Last updated: 25th April 2013
1. PollenTree.com
These terms & conditions ("Terms") govern your use of the PollenTree website located at pollentree.com ("Site") and such other country specific PollenTree websites as may be introduced from time to time. Our Terms are drafted to protect the interests of our members and the PollenTree community as a whole.
2. Eligibility
You must be a minimum age of 25 to register on and use the Site. By registering and using the Site you warrant that you are 25 or older and understand your obligations under these Terms.
3. Registration
3.1 As part of the registration process you will need to create an account, including a username & password. It is your responsibility to ensure that the information you provide is accurate, not misleading and relates to you. You cannot create an account or username & password (including email address supplied by you) using the names and information of another person or using words that are the trademarks or the property of another party (including PollenTree), or vulgar, obscene or in any other way inappropriate. PollenTree reserves the right with or without notice to suspend or terminate any account in breach.
3.2 If for any reason you suspect that your username & password has been disclosed to or obtained by another party you should contact PollenTree immediately. Please note that PollenTree never contacts users requesting them to confirm their username & password or other details.
4. PollenTree Rules
4.1 PollenTree is intended to be a place where people can provide material, express views and comment, ("Content"). The views expressed by any user on the Site are their own and not those of PollenTree. As a user you agree not to do any of the following:
1. Abuse, harass, threaten, stalk, defame or in anyway seek to violate the rights of another user or third party.
2. Publish or seek to distribute any material or information that is unlawful, harmful, obscene, indecent, libellous, profane, defamatory, racist, or in any other way inappropriate or objectionable.
3. Use or harvest data provided by other users in a way that they would object to.
4. Use data provided by other users for purposes other than contacting them via PollenTree.
5. Contact other users in ways they may find inappropriate.
6. Engage in or encourage illegal activity or activity that violates the rights of other PollenTree users or third parties, whether individuals or organisations.
7. Supply or post Content calculated to deliberately mislead other users or third parties, including Content falsely made to appear from or be endorsed by PollenTree.
8. To pose as another user, third party or organisation or PollenTree employee for the purposes of obtaining user or third party information.
9. Provide inaccurate or false information about themselves on the Health Questionnaire or profile pages on PollenTree.
10. Use PollenTree to advertise that they are willing to enter into a surrogacy arrangement.
11. To transmit or transfer any viruses, trojans, worms or any other malicious programs or code intended to spy on, gain control over, disrupt, destroy or in any other way impair any computer hardware or software or any other equipment.
12. Attempt to gain access to PollenTree servers or other equipment in order to disrupt, impair, overload or otherwise hinder or compromise the safety, security or privacy of any of the services provided by or relied upon by PollenTree and PollenTree users.
13. Reframe, repurpose the Site or any Content on it or remove or obscure any notices or advertising provided by PollenTree on the Site.
14. Load or provide access to Content on the Site or link to other content from the Site, which infringes the trademark, patent, trade secret or any other proprietary right of a third party or infringes any intellectual property law.
15. Make commercial posts or comment spam or attempt to disguise such spam as Content.
16. Send junk or spam emails or posts promoting pyramid schemes, chain letters or any other activity that invites users and others to participate in wasting their time and/or money.
17. Use any robot, spider, scraper or other technical means to access the Site or Content on the Site.
4.2 If you breach these Terms by sending any unsolicited bulk email, (spam) or any other bulk communications to users (or to third parties where the email is purports to come from PollenTree) your actions will cause harm to PollenTree and the Site. Such harm is difficult to quantify and as such you agree to pay PollenTree the sum of £50/$100 (whichever is the greater) for each and every individual email or other communication sent to a user or third party.
4.3 Place email addresses, telephone numbers, skype, facebook, twitter or chat account details or any other third-party service or direct contact information on your profile page.
4.4 Place commercial messages, spam or off-topic unrelated content on your profile page, either by use of a photo or photos or text.
4.5 Use offensive or obscene words in any email address, PollenTree account name, PollenTree profile details or accounts with any other third-party service which are made accessible via PollenTree.
4.6 The above list is not intended to be exhaustive. PollenTree reserves the right to remove (with or without notice) Content and suspend or terminate (with or without notice) the account of any user who in the sole judgment of PollenTree is in breach of the rules or the spirit of the rules.
4.7 PollenTree reserves the right to take legal action against any user who has been banned by PollenTree and subsequently and repeatedly goes on to create further accounts on PollenTree in order to avoid their ban. In such cases PollenTree will seek damages to recover all associated costs, (including administrative and technical) incurred in finding and removing such accounts. Furthermore PollenTree will seek to recover all legal costs and court fees incurred in any legal action.
5. Proper Use of PollenTree
5.1 PollenTree enables registered users to contact each other and exchange information.
5.2 PollenTree does not procure gametes for users.
5.3 PollenTree does not advertise for surrogates or on behalf of surrogates.
5.4 PollenTree does not advertise payment for a donor, (only reasonable travel expenses can be charged by a donor).
5.5 All donations of sperm must be by artificial insemination only.
5.6 PollenTree does not guarantee the information provided by users or the identity of users.
5.7 PollenTree does not act as an adoption agency or facilitate adoptions.
6. Content Ownership
6.1 As a user you retain all ownership rights to Content provided by you, except for navigation and navigation headings and introductory text suggested or provided by you for any categories or articles. Navigation and navigation headings, article titles and introductory text are excluded because other users may subsequently add other categories or articles to any category. Therefore such navigation headings and text become part of the Site and pass under the ownership of PollenTree in order to preserve continuity and navigation on the Site.
