Terms of Use and Privacy Statement
Credits and Copyright Notice
This site was created for Byers IP Law and Consulting (“BIP”).
This entire site is copyright protected ©2010 by BIP. All rights are reserved. In addition, certain parts of this site may also be protected by copyrights belonging to other parties.
BYERS IP LAW AND CONSULTING
Website Terms of Use
(Updated October 2010)
Welcome, and thank you for visiting ByersIPLaw.com which is owned and operated by Byers IP Law and Consulting (“BIP” or “we”).
Please read these Terms of Use and Privacy Statement (collectively, the “Terms”) carefully before using this Site. Using this Site indicates that you accept these Terms. BIP provides the BIP Site to you subject to the following Terms, which may be updated by us from time to time without any notice to you. Any changes are effective upon posting, and you are responsible for regularly reviewing these Terms. Your continued use after a change has been posted constitutes your acceptance of those changes.
If you do not agree to these Terms, your sole remedy is to discontinue use of the BIP Site.
1. Terms of Use
a. Legal Disclaimers:
1. No Legal Advice: The materials on the BIP Site are general in nature and are intended only as background materials for informational purposes. They do not constitute legal advice. They may not apply to your specific situation or may be incomplete. Although we may update certain information on the BIP Site, some of the information may be outdated. You should not act or rely on any information on the BIP Site. You are not authorized to treat the BIP Site as a source of legal advice. Before acting or delaying action, you should first seek the advice of an attorney qualified in the applicable subject matter and jurisdiction.
2. No Tax Advice (Required Tax Disclosure—Circular 230): Any tax information presented on the BIP Site is not intended to constitute a complete analysis of all tax considerations. Internal Revenue Service regulations generally provide that, for the purpose of avoiding United States federal tax penalties, a taxpayer may rely only on formal written opinions meeting specific regulatory requirements. The information presented on the BIP Site does not meet those requirements. Accordingly, such information is not intended or written to be used, and a taxpayer cannot use it, for the purpose of avoiding United States federal or other tax penalties or for the purpose of promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any tax-related matters.
3. No Attorney-Client Relationship: Your access to or use of the BIP Site does not create an attorney-client relationship between you and BIP. If you are not a current client of BIP and you communicate with us through the Site, we are under no obligation to keep confidential your communication nor will the communication invoke the attorney client privilege. Thus, unless you have a pre-existing, documented attorney-client relationship with a BIP attorney, you should not communicate confidential information to BIP.
4. Sensitive Communications: Should you choose to contact BIP electronically, you should be aware that information transmitted electronically cannot be guaranteed to be securely transmitted. BIP assumes no responsibility for the loss of confidentiality for any information you transmit through the internet.
5. Advertising Notice: BIP does not seek to be retained by anyone who approaches BIP as a result of the BIP Site and who is from a state where the BIP Site fails to comply with all laws and ethical rules of that state. Under the New York State Lawyer’s Code of Professional Responsibility, the content of the BIP Site might contain advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each representation has unique facts and circumstances that may impact results.
6. Jurisdictional Issues: The attorneys of Byers IP Law and Consulting are only licensed to practice law in the State of California. As such, while many intellectual property matters may only involve federal issues (for example trademark prosecution), any matters involving the practice of law in other jurisdictions will likely require the association of other jurisdictionally licensed attorneys. Except as specifically stated, each BIP attorney is not certified (including as a specialist) by any professional or governmental authority.
b. Proprietary Rights
1. Our Intellectual Property Rights. The materials on the BIP Site, including without limitation any and all text, software, scripts, graphics, photos, sounds, music, videos, interactive features and the like and the trademarks, service marks and logos contained therein, are owned by or licensed to BIP, subject to copyright and other intellectual property rights under United States and foreign laws and international conventions.
2. Use of the BIP Site. For your personal, non-commercial and informational purposes, and subject to these Terms, you may (a) access and view the BIP Site and its materials, and (b) make a limited number of prints, downloads and copies of the documents made available on the BIP Site, provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices in print outs or downloads on all copies. Any other use (and in particular, any commercial use) of the BIP Site or its contents is not permitted. Except as expressly authorized by BIP, you agree not to modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute or create derivative works based on the Site in whole or in part. You are not permitted to use any automated means of compiling e-mail addresses from the BIP Site for the purpose of sending unsolicited commercial e-mails. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved.
