Terms and Conditions

This Disclaimer applies solely to the McMaster University Research Ethics Board's (MREB) Research Ethics Manager (MacREM) online system (the “Website”). The software and web services are provided by Infonetica Ltd (“Infonetica”).

Reference to "we" are to McMaster University ("McMaster") and/or Infonetica.

By accessing the Website the user agrees to these Terms and Conditions and the Website's Privacy Policy and consent to the collection, use and transfer of the information that you provide in the use of the Website. If you do not agree to the Terms and conditions and the Privacy Policy, you are not authorized to use the Website and must not access and/or use the Website in any capacity.

McMaster and Infonetica provide the Website "as is" to you without any conditions, warranties or guarantees (whether express or implied), including but not limited to any implied warranties or conditions as to the satisfactory quality of fitness for a particular purpose, which are expressly excluded to the extent permitted by law.

You may only use the Website for lawful purposes on a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable, personal and non-commercial basis. You may not use, and shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that no other person uses, the Website in a way that does not comply with the terms of any laws applicable to you or that is in any way unlawful.

You represent and warrant that you possess the legal authority to enter into this Agreement and that you will be financially responsible for your access and/or use of the Website. You are responsible for supplying any hardware or software necessary to access and/or use the Website.

You agree:

1. To comply with any legal notices contained on the Website;
2. To respect and comply with the legal rights of others, in particular our rights (including our rights in copyright and trade marks), and the rights of our licensors; and
3. Save where acting as agent or employee of a third party in connection with an application on this Website, not to use this Website for any personal commercial gain, nor to sell or trade in any of the content or other material copied or downloaded from this Website without our express written permission.

Use of the Website through your credentials is for your use by you only. You must not make the Website available to any other person or entity or allow any other person or entity to access and/or use the Website using your credentials.

McMaster and Infonetica try to make sure that all information on the Website is correct, and (without giving any warranty or undertaking in this regard) McMaster will and will procure that Infonetica will use all reasonable care and skill to do so. However, subject to the paragraph entitled ‘Exclusions by Law’ below, neither McMaster nor Infonetica accept liability for any error or omission and exclude all liability, either jointly or severally, for any action you may take or loss or injury you may suffer (whether direct, indirect or any consequential or special loss) howsoever arising out of or in connection with the use of this Website.

You shall defend, indemnity, and hold harmless us, our Board of Governors, officers, employees and agents from and against any claim or demand made by any third party, and all liabilities damages, losses, costs and expenses (including but not limited to reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to your browsing or use of the Website, content that you transmit to the Website, or your breach of any of the Terms. We shall not be responsible for any direct, indifrect, special, incidental or consequential damage or any other damages whatsoever and however caused, arising out of or in connection with the use of the Website or in reliance on the information available on the Website, including the loss of use, lost data, lost business profits, business interruption, personal injury, or any other personal or pecuniary loss, whether the action is in contract, tort (including negligence) or other tortious action.

Nothing in these Terms and Conditions or the Website's Privacy Policy shall or shall be deemed to exclude or limit liability for death or personal injury caused by McMaster  or Infonetica’s own negligence or for any fraud perpetrated by McMaster or Infonetica.

For the avoidance of doubt, to the extent that McMaster or Infonetica are liable by operation of the above Exclusions by Law paragraph, such liability shall not be several and not joint.

McMaster and Infonetica make reasonable endeavours to ensure that the Website is generally available but neither makes any representation or guarantee as to such availability. Neither McMaster nor Infonetica take responsibility for and will not be liable for the website or any interfaces with other systems being temporarily unavailable, or resulting in loss or corruption of data due to technical issues beyond the reasonable control of McMaster and Infonetica.

This Agreement commences on the date that you are provided access to the Website or through the Website registration, and continues in effect unless it is terminated earlier by McMaster. It may be terminated automatically by McMaster immediately without notice if you fail to comply with any of the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Upon termination of this Agreement, you must immediately stop using the Website, uninstall and return to McMaster all copies of the Website and any user documentation in your possession or control.  

