General conditions and licensing of Strada lex

It is expressly agreed between the De Boeck Group and the purchaser of a licence for using Strada lex, (hereinafter referred to as "the Licensee"), that only the provisions of these licensing terms and conditions, in addition to mandatory legal provisions, are applicable to both parties.

Article 1 – Purpose

The De Boeck Group grants the Licensee, on their payment of a user’s fee, the personal, non-exclusive and non-transferrable right to use Strada lex, under the conditions and within the limits prescribed by the current general conditions, any use that is not expressly authorized being reserved.

The acquisition of a license for use transfers neither any intellectual property rights nor any other rights over the content of Strada lex to the Licensee, which remains the exclusive property of the De Boeck Group.

Article 2 – Access

The De Boeck Group will not provide a single access code for all concurrent accesses

Article 3 – Reproduction - Permissions - Prohibitions

3.1. Only the partial extraction of selective data for printing to paper, or the export of partial and selective data to a non-permanent and non-networked electronic medium for the exclusive use of the licensee are permitted, within the limits of normal usage of Strada lex.

3.2. Beyond these limits, any copying, reproduction or modification of Strada lex, in whole or in part in any way whatsoever, by the Licensee, is prohibited. The Licensee is not permitted to offer copies to third parties, in any form or under any conditions, even free of charge.

The Licensee is also prohibited from disseminating Strada lex to third parties by sale, lease, loan, distribution, making it available via a network or providing it to others in any other way, for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, without the expressed written consent of the De Boeck Group.

The Licensee is formally forbidden from disclosing to any third party, even free of charge, any element or component part of Strada lex, if its communication has the effect to granting to the third party the benefits of a Strada lex license which they do not themselves hold.

The De Boeck Group authorise, without prior request by the Licensee, the creation of links ("surface linking"), that refer to the homepage of the Strada lex site.

However, the use of any technique to include all or part of the site in another Internet site by partially hiding the exact origin of the information, or in a way, such as "framing" or "in-lining", that can lead to confusion about the origin of the information, requires prior written permission from the De Boeck Group.

By accessing this site, the Licensee acknowledges that the data components are protected by law, and that they must refrain from extracting, reusing, storing, reproducing, representing, or saving, directly or indirectly, on any medium whatsoever, by any means and in any form whatsoever, all or any qualitatively or quantitatively significant part of the contents of the databases listed on the site to which the Licensee has access, as well as refraining from the extraction or re-use of qualitatively or quantitatively substantial parts, repeatedly and systematically, when these operations clearly exceed the conditions of normal use.

Article 4 – Rights of Ownership

The De Boeck Group retains exclusive ownership of all the rights pertaining to Strada lex, whether they are intellectual and/or economic (copyrights, rights of the producer of the database, etc.). In addition to the software and database, this exclusivity also covers documentation for the Licensee, the User's Manual, and any other code or item included in the contract.

The Licensee undertakes not to infringe the property rights or intellectual rights of the De Boeck Group, and to take all measures needed to ensure the rights of the De Boeck Group are respected by the people they deal with.

Article 5 – Guarantees

5.1. The De Boeck Group guarantees the Licensee that the Strada lex site will function correctly (if used by the Licensee in accordance with the online site help), that is, they will have access to the site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and the site will be operational in character, particularly the tools for research and access to legal information given in the list covered by the contract. However, the De Boeck Group cannot be held responsible for any discontinuity in the service originating in either maintenance of the Strada lex site, or breaks in the connection between servers hosting the Strada lex website and the Licensee’s computer equipment caused by Telecoms operators, or breaks due to a fault, a bad setting or failure of the Licensee’s computer equipment to meet the minimum configuration requirements, or for any Force Majeure.

5.2. Despite taking all due care over the content of the modules that they are legally obliged to when issuing Strada lex, the De Boeck Group do not accept responsibility for any errors or omissions that may have escaped their attention, and the Licensee remains exclusively responsible for their own use of the results obtained.

5.3. The Licensee acknowledges that they have been informed in advance of the features and capabilities of Strada lex, and have therefore been able to verify that the modules correspond to their requirements.

Article 6 – Updates and Subscriptions

Strada lex is updated on a regular basis. Subscribers will be billed annually for this, at the price in force on the anniversary date of their subscription. Subscriptions will be automatically renewed under the terms and conditions of use that are in force on the anniversary date of the subscription.

Subscribed monographs are accessible until the release of the new edition. The online content of the new edition will replace the previous one. The responsible editor has the right to remove monographs of which the content is deemed obsolete from Strada lex, even before the release of a new edition.

Article 7 – Duration

Subscription starts from the day on which the purchase order was signed and runs for a minimum period of one year. Subscription will be automatically renewed for one year unless either party terminates it at the latest one month before it expires. Access will be blocked after the subscription has expired. There is no refund of subscription fees paid. Termination of subscription must be done by sending a registered letter to: Groupe De Boeck, rue des Minimes-Minimenstraat 39,1000 Brussels.

Article 8 – Penalties

Any breach, by the Licensee, of their obligations under Articles 3 and 4 of these general conditions will automatically give the De Boeck Group the right to demand, without prior notice, the debit of a lump-sum equivalent to 10 times the cost of the licence, without prejudice to the right of the De Boeck Group to claim higher compensation where justified, and without prejudice to the rights of publishers and partners to sue them, independently of the De Boeck Group.

However, if the De Boeck Group establishes that the Licensee has traded, including by the operation of illegal, illicit software, copies of the database and / or its content, personally, directly or indirectly, or even via a business in which they have an interest, however small it may be, the amount of the lump sum forfeited will increase to €300,000.00, without prejudice to the rights of the publisher to reclaim a higher amount where justified.

The Licensee acknowledges that the amount of the lump-sum damages allowed is justified by the significant investment and effort put into developing Strada lex, its updates, into obtaining, verifying and the presenting its content, as well as rendering it suitable for the new operating systems available to users. The Licensee therefore expressly acknowledges that these lump-sum damages only partially cover the damage that may be incurred by the publisher when the Licensee breaches the obligations stipulated in the preceding sections.

The De Boeck Group also reserves the right to prosecute the person responsible for the infringement. In all cases covered by this section, the breach by the Licensee automatically terminates their licence without prior notice.

Article 9 – Modification of General Conditions

The De Boeck Group reserves the right to modify the general conditions of use in the future.

Article 10 – Disputes

The parties agree to settle potential disputes amicably. In the absence of an agreement by the person appointed as mediator, and/or if disagreements remain after mediation, the disputes will be submitted to the Courts of Brussels, who will have exclusive jurisdiction to review the case.