USE, OMISSIONS, INTERRUPTIONS, ERRORS,
DEFECTS, DELAYS IN OPERATION, OR ANY FAILURE OF
PERFORMANCE, WHETHER OR NOT LIMITED TO ACTS OF GOD,
COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE, THEFT, DESTRUCTION OR
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO INSTITUTIONS RECORDS, PROGRAMS OR
SERVICES. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOREGOING LIMITATIONS OF
LIABILITY REPRESENT A REASONABLE ALLOCATION OF RISK.
IN NO EVENT, SHALL REGISTRAR BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ANY AMOUNT EXCEEDING THE AMOUNT OF FEES PAID
BY YOU FOR THE APPLICABLE IP CLAIM.
- Indemnification. You agree to
indemnify and hold harmless Registrar and its parents,
subsidiaries, shareholders, members, officers,
directors, employees, affiliates, agents and
subcontractors from any claim or demand, including
reasonable attorney’s fees made by any third party due
to or arising out of Your use of the Service, your
breach of these Terms of Use, any Content submitted to
the Service, or any disputes involving the intellectual
property rights of the Trademarks.
- Modifications to the Service.
Registrar reserves the right at any time and from time
to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or
permanently, the Service (or any part thereof) with or
without notice. You agree that Registrar will not be
liable to You or to any third party for any
modification, suspension, or discontinuation of the
Services.
- Termination. You may
discontinue Your participation in and access to the
Service at any time. These Terms of Use will continue to
apply to all past use of the Service by You, even if You
are no longer using the Service. You acknowledge and
agree that Registrar may terminate or block Your use of
all or part of the Service without prior notice for any
reason, including, without limitation, if Registrar
believes You have engaged in conduct prohibited by these
Terms of Use. You agree that upon termination or
discontinuance for any reason, may delete all
information related to You on the Service and may bar
Your access to and use of the Service.
- Governing Law. These Terms of
Use shall be governed by and construed in accordance
with the laws of the Province of Ontario, without regard
to its principles of conflicts of law.
- Changes to the Terms of Use.
Registrar reserves the right to modify the Terms of Use
at any time and from time to time. Any modifications
shall be effective upon the posting of the modified
Terms of Use at
http://ipclaims.neulevel.com/legal/conditions.php.You
agree to review these Terms of Use periodically so that
You are aware of any modifications. Your continued use
of the Service shall be deemed Your acceptance of the
modified Terms of Use.
- Severability. In the event
that any provision of these Terms of Use shall be
unenforceable or invalid under any applicable law or be
so held by applicable court decision, such
unenforceability or invalidity shall not render this
Agreement unenforceable or invalid as a whole, and, in
such event, such provision shall be changed and
interpreted so as to best accomplish the objectives of
such provision within the limits of applicable law or
applicable court decision.
- Third Party Beneficiary.
Registry Operator (“NeuLevel”) is an intended third
party beneficiary of these Term and Conditions with
rights to enforce these Terms of Use.You will cooperate
in good faith with NeuLevel or Registrar in
investigating instances of non-compliance with these
Terms of Use, if NeuLevel or Registrar believes in good
faith that you are not in compliance with these Terms of
Use.
- Subcontractors. In the course
of providing the IP Claim Service, Registrar may retain
independent contractors or assign or subcontract to or
otherwise have any third party perform any or all of the
IP Claim Service at any time, provided that Registrar
shall continue to remain responsible for full
performance of any such duties to the same extent as if
it had performed the IP Claim Service itself.
- Entire Agreement. These Terms
of Use completely and exclusively state the agreement of
the parties regarding the subject matter, and supersede
all prior agreements and understandings, whether written
or oral, with respect to the subject matter of these
Terms of Use.
- Modifications to your Account.
In order to change any of your account information
with Registrar, you must use the Account Identifier and
Password selected when you opened your account with
Registrar. You agree to safeguard your Account
Identifier and Password from any unauthorized use. In no
event shall Registrar be liable for the unauthorized use
or misuse of your Account Identifier or Password.
- Breach. You agree that failure
to abide by an provision of this Agreement, any
operating rule or policy or the Dispute Policy provided
by Registrar, may be considered by Registrar to be a
material breach and that Registrar may provide a written
notice, describing the breach, to you. If within thirty
(30) calendar days of the date of such notice, you fail
to provide evidence, which is reasonably satisfactory to
Registrar, that you have not breached your obligations
under the Agreement, then Registrar may delete the
registration or reservation of your domain name. Any
such breach by you shall not be deemed to be excused
simply because Registrar did not act earlier in response
to that, or any other breach by you.
- No Guarantee. You acknowledge
that reservation of your IP Claim name does not confer
immunity from objection to either the registration,
reservation, or use of the domain name.
- Right of Refusal. Registrar,
in its sole discretion, reserves the right to refuse to
register or reserve your IP Claim name or register you
for other services. You agree that Registrar shall not
be liable to you for loss or damages that may result
from its refusal to register, reserve or delete your IP
Claim. Registrar reserves the right to delete or
transfer your IP Claim within a thirty (30) day period
following receipt of the application if it believes the
IP Claim has been made possible by a mistake, made
either by Registrar or by a third party.
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