Effective Date: April 28, 2010
CaringBridge Inc. (“CaringBridge”) operates the Recommend CaringBridge Web site, www.RecommendCaringBridge.org (this “Site”), as a way to promote CaringBridge.org, an online service that provides free websites to help families and friends stay connected during serious health event, care and recovery.
Please take a few minutes to review these Terms of Use before using this Site. By using this Site you are agreeing to comply with and be bound by these Terms of Use. If you do not agree to these Terms of Use, you may not access or use this Site.
Our Privacy Policy describes the personal information we collect when you and others use this Site, for example, to sign up for a Welcome Kit or to recommend CaringBridge.org. It also describes how we use the personal information you share with us and some of the steps we take to protect your privacy. Our Privacy Policy is part of these Terms of Use. By agreeing to these Terms of Use, you are also consenting to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Please review our Privacy Policy before using this Site.
We are continually improving and adding to the features and functionality of this Site and the services we offer through this Site. As a result of these changes (or changes in the law), we may need to update or revise these Terms of Use. Accordingly, we reserve the right to update or modify these Terms of Use at any time, without prior notice, by posting the revised version of these Terms of Use behind the link marked “Terms of Use” at the bottom of each page of this Site. Your continued use of this Site after we have posted the revised Terms of Use constitutes your agreement to be bound by the revised Terms of Use.
For your convenience, whenever these Terms of Use are changed, we will alert you by posting a notice on our home page for sixty days. We will also update the “effective date” at the top of this page. If more than sixty days goes by between your visits to this Site, be sure you check the effective date to see if these Terms of Use have been revised since your last visit.
You may access the current version of these Terms of Use at any time by clicking the link marked “Terms of Use” at the bottom of each page of this Site.
When you sign up to use specific functionality or a special feature of this Site, you may be asked to agree to special terms governing your use of that functionality or special feature. In such cases, you will be asked to expressly consent to the special terms, for example, by checking a box or clicking on a button marked "I agree." This type of agreement is known as a “click–through” agreement. If any of the terms of the click–through agreement are different than the terms of these Terms of Use, the terms of the click–through agreement shall supplement or amend these Terms of Use, but only with respect to the matters governed by the click–through agreement.
You may be asked to submit personal information to this Site. For example, you must submit personal information to receive a Welcome Kit. You must also submit personal information in submitting a story about your experience with CaringBridge.org. If you submit personal information to CaringBridge through this Site, the information you submit must be true, accurate, current, and complete.
What are Recommender Stories? In these Terms of Use, we refer to the text, photographs, images, illustrations, graphics, sound recordings, video and audio–video clips, links, and other materials that you submit on or through this Site related to your experience with CaringBridge.org as "Recommender Stories."
Restrictions on Recommender Stories. You may not submit any Recommender Story on or through this Site that
Special Restrictions for Healthcare Providers. The privacy and security regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) and state health records laws impose obligations on healthcare providers and others to protect patient privacy. If you or the entity for which you work are subject to HIPAA or similar state laws, you must abide by their requirements in submitting Recommender Stories. Thus, although we encourage you to submit Recommender Stories about your own experience with CaringBridge, you must not submit Recommender Stories that contain details about a particular patient or that patient’s experience with CaringBridge.org, unless that patient or his/her authorized representative has consented to the disclosure of the patient’s personal information in a written authorization that meets applicable legal requirements. This is true even if you submit a Recommender Story that does not refer to a patient by name, as details about his/her medical condition, length of hospital stay, etc., may render the patient identifiable.
Responsibility for Recommender Stories. By posting Recommender Stories on this Site, you represent and warrant that (1) you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the Recommender Stories you post; (2) the Recommender Stories you post are accurate, (3) if your Recommender Stories include information that identifies or could be used to identify a patient, you have obtained all legally required authorizations to disclose such information; and (4) you are at least eighteen years old and you have read and understood—and your Recommender Story fully complies with—these Terms of Use and applicable laws and will not cause injury to any person or entity.
You are legally responsible for the content of Recommender Stories you submit on or through this Site. If any part of your Recommender Stories is not your original work, it is your responsibility to obtain permission from the copyright owner before you submit your Recommender Stories.
Failure to comply with these Terms of Use may expose you to liability to CaringBridge and liability to individuals or legal entities whose copyrights or other rights have been violated.
Ownership of Recommender Stories. If a Recommender Story is your original work, then you own the copyright in that work and you do not forfeit that ownership interest by submitting the Recommender Story on or through this Site.
As described in our Privacy Policy, we may wish to post certain Recommender Stories on this Site. Before doing so, we will obtain your written consent in an agreement that provides to CaringBridge a license to use that story.
Ownership of This Site. This Site, including all of the software and code comprising or used to operate this Site and all of the text, photographs, images, illustrations, graphics, sound recordings, video and audio-video clips, and other materials available on this Site (collectively, “Content”), is owned by CaringBridge or by third parties who have licensed their rights to CaringBridge. No right, title or interest in our Site or any Content is transferred to you under these Terms of Use.
Copyrights. As between you and CaringBridge, CaringBridge and its licensors own and reserve the copyrights in this Site, including all of its Content.
Copyright License. We hereby grant you a limited license to access and use this Site and to download and print copies of any Content to which you have properly gained access, but only for your own personal, non-commercial use, and only if you do not remove, modify or obscure any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notices from such Content. The foregoing license is subject to our Terms of Use and does not include use of any data mining, robots or similar data gathering or extraction methods. This license is revocable at any time without notice and with or without cause. You agree not to use, display, reproduce, retransmit, modify, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish, broadcast, circulate, display or in any way exploit any Content, in whole or in part, by any means, except as expressly set forth in our Terms of Use, unless you first obtain our written permission.
Trademarks. All trade names, trademarks and service marks displayed on this Website are the registered or unregistered trademarks of CaringBridge, or its licensors, or other third parties (collectively, the “Trademarks”) and are protected by U.S. and international trademark laws and treaties. You may not use any Trademarks displayed on this Website without the prior express written permission of CaringBridge or the trademark owner.
DO NOT SUBMIT CONFIDENTIAL OR PROPRIETARY IDEAS TO US. DO NOT SUBMIT IDEAS TO US IF YOU EXPECT ANY FORM OF COMPENSATION. ANY IDEAS YOU CHOOSE TO SUBMIT TO US MAY BE USED BY US IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUT COMPENSATING YOU IN ANY WAY AND WITHOUT OBLIGATION OF CONFIDENTIALITY. PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU SUBMIT ANY IDEAS TO US.
As used in these Terms of Use, the term “Ideas” refers to any feedback, suggestions, inventions, conceptions or ideas you submit to CaringBridge. The term “Ideas” does not include any Recommender Stories you submit on or through this Site.
CaringBridge does not wish to receive confidential or proprietary Ideas. All Ideas submitted to CaringBridge through this Site shall be considered NON–CONFIDENTIAL and NON–PROPRIETARY.
By submitting Ideas to CaringBridge through this Site, you are granting to CaringBridge and its designees a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non–exclusive, fully–paid up and royalty free, fully assignable, transferable and sublicensable license to use, exploit, modify, improve, copy, distribute, display or perform publicly (including, in the case of sound recordings, to perform publicly in digital audio transmission), prepare derivative works of the Ideas you submit (and all rights therein), without restrictions of any kind, without any payment or other consideration of any kind, without notification to you or any third party, and without attribution, throughout the universe and in any form, format or medium now or hereafter known, and to authorize others to do the same. This license includes the right to reduce to practice, make, have made, use, import, export, sell, and offer to sell products and services incorporating, embodying, or using the Ideas (including, to the extent reasonably necessary, any ideas underlying the Ideas) and to authorize others to do the same.
You may not use this Site
In General. If you would like us to remove any Content from this Site for any reason, please notify us at RCcontentadmin@caringbridge.org. While we do not have any obligation to remove Content merely because of a removal request, CaringBridge will review all such requests and will remove Content that we determine should be removed, in our sole discretion and in accordance with our Terms of Use (including our Privacy Policy) and applicable law. If you are requesting removal of Content because of a violation of your copyrights, please follow the procedure described in the “Violation of Copyrights/Copyright Agent” paragraph below.