3. Linking to the Site. You may hyperlink to the home page of the BIP Site, but you may not frame or mirror the BIP Site or use any meta tags or any other “hidden text” using BIP’s name or trademarks. You must remove any hyperlink to the BIP Site upon BIP’s request.
4. Permission Requests. Please contact BIP at info@byersiplaw.com if you wish to request permission to use any materials of the BIP Site in a manner not authorized above.
5. Trademarks. BIP, BYERS IP LAW, BYERS IP LAW AND CONSULTING, and other BIP logos, service marks and trademarks are trademarks of BIP (the “BIP Marks”). Without BIP's prior permission, you agree not to display or use in any manner, the BIP Marks.
c. Registration Obligations.
1. Registration. The BIP Site may allow you to register in order to personalize your viewing of content on the site and to receive certain publications from BIP. In registering, you agree to provide complete and accurate information about yourself. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your username and password and you accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your username and password.
2. Termination. BIP reserves the right to change the BIP Site, including its contents, and to block or terminate access to or use of the BIP Site, including through usernames and passwords, at any time for any reason and without notice.
d. Third Party Sites. Any links on the BIP Site to third party sites are provided solely as a convenience to you and are not intended to state or imply that BIP sponsors, or is affiliated or associated with, the linked sites. Your privacy and conditions of your use at those websites are governed by the privacy policy and terms of use at that website and not BIP’s policies and terms.
e. No Warranties. THE BIP SITE, INCLUDING THE INFORMATION PROVIDED THROUGH THE BIP SITE, IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR USE OR PURPOSE. BIP ASSUMES NO LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY ERRORS OR OMISSIONS IN, OR RELIANCE UPON, THE INFORMATION IN THIS WEBSITE. ANY MATERIALS DOWNLOADED OR OTHERWISE OBTAINED THROUGH THE BIP SITE IS DONE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION AND RISK. YOU WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM OR LOSS OF DATA THAT RESULTS FROM THE DOWNLOAD OR USE OF ANY SUCH MATERIAL.
f. Limitations of Liability. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL BIP BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR INJURY OF ANY KIND OR UNDER ANY LEGAL THEORY, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, THAT RESULT FROM THE USE OF, OR INABILITY TO USE THIS WEBSITE OR THE MATERIALS PROVIDED ON THIS WEBSITE. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW CERTAIN LIMITATIONS OR EXCLUSIONS OF LIABILITY IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES, SO THESE LIMITATIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
g. Indemnity. You agree to indemnify and hold BIP, and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, partners, and employees, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your use of the Site, your connection to the Site, your violation of the Terms, or your violation of any rights of another.
h. General. These Terms, including the Privacy Statement below, along with any other terms and policies posted on the BIP Site, constitute the entire agreement between you and BIP regarding your use of the BIP Site and supersedes any prior agreements between you and BIP regarding such use, other than any written agreement between you and BIP.
2. Privacy Statement
a. APPLICABILITY OF THIS PRIVACY STATEMENT
1. Scope. This Privacy Statement applies to information BIP collects from users of the BIP Site. It does not apply to information received by BIP from you in the course of an attorney-client relationship, or received or collected by BIP offline or through any other means.
2. Individual User Information. If you are a client of BIP, we protect the confidentiality of your information in accordance with the applicable professional standards of conduct. However, if you choose to submit personal information to BIP through the BIP Site (for example, to sign up to receive BIP publications), we will store and use that information in accordance with this Privacy Statement unless you notify us otherwise as described below.
3. Our Commitment to Children’s Privacy. The BIP Site is not directed to, nor intended for use by, minors. If BIP becomes aware that it received personal information of minors, it will delete that information.
4. Third Party Sites. This Privacy Statement also does not apply to information you submit to websites not controlled by BIP, even if linked to the BIP Site, including third party providers of webinar services offered to users of the BIP Site. You should read and understand the privacy policies applicable to such third party sites and service providers.
b. INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE USE IT. In general, you may use the BIP Site without providing any information that personally identifies you (“Personal Information”). However, as described in greater detail below, you may choose to provide Personal Information to us. In addition, we will store and use information about you, including information about where and when you browse our website (“Visitor Information”), to continually improve the quality of our business and our website, as further described below.
