Legal/Privacy

SoftSmiths’ Terms of Use

1. Introduction and Acceptance of Terms of Use. SoftSmiths, Inc. ("SoftSmiths") offers you a wide range of content, communication tools, forums, and information about its products and services ("Materials") via this web site. By using this web site, you are agreeing to accept and comply with the terms and conditions of use as stated below ("Terms of Use"), which SoftSmiths may update at any time without notice. You should visit this page periodically to review the then-current Terms of Use. Please note that SoftSmiths may, at its sole discretion, terminate your access to this web site at any time without notice.

2. Limited Right to Use. This web site is owned and operated by SoftSmiths. Unless otherwise specified, all Materials on this web site are the property of SoftSmiths and are protected by the copyright laws of the United States and, throughout the world by the applicable copyright laws. You may, view, print and/or download one copy of the Materials from this web site on any single computer solely for your personal, informational, non-commercial use, provided you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices. No Materials published by SoftSmiths on this web site, in whole or in part, may be copied, reproduced, modified, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from SoftSmiths. The use of any such Materials on any other web site or networked computer environment or for any other purpose is strictly prohibited and such unauthorized use may violate copyright, trademark and other similar laws.

3. Communications. Except for any disclosure by you for technical support purposes, or as specified in our Privacy Statement, all communications from you to this web site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You agree that any and all comments, information, feedback and ideas regarding our company, products or services that you communicate to SoftSmiths ("Feedback") will be deemed, at the time of communication to SoftSmiths, the property of SoftSmiths, and SoftSmiths shall be entitled to full rights of ownership, including without limitation, unrestricted right to use or disclose such Feedback in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed, and for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without compensation to you. You are solely responsible for the content of your communications and their legality under all laws and regulations. You agree not to use this web site to distribute, link to or solicit content that is defamatory, harassing, unlawful, libelous, harmful to minors, threatening, obscene, false, misleading, or infringing a third party intellectual or privacy rights.

4. Access to Password Protected or Secured Areas. Access to and use of password protected or secured areas of this web site, including without limitation, the Customer, Partners and Suppliers, is restricted to authorized users only. You will be asked to provide accurate and current information on all registration forms on this web site. You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of any username and password that you choose or is chosen by your web administrator on your behalf, to access this web site as well as any activity that occur under your username/password. You will not misuse or share your username or password, misrepresent your identity or your affiliation with an entity, impersonate any person or entity, or misstate the origin of any Materials you are exposed to through this web site. Furthermore, your access and use of the secured areas of this web site will be governed by additional Special Terms of Use and you are strongly advised to review such terms prior to accessing or using those secured areas. If you violate your obligations under this section, you may be subject to prosecution.

5. Monitoring. Although SoftSmiths is not obligated to do so, it will have the right to review your communications on this web site to determine whether you comply with our Terms of Use. SoftSmiths will not have any liability or responsibility for the content of any communications you post to this web site, or for any errors or violations of any laws or regulations by you. SoftSmiths will comply with any court order in disclosing the identity of any person posting communications on this web site. It is advisable that you review our Privacy Statement before posting any such communications. Please note that when you conduct transactions with other companies providing content via this web site, you will also be subject to their privacy policies.

6. Links to Other Sites. The linked sites are not under the control of SoftSmiths and SoftSmiths is not responsible for the content of any linked site or any link contained in a linked site. SoftSmiths reserves the right to terminate any link at any time. SoftSmiths may provide links from this web site to other sites as a convenience to you and in no way should this be interpreted as an endorsement of any company, content or products to which it links. If you decide to access any of the third party sites linked to this web site, you do this entirely at your own risk. SOFTSMITHS DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO ANY SUCH LINKED SITES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY TERMS AS TO THE ACCURACY, OWNERSHIP, VALIDITY OR LEGALITY OF ANY CONTENT OF A LINKED SITE.

7. Trademarks. The trademarks, service marks and logos of SoftSmiths and others used in this web site ("Trademarks") are the property of SoftSmiths and their respective owners. You have no right to use any such Trademarks, and nothing contained in this web site or the Terms of Use grants any right to use (by implication, waiver, estoppel or otherwise) any Trademarks without the prior written permission of SoftSmiths or the respective owner.

8. Indemnity. You agree to indemnify, defend and hold SoftSmiths harmless from and against any and all third party claims, liabilities, damages, losses or expenses (including reasonable attorney's fees and costs) arising out of, based on or in connection with your access and/or use of this web site.

9. Limitation of Liability. IN NO EVENT SHALL SOFTSMITHS OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, LOSS PROFITS OR REVENUES, COSTS OF REPLACEMENT GOODS, LOSS OR DAMAGE TO DATA ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THIS WEB SITE OR ANY LINKED SITE, DAMAGES RESULTING FROM USE OF OR RELIANCE ON THE INFORMATION OR MATERIALS PRESENTED ON THIS WEB SITE, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY EVEN IF SOFTSMITHS OR ITS SUPPLIERS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

10. Disclaimer. SoftSmiths assumes no responsibility for accuracy, correctness, timeliness, or content of the Materials provided on this web site. You should not assume that the Materials on this web site are continuously updated or otherwise contain current information. SoftSmiths is not responsible for supplying content or materials from the web site that have expired or have been removed. THE MATERIALS PROVIDED AT THIS WEB SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ANY WARRANTY (EXPRESS OR IMPLIED), CONDITION OR OTHER TERM OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTIBILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT OR TITLE IS HEREBY EXCLUDED.