Any information generated by you visiting the Website will be handled in accordance with these Terms and Conditions, the Website's Privacy Policy and where applicable data protection and privacy legislations under the jurisdiction of the Province of Ontario.

While McMaster and Infonetica make every effort to check and test material at all stages of production, McMaster and Infonetica are unable to guarantee that the Website will never be faulty, free of viruses and/or errors, nor that it will work continuously, nor that it will be maintained in a fully operational condition. It is always wise for you to run an anti-virus program on all material downloaded from the internet. McMaster and Infonetica cannot accept any liability for any loss, disruption or damage to your data or your computer system, which may occur whilst you are using the Website or material derived from the Website.

Users must not misuse the Website by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful. Website users must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Website, the server on which the Website is stored or any server, computer or database connected to the Website. Users must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack.

If you breach this provision, you will have committed a criminal offense under the applicable Ontario legislation. McMaster and/or Infonetica will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing the website user’s identity to them. In the event of such a breach, the website user’s right to use the Website will cease immediately.

We may make changes to and means of accessing the Website at any time and without prior notice. If the need arises, McMaster and Infonetica reserve the right to suspend access to or close the Website permanently without prior notice. Whilst every effort is made to keep the Website up to date, any of the material on the Website may be out of date at any given time.

You acknowledge that all rights in copyright, patents, design rights, trade marks and other intellectual property rights (whether registered, capable of registration or otherwise) throughout the world ("IP Rights") in the Website (including all content) are owned by McMaster and/or its licensors for the full duration of such rights.

Except for your use of the Website in accordance with these Terms and Conditions and the Website's Privacy Policy, you are granted no IP Rights in respect of the Website or its content.

As an individual or organisation, you may print paper copies and make copies to your hard drive of any of the names, images and logos identifying the Website provided that in doing so you comply with the following conditions:

1. You must ensure that the resource which you copy is used for research, training, private study or information only and is not used for direct commercial gain;
2. You must not modify the paper or digital copies of any materials you have printed off or downloaded in any way; and
3. You must ensure that the Website is referred to as the source of the resource that you have copied.
4. You must not change any of the text or images contained in this Website or merge it with any other text or images, or forger headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any content.

You must not:

1. sell, download, print, distribute, reproduce, rent, modify, copy, adapt, reverse engineer, translate, transfer, make available to anyone other than you, or otherwise distribute copies of the Website.
2. include the Website as a component of a commercial product or use the Website for performing research (whether commercial, or non-commercial, funded or non-funded) or other non-personal uses.
3. publicly perform or display the Website including making the Website available for download to anyone else on any computer system or network using your own personal credentials.
4. remove or obscure any copyright, trade-mark, or other proprietary notices from Website.
5. otherwise use the Website on behalf of any third party.
6. use the Website to create, develop, distribute or market any product, application or service that is competitive to McMaster and / or its affiliates (to be determined at McMaster sole discretion).
7. defame, abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others.
8. transfer the Website to any ad network, ad exchange, data broker, or other advertising or monetization-related toolset or to any other service.
9. use the Website in any manner that makes the Website available to any third party, in whole or in part, with use of the your own credentials.

From time to time McMaster may at its sole discretion amend these Terms and Conditions and/or the Website's Privacy Policy. Your continued use of the Website constitutes your acceptance of and agreement to any changed Terms and Conditions and/or Website's Privacy Policy. McMaster will ensure that details of any such changes are posted on the Website in a timely manner.

If any provision of these Terms and Conditions is held to be invalid, unlawful or unenforceable to any extent, such provision shall not affect the validity, legality and enforceability of the other provisions of these Terms and Conditions.

The Ontario  courts will have exclusive jurisdiction over any claim arising from, or related to, the use of this Website. These Terms and Conditions, the Website's Privacy Policy and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or their subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Ontario.