1. Personal Information. You may be asked to provide us with Personal Information, such as your name, address, telephone number, email address, employer’s name and your title. We use this information in order to provide you with the publications and information you requested and to respond to your comments and questions about our services and this site. We may also use your Personal Information to send you additional information that we believe may be of interest to you.
2. Visitor Information. When you use the BIP Site, we may collect certain information to help diagnose problems with our server, administer our site, gather broad demographic information and generate user statistics. The Visitor Information we collect includes your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your Internet host company (e.g., AOL), your browser software (e.g., Microsoft Internet Explorer), your software platform (e.g., Windows 2000), the duration of your visit to our site, and the domain (e.g., .COM, .NET, .JP) of the site from which you arrived at our site.
3. Storage of Information. Our Site may employs browser cookies to store users’ preferences and record session information. A cookie is a small data file that is stored by your browser on your hard drive. A cookie file can contain information such as a user ID that the Site uses to track the pages you've visited, but the only Personal Information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. We may use cookies to track user traffic patterns. We do this in order to determine the usefulness of the information we supply to you and other users and to see how effective our navigational structure is in helping users reach that information. We do not correlate this information with data about individual users, nor do we share this information or sell it to any third party. If you prefer not to receive cookies through the Site, you can set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies and refuse the cookie when your browser alerts you to its presence. You can also refuse all cookies by turning them off in your browser. However, doing so may hinder your ability to access, use or navigate portions of the Site.
c. WITH WHOM WE MAY SHARE YOUR INFORMATION
1. Personal Information. We will not share your Personal Information (including e-mail address) with any third party except (1) with your consent, (2) when we believe in good faith disclosure is required by law, or (3) to third parties who are providing services to BIP as needed to provide such services and subject to appropriate confidentiality obligations. We reserve the right to disclose information about you, including data on which pages you have visited, to third parties if we feel it is necessary to protect the security of our systems, Site, business, users or others.
2. Visitor Information. Visitor Information may be provided to third parties at BIP’s discretion so long as the information is not linked to your Personal Information.
3. Transfer of Practice. We may provide and transfer to third parties any or all information regarding the BIP Site, including your Personal Information and Visitor Information, in connection with the transfer of all or a portion of BIP’s practice, whether by merger, acquisition or otherwise.
d. GOVERNING LAW. The BIP Site is hosted within the United States. By providing any Personal Information to the Site, you consent to the collection, processing, transfer, and storage of such information in the United States and any other country where BIP or its service provider maintains offices, even if such country has a different level of privacy protection than the protection available under your local law. If you are a user accessing this Site from any region with regulations or laws governing personal data collection, use and disclosure, that differ from United States laws/regulations, please note that through your continued use of this Site, which is governed by U.S. Law, this Privacy Statement, and our Terms of Use, you are transferring Personal Information to the United States and you consent to that transfer.
e. YOUR CHOICES AND OPTING-OUT. The BIP Site provides current subscribers the opportunity to opt-out of receiving email from us at any time, to update your email subscription information and to review and request changes to your Personal Information that BIP has collected through the BIP Site. To do so, please click here or follow the instructions contained in any email sent from the BIP Site.
f. SECURITY MEASURES. We use commercially reasonable security measures designed to protect against unauthorized access to Personal Information under our control, including physical, electronic and procedural safeguards. However, please be aware that, despite these efforts, data transmission over the Internet is inherently insecure and we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted or provided through the BIP Site. Once we received your transmission, we use appropriate efforts to ensure its security on our systems, but we do not accept liability for unintentional disclosure.
g. CHANGES. We may change this Privacy Statement from time to time, and such changes will be effective upon posting the amended terms to the BIP Site. The date of update is specified at the beginning of these Terms.
Severability. If any provision of these Terms, including the Privacy Statement, is found to be void or unenforceable, such provision shall be severed and all other provisions shall remain in force.
How to Contact Us. If you have any questions about these Terms, including the Privacy Statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this site, please contact us via e-mail at: info@ByersIPLaw.com.