11. Export Restrictions. The United States export control laws and regulations, including the Export Administration Regulations of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and other applicable laws and regulations apply to this web site which prohibit the export or re-export of content, products, services, and technology to certain countries and persons. You agree to comply with all export laws, regulations and restrictions of the United States and any foreign agency or authority and assume sole responsibility for any such unauthorized exportation.

12. Applicable Laws. All matters relating to your access to, and use of, the web site shall be governed by U.S. federal law and the laws of the State of Texas. Any legal action or proceeding relating to your access to, or use of, the web site shall be instituted in a state or federal court in Houston or Harris County, Texas. You and SoftSmiths agree to submit to the jurisdiction of, and agree that venue is proper in, these courts in any such legal action or proceeding.

13. General. If you have any questions regarding the Terms of Use, please contact SoftSmiths at legaldepartment@SoftSmiths.com. For other general questions, please refer to our Contact Us page. Customers, partners and suppliers, please read our Special Terms of Use.

SoftSmiths Privacy Statement
SoftSmiths, Inc. (SoftSmiths) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal information that you provide to us. This statement explains our policies and practices regarding the use and disclosure of your personal information by SoftSmiths. Please note that, SoftSmiths reviews and updates this Privacy Policy from time to time as needed without notice. Therefore, you should review the terms of this policy periodically to make sure that you are aware of how SoftSmiths collects and uses personal information. By using our web site, you consent to the collection and use of your personal information by SoftSmiths as explained below.

1. Personal Information. You have complete control over your personal information. In general, you can visit our web site without providing us with any personal information. However, there are instances where we must have your personal information in order for us to grant you an access to our protected and secured sites. This information may include registration data (your name, address, email address, phone number, title, etc.), information request data and response data ("User Information"). When you receive your confirmation email or when you receive any email from the list server, you will be given instructions on how to remove yourself from the list.

2. Use of User Information. We intend to use such information for purposes of supporting your and your employers relationship with SoftSmiths by designing a web site content that is suitable to your needs and alerting you to new product and service offerings as they become available. This User Information may be retained by SoftSmiths to verify compliance with the agreement between SoftSmiths and your employer, to keep track of the domains from which people visit us, to create a user profile to better serve you and your employer, or to simply contact you either electronically or otherwise. If you decide that we should not use your personal User Information to contact you, please let us know and we will not use that information for such purpose. However, please do not submit any User Information if you are less than 18 years of age.

3. Disclosure of User Information. SoftSmiths does not sell, trade or transfer User Information to third parties. However, we may share User Information with our business partners for marketing, advertising or product/service offering purposes. For example, we provide User Information to our service providers for direct emailing of our newsletters, online surveys or notifications on SoftSmiths Offerings to our viewers. We also disclose User Information if: we have your consent; we need to share it in order to provide you with the products and/or services you requested; we respond to a court order or you violate our Terms of Use. You may separately agree to provide your personal information to third parties that provide content for SoftSmiths Offerings, in order to access and/or use their products and/or services. If you agree to provide such information to these third parties, then your personal information will be subject to their privacy policies.

4. Accuracy and Security. The accuracy and security of the User Information is important to SoftSmiths. Currently, you may review and request updates to your User Information retained by SoftSmiths at Customers, Partners or Supplier. If you contact us to correct your User Information, we will attempt to correct such inaccuracies in a timely manner. SoftSmiths is concerned with the security of your User Information and is committed to taking reasonable steps to protect it from unauthorized access and use of that personal information. To that end, we put in place the appropriate physical, electronic and managerial policies and procedures to secure your personal User Information. We also continue to implement procedures to maintain accurate, complete and current User Information.

5. Usernames and Passwords. Access to certain content on our web site may be allowed under a written agreement between you or your employer and SoftSmiths and will require a username and/or password. In some cases, failure to provide personal information may prevent you from accessing certain SoftSmiths web site(s) containing certain confidential information, products, services, or promotional offers ("SoftSmiths Offerings"). By accessing and using our protected and secured web site(s), you agree to maintain the confidentiality of the username and password you selected to access such site(s) and consent to our Terms of Use.

6. Cookies. SoftSmiths uses "cookies". A cookie is a small data file that a web site can transfer to a visitor's hard drive to keep records of the visits to such site. A cookie contains information such as your username and password that helps us recognize the pages you have visited and improve future visits, but the only personal information a cookie can contain is the information that you provide yourself. A cookie cannot read data off of your hard drive or read cookie files created by other sites. Information stored in cookies may be encrypted, however, we do not store your credit card number in cookies. If you prefer not to accept a cookie, you can set your web browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator) to warn you before accepting cookies or you can refuse all cookies by turning them off in your web browser. However, access to our secured web site(s) requires the use of per-session cookies in Microsoft Internet Explorer, which you must enable only cookies that get sent back to the originating server. Otherwise, you can still access most of the features on our web site even without accepting a cookie.

7. External Links. SoftSmiths web site provides links to other third party web sites. Even if the third party is affiliated with SoftSmiths through a business partnership or otherwise, SoftSmiths is not responsible for the privacy policies or practices or the content of such external links. These links are provided to you for convenience purposes only and you access them at your own risk.

8. Terms of Use. Please also see our Terms of Use, which describes the restrictions, disclaimers, indemnification and limitation of liability governing the use of the entire SoftSmiths web site.

9. General. If you have questions regarding our Privacy Statement, please contact us at legaldepartment@SoftSmiths.com. For other general questions, please go to our Contact Us page.

© SoftSmiths 1997-2004 - All Rights Reserved. Legal/Privacy