Legal

Terms and Conditions

THIS governs the UMIP relationship with you in relation to the Knowledge Vine. For the purposes of these terms and conditions, We/Our/Us means The University of Manchester Intellectual Property and The Knowledge Vine means a community of individual business communities that are individually accessible to help you find the knowledge, skills, expertise, contacts, experience or information to allow you to be more effective in your profession. We may update these terms and conditions from time to time with no notification to you on relevant page on the web site www.theknowledgevine.net. Using or accessing the Knowledge Vine indicates your acceptance of these terms and conditions. If you do not accept these terms and conditions, you may not access or use the Knowledge Vine.

 

About Us

We are The University of Manchester Intellectual Property (UMIP) a division of The University of Manchester I³ Limited, a company registered in England and Wales. Our registered office is at The Core Technology Facility, 46 Grafton Street, Manchester, M13 9NT and our registered number is 05177409. You can contact us by emailing us at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or by telephone on +44 (0) 161 603 7751.

 

The service

The Knowledge Vine predominantly uses an email based messaging system that is used in a specific way, with some clear rules of use.

 

Your use of this service

We have made the Knowledge Vine available to you for your use. We may modify, withdraw or deny access to the Knowledge Vine at any time and without prior notice.

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your username and password, and are fully responsible for the activities that occur using your username and password, either with or without your knowledge.

It is your responsibility to notify either your Knowledge Vine Group Administrator (s), or the General Administrator for the system if you have your username/password stolen or believe security of this information has been breached, or that you know that there has been unauthorised use of your username or password. We will not be liable to you for any loss or damage arising from a failure to comply with this section.

 

Eligibility

Users have to be over 18. Users may have more than one account if they wish.

Users are prohibited from trading, selling, loaning or transferring their Knowledge Vine access or account to any other third party. Users are also prohibited from charging fees to third parties for directly accessing the Knowledge Vine networks on behalf of others. Any such actions could result in you being banned from the system.

Users who have been banned or removed are prohibited from re-applying to join under another identity or login username.

 

Our liability to you

These terms and conditions do not exclude Our liability (if any) to you for:

personal injury or death resulting from Our negligence;

fraud; or any matter which it would be illegal for Us to exclude or to attempt to exclude.

 

Our liability

We do not guarantee that the Knowledge Vine will be available all the time or at any specific time. We reserve the right to withdraw or modify the Knowledge Vine at any time. We will not be liable to your or any third party for any damage or loss as a result of withdrawal of the service, or termination of your account. We reserve the right to terminate an account, entirely at our discretion, and We are not obligated to give you a reason.

We are only liable to you for losses which you suffer as a result of a breach of these terms and conditions by Us. We are not responsible to you for any losses which you may incur which were not a foreseeable consequence of Us breaching these terms and conditions, for example if you and We could not have contemplated those losses before or when you access the Knowledge Vine . Our liability to you shall not in any circumstances include any business losses that you may incur, including but not limited to lost data, lost profits or business interruption.

 

Information provided as part of the Knowledge Vine

Any information provided by any party as part of the Knowledge Vine is given for general information and interest purposes only. We cannot be responsible for any inaccuracies in the information. As a result, you should not rely on this information and We recommend that you take further advice or seek further guidance before investing or taking any commercial decisions in relation to any information provided as part of the Knowledge Vine or taking any action based on the information provided as part of the Knowledge Vine. Our liability to you as explained above remains unaffected by this.

 

Contracting online

Nothing relating to the Knowledge Vine is intended to be nor should be construed as an offer to enter into a contractual relationship with you or anyone else, except for these terms and conditions which govern the relationship between Us in relation to your use of the Knowledge Vine .

If you make a contract with a third party who is named or referred to as part of the Knowledge Vine , it is your responsibility to ensure that you are comfortable with the terms of that contract and to take legal advice if necessary.

 

Conduct of users

As a user you agree, not to do the following:

1) Post, email or transmit to any group any form of advertising, or offers of products or services

2) Use the Knowledge Vine system to gather email addresses for the purposes of sending commercial promotional mailings, spam, or other direct marketing purposes

3) Post, upload or transmit any emails that contain software viruses, Trojans, or spyware, or any other malicious computer software code

4) Harrass or stalk other users

5) Manipulate email identifiers or headers in order to disguise the origin of your communication or your identity, nor to impersonate anyone or any organisation, or use any pseudonym

6) Post content on the Knowledge Vine web site that is in incorrect locations

7) Make any attempt to interfere with or disrupt Knowledge Vine servers

8) Make postings or reply to postings with information that infringes upon patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copy rights or other proprietary intellectual property rights

9) Post any information or reply to postings with information to which you do not have the right to disclose

10) Use the Knowledge Vine for any illegal activity, including but not limited to conspiring to violate any law.

11) Post any questions or reply to postings with any content that is obscene, unlawful, abusive, discriminatory, or in any other way objectionable

 

Recognition

If any organisations or collective of organisations wish to adopt or adapt this networking model for their own purposes outside the Knowledge Vine as described here, then they must give a statement of recognition on all public communications that the concept is based on the Knowledge Vine networking system conceived by UMIP (The University of Manchester Intellectual Property Ltd), observing that any associated intellectual property such as copyright or Knowledge Vine trade marks belong to UMIP.

 

Governing Law and Jurisdiction

The formation, existence, construction, performance, validity and all aspects whatsoever of these terms and conditions or of any term of these terms and conditions will be governed by the law of England . The English courts will have non-exclusive jurisdiction to settle any disputes which may arise out of or in connection with these terms and conditions or use of the website.

You agree to comply with all applicable laws regarding the transmission of technical data as appropriate to the country in which you reside.

Fees

Information provided by you

As a user of the Knowledge Vine network you will provide information about yourself that may become visible to other users of the system. You may also from time to time contribute information into the network such as posted questions. By doing so you are granting Us and the users of the Knowledge Vine a royalty free, perpetual, irrevocable license to use this information. Furthermore, We reserve the right to excerpt, reformat, translate, or redistribute any network postings submitted by you.

Any information you provide in answers directly in response to questions is confidential and will not be used by Us other than for the purposes of quality monitoring of the usage of the system.

We will not be liable for any omissions or errors of content of any postings that you place on the network, or in any replies you give to questions posted by others, nor any issues of authenticity of any information provided by a user.

 

The web site service

You will not use any software or automated system for trawling the Knowledge Vine web site for any data. Framing of the Knowledge Vine web site into other web sites is strictly prohibited as is arrangement of Knowledge Vine data into any form of RSS feed. RSS feeds to and from the Knowledge Vine can be arranged by specific agreement.

You agree not to conduct any activity that unduly loads the web site, including sending SPAM to any of the administrators of the web site, or to the group email addresses for the site.

Communication with users

From time to time We will need to communicate with users on administration issues, or to communicate news of new Knowledge Vine services or services directly associated or integrated with The Knowledge Vine. These communications will either be sent from a Knowledge Vine domain name email address, or from an email address from UMIP. Users accept that they can be sent emails of this sort. We will not communicate, transfer or sell any user data to any third party.

Enforcement and monitoring

Although The Knowledge Vine monitors the activity of the system it is not obligated to do so. We are not liable for any abuse of the terms of conditions of the system or poor quality usage. If you are unhappy with the usage of the system in any way, please contact the administrator for the group concerned, or if more general, contact Us directly. We will strive to investigate complaints but We are not obligated to do so, nor are We obligated to respond to users with actions taken, nor are We obligated to resolve issues to the satisfaction of the individual user concerned.