6.2 By submitting, posting or displaying your Content on the Site you agree to grant a non-exclusive royalty-free licence to Pollentree to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and distribute such Content on the Site. This allows us to place your Content on the Site and let all users, whether registered or not to view your Content. It also allows PollenTree to compress or alter the size of any files you may post onto the Site to ensure that they can be readily displayed for other users.
6.3 As this is a non-exclusive licence you as an individual are free to provide your Content to other websites or other parties, without restriction.
6.4 This licence is also royalty-free, which means that the Content is provided free of charge to PollenTree, and PollenTree will not pay for the Content or account for any advertising revenue generated on the Site or on any specific Content pages.
6.5 This licence is also sub-licensable, which means that PollenTree's partners and affiliates can also use the Content.
6.6 This licence also applies worldwide because the Site can be accessed from anywhere in the world, at any time.
6.7 Also as part of the licence you warrant that any Content provided by you does not belong to a third party whose rights have been violated by the Content being posted on to the Site. Furthermore if any Content is owned by a third party you agree to pay all royalties owed to that party, without seeking any contribution from PollenTree.
7. Copyrighted Material
7.1 PollenTree does not condone or encourage in any way the posting of copyrighted or proprietary content or information by any users who are not the legal owners of such content.
7.2 Where notified of such breaches by the owner of such content PollenTree will remove the content from the Site as soon as practicable. But only where the true owner of such content can be reasonably ascertained.
7.3 If as the owner of such content you believe that your rights have been infringed you should use the report link on the Site to notify PollenTree and provide all the information requested on the report form and submit the form to PollenTree electronically and in writing. By submitting the form you warrant that you are, (or act as an agent) for the owner of the content and that you are (or represent) the owner of the content.
8. Content Monitoring
PollenTree users can freely add Content and navigation to the Site. PollenTree does not monitor or assume any responsibility for Content posted to the Site. If at any time PollenTree decides to monitor the Site on any occasion it does not assume responsibility for removing any Content or the conduct of any users.
9. Termination
9.1 PollenTree may terminate your user account and all Content and materials associated with it at any time where these Terms have been breached. Such termination can be with or without notice. As a user you can choose to terminate your account at any time and are free to remove any Content you have created on termination, except for navigation and navigation headings and introductory text.
9.2 Various clauses within these Terms are designed to survive and continue after termination, including (but not limited to) clauses 6, 12, 13, 20.
10. Access
PollenTree takes all reasonable steps to ensure that the Site is available and functioning fully at all times. However, PollenTree does not accept any responsibility for "down-time" or poor performance of PollenTree fileservers or where the Site or any PollenTree service is unavailable for any other reason, whether within or outside the direct control of PollenTree.
11. Disclaimer
11.1 PollenTree is not responsible for the accuracy of any Content on the Site nor any advertisements placed on the Site.
11.2 PollenTree is not responsible for any links to third party websites from the Site and the inclusion of any link does not imply an endorsement of a third party website by PollenTree.
12. Limitation of Liability
PollenTree shall not be liable for any indirect, consequential, exemplary, incidental, special or punitive damages, including loss of profit.
13. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold PollenTree, its subsidiaries, affiliates and partners and their respective officers and employees harmless from any loss, fines, fees, liability or claim made by any third party arising from your breach of these Terms whilst using the Site or any other PollenTree service.
14. Privacy
Use of the Site is also governed by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into this Agreement by this reference.
15. Trademarks & Copyright
15.1 The PollenTree name and logo are the registered trade marks of PollenTree Limited ("PollenTree") and must not be used in any form without the prior written approval of PollenTree.
15.2 The underlying code, (including but not limited to) html, css and php code, look, feel, design, features and layout of the Site are the property of PollenTree, and as such cannot be copied, cloned, scraped or adapted in any form without our express prior written permission.
16. Alteration of Terms
PollenTree is free to alter or revise these Terms at any time and without the requirement to notify users.
17. Acceptance
Your use of PollenTree and any service contained within constitutes acceptance of these Terms.
18. Entire Terms & Conditions
These Terms set out the entire agreement and understanding between you and PollenTree.
19. Severability
The foregoing paragraphs, sub-paragraphs and clauses of these Terms shall be read and construed independently of each other. Should any part of this agreement or its paragraphs, sub-paragraphs or clauses be found invalid it shall not affect the remaining paragraphs, sub-paragraphs and clauses.
20. Waiver
Failure by PollenTree to enforce any accrued rights under these Terms is not to be taken as or deemed to be a waiver of those rights unless Pollentree acknowledges the waiver in writing.
21. Jurisdiction
These Terms shall be interpreted, construed and enforced in accordance with English law and shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts.