- The Service. Registrarprovides
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.