Violation of Copyrights/Copyright Agent. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (the “DMCA”) provides recourse for copyright owners who believe that material appearing on the Internet infringes their rights under U.S. copyright law. If you are the copyright owner (or are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner), please notify our Copyright Agent immediately of any copyright infringement. As soon as we receive your notice of claimed infringement, in the form described below, we will promptly remove or disable access to materials that are claimed to be infringing (or the subject of infringing activity). Your notice must be in writing and must include the following:
Your notice must be signed (physically or electronically) and must be addressed as follows:
Sona Mehring, Executive Director
CaringBridge
1715 Yankee Doodle Road, Suite 301
Eagan, MN 55121
Phone: (651) 452-7940
E-mail: RCcontentadmin@caringbridge.org
Any notification by a copyright owner or a person authorized to act on its behalf that fails to comply with requirements of the DMCA shall not be considered sufficient notice and shall not be deemed to confer upon CaringBridge actual knowledge of facts or circumstances from which infringing material or acts are evident.
CaringBridge reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, this Site (or any part thereof) with or without notice. CaringBridge shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of this Site.
This Site may provide links to other Web sites operated by third parties. Because we have no control over third–party Web sites, we are not responsible for the availability of those Web sites and do not endorse and are not responsible or liable for any content, advertising, services, products, or other materials on or available from such Web sites. CaringBridge 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 the use of or reliance on any content, advertising, services, products, or other materials on or available from such Web sites. These Terms of Use do not apply to your use of third-party Web sites; your use of such Web sites is subject to the terms and policies of the owner of such Web sites.
CARINGBRIDGE MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER WITH RESPECT TO THIS SITE, ANY CONTENT ON THIS SITE, OR ANY PRODUCT OR SERVICE PROMOTED THROUGH THIS SITE. THIS SITE AND ALL OF ITS CONTENT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ON AN "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, CARINGBRIDGE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARISING BY STATUTE, CUSTOM OR COURSE OF DEALING, COURSE OF PERFORMANCE OR IN ANY OTHER WAY, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF TITLE, NON–INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. WITHOUT LIMITING THE GENERALITY OF THE FOREGOING, CARINGBRIDGE DOES NOT MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE ACCURACY, CORRECTNESS, RELIABILITY, COMPLETENESS OR USEFULNESS OF ANY CONTENT APPEARING ON THIS SITE. CARINGBRIDGE DOES NOT ENDORSE ANY OPINION, ADVICE, COMMENT OR STATEMENT MADE ON THIS SITE BY USERS, AND STORIES ABOUT OTHERS' EXPERIENCES WITH CARINGBRIDGE.ORG DO NOT IN ANY WAY REFLECT THE OPINION, ADVICE OR STATEMENT OF CARINGBRIDGE.
NOTHING IN THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS SHALL AFFECT ANY STATUTORY RIGHTS TO WHICH YOU MAY BE ENTITLED AS A CONSUMER TO THE EXTENT YOUR ABILITY TO ALTER OR WAIVE SUCH RIGHTS BY CONTRACT IS LIMITED BY APPLICABLE LAW.
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, SHALL CARINGBRIDGE, OR ITS SPONSORS, LICENSORS, OR SERVICE PROVIDERS, OR ANY OF ITS OR THEIR RESPECTIVE SHAREHOLDERS, DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES OR AGENTS (COLLECTIVELY, THE “RELEASED PARTIES”), BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY CLAIMING THROUGH YOU FOR ANY LOSSES OR DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THIS SITE, ITS CONTENT, ANY PRODUCTS OR SERVICES MADE AVAILABLE THROUGH THIS SITE, OR YOUR USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THIS SITE, INCLUDING ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE DUE TO VIRUSES THAT MAY AFFECT YOUR COMPUTER EQUIPMENT, SOFTWARE, DATA OR OTHER PROPERTY ON ACCOUNT OF YOUR USE OF THIS SITE OR YOUR DOWNLOADING OF ANY MATERIAL FROM THIS SITE.
THIS IS A COMPREHENSIVE LIMITATION OF LIABILITY THAT APPLIES TO ALL LOSSES AND DAMAGES OF ANY KIND (WHETHER DIRECT, INDIRECT, GENERAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL, EXEMPLARY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, LOSS OF DATA, INCOME OR PROFITS), WHETHER THE CLAIM IS BASED ON CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, EVEN IF AN AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE OF CARINGBRIDGE OR ANOTHER RELEASED PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF OR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, AND WITHOUT REGARD TO THE SUCCESS OR EFFECTIVENESS OF OTHER REMEDIES.
IF ANY PART OF THIS LIMITATION OF LIABILITY IS FOUND TO BE INVALID, ILLEGAL OR UNENFORCEABLE FOR ANY REASON, THEN THE AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF CARINGBRIDGE, ITS SPONSORS, LICENSORS, AND SERVICE PROVIDERS, AND ITS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE SHAREHOLDERS, DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES AND AGENTS, UNDER SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES TO YOU OR ANY PERSON OR ENTITY CLAIMING THROUGH YOU FOR LIABILITIES THAT OTHERWISE WOULD HAVE BEEN LIMITED SHALL NOT EXCEED ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($100.00).
SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF LIABILITY FOR CERTAIN TYPES OF DAMAGES. ACCORDINGLY, SOME OF THE THESE LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
NOTHING IN THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS SHALL LIMIT OR EXCLUDE LIABILITY FOR LOSSES OR DAMAGES WHICH MAY NOT BE LAWFULLY EXCLUDED OR LIMITED BY APPLICABLE LAW.
This Site is not intended for children or minors under the age of thirteen years without the permission of a parent or guardian.
These Terms of Use and the relationship between you and CaringBridge shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the federal laws of the United States of America and the internal laws of the State of Minnesota, U.S.A., excluding conflict of laws provisions that would indicate the application of the laws of any other jurisdiction. ANY LEGAL ACTION OR PROCEEDING RELATING TO YOUR ACCESS TO, OR USE OF, THIS SITE OR THESE TERMS OF USE SHALL BE INSTITUTED ONLY IN A STATE OR FEDERAL COURT LOCATED IN HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA, U.S.A. YOU AND CARINGBRIDGE IRREVOCABLY AGREE TO SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF SUCH COURTS. You expressly waive any claim of improper venue and any claim that such courts are an inconvenient forum. If the courts of the country in which you reside should determine that the provisions of this paragraph are not enforceable, then you agree to submit to binding arbitration.
You agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to use of this Site or these Terms of Use must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred.
As used in these Terms of Use, the term "including" means “including, but not limited to.” Section headings are for reference purposes only and in no way define, limit, construe or describe the scope or extent of such section.
Our failure at any time to require performance of any provision of these Terms of Use or to exercise any right provided for herein shall not be deemed a waiver of such provision or such right. All waivers must be in writing and signed in ink by the party to be bound. Unless the written waiver contains an express statement to the contrary, no waiver of any breach of any provision of these Terms of Use or of any right provided for herein shall be construed as a waiver of any continuing or succeeding breach of such provision, a waiver of the provision itself, or a waiver of any right under these Terms of Use.
If any provision of these Terms of Use is held to be invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, such invalidity or unenforceability shall not affect the validity or enforceability of the remaining provisions, and the court shall substitute for such provision the valid and enforceable provision that most closely approximates the intent and economic effect of such provision. The remaining provisions of these Terms of Use shall remain in full force and effect.
These Terms of Use set forth the entire understanding and agreement between us and supercede all prior understandings and agreements between you and CaringBridge with respect to the subject matter hereof.
These Terms of Use may be amended only as set forth above in these Terms of Use.
If you have any questions regarding these Terms of Use, please contact us by email at RCcontentadmin@caringbridge.org CaringBridge, 1715 Yankee Doodle Road, Suite 301, Eagan, MN, U.S.A. 55121.
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