Terms and Conditions of Use


1. Welcome to EyeDocNews.com (hereinafter, “EDN”, “we” or “us”). By using our website and its various features and functionality (hereinafter, collectively, the “Service”) you agree to be bound by all of the terms of this Agreement (the “User Agreement”). We reserve the right to change the terms of this User Agreement or to modify any features of the Service at any time without notice to you, and you agree to be bound by such changes. Any changes to this User Agreement shall become a part of this User Agreement and shall apply as soon as they are posted. The most current version of the User Agreement can be viewed at any time via a link in the footer of any page at: EyeDocNews.com. Your use of the Service constitutes your agreement to all such terms, conditions and policies. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, any new features or functionality that augment or enhance the Service, shall be subject to this User Agreement.

Modification of Terms and Conditions

2. EDN reserves the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part thereof), with or without notice, at any time for any reason. You agree that EDN shall not be liable to you or any third party for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Service at any time for any reason.

Service Provided “As Is” for Educational Purposes ONLY

3. EyeDocNews is designed primarily for use by qualified medical and other healthcare professionals. You acknowledge and understand that any information published on our website as part of the Service is provided “as is” for educational and informational purposes ONLY. Such information should in no way be considered as offering, or relied upon for, medical advice, legal advice or any other form of professional advice without further consultation with a qualified professional.

IF YOU ARE A MEDICAL OR OTHER HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL, YOU SHOULD EXERCISE YOUR PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT IN EVALUATING ANY INFORMATION, AND WE URGE YOU TO CONFIRM THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON OUR WEB SITE WITH OTHER SOURCES BEFORE UNDERTAKING ANY TREATMENT BASED ON IT.

IF YOU ARE A PATIENT OR CONSUMER, WE URGE YOU TO FIRST EVALUATE ANY INFORMATION FOUND ON OUR WEB SITE WITH YOUR PHYSICIAN OR OTHER QUALIFIED HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY DECISIONS OR CHOICES ABOUT YOUR HEALTHCARE. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS WEB SITE SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR SEEKING MEDICAL OR OTHER ADVICE FROM AN APPROPRIATELY QUALIFIED AND LICENSED PHYSICIAN OR OTHER HEALTH CARE PROVIDER. PLEASE CHECK WITH A PHYSICIAN IF YOU SUSPECT YOU ARE ILL.

See paragraphs 12 and 13 below for further disclaimers.

Intellectual Property Rights

4. The Service (including, without limitation, text, photographs, graphics, video and audio content displayed thereby) is protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under the copyright laws of the United States and other countries, and EDN has sole and exclusive ownership thereof (subject to the rights of any licensors and licensees under applicable written agreements, understandings and arrangements). All individual articles, graphics, videos, content and other elements comprising this Service are also copyrighted works, and EDN has sole and exclusive ownership thereof (subject to the rights of any licensors and licensees under applicable written agreements, understandings and arrangements). You must abide by all additional copyright notices or restrictions contained in this User Agreement or displayed

5. By posting or submitting content (“User Content”) on or to the Service (regardless of the form or medium with respect to such content, whether text, videos, photographs, audio or otherwise), you are giving EDN, and its affiliates, agents and third party contractors, a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, free  license to: (i) store such User Content, (ii) reproduce, display and/or publish such User Content on the Service and any affiliated digital or print publications in digital, print or any other format (either in the form submitted or in the form of a derivative or adapted work) indefinitely, and (iii) distribute such User Content and use such User Content for promotional and marketing purposes, at no charge to EDN and without any expectation of any compensation of any type or form from EDN (unless otherwise agreed to in writing by an authorized executive of EDN).

6. EDN reserves the right in its sole and absolute discretion to decline to publish, or to remove following initial publication, any User Content and any other submissions to the Service without prior notice.

7. (a) Unless expressly permitted, you may not copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, enter into a database, display, perform, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any part of this Service, except as permitted under the last sentence of this Section 7(a), and except that you may make one print copy that is limited to occasional articles of personal interest only. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing (but subject to the last sentence of this Section 7(a)), you may not distribute any part of this Service over any network, including, without limitation, a local area network, nor sell or offer it for sale. In addition, these files may not be used to construct any kind of database. Just as EDN from time to time excerpts materials from other sources in order to support the various commentaries and writings contained herein, we respect the right of others to make “fair use” of the materials contained on EDN; accordingly, you may from time to time excerpt and use materials set forth on this site, provided, that you must give the original author credit, acknowledge the copyright of EDN in such materials, and such use must be for a non-commercial purpose only and not, for example, for re-sale.

(b) We are concerned about the integrity of our Service when it is viewed in a framed or other setting created by a third party that includes advertising or other materials that we have not authorized to be displayed together with our Service. Neither you nor any third party are authorized to make use of the content or information provided by the Service, or to frame portions of the content or information provided by the Service on a different website or blog, in any manner that constitutes an infringement of our rights, including copyright, or that has not been authorized by us, or that in any way has a negative impact on our reputation.

Representations and Warranties

8. You shall be solely responsible for your own submission of User Content and the consequences of posting or publishing them. In connection with each of your submissions, you affirm, represent, and/or warrant that: (i) you own or have obtained the necessary intellectual property and other rights (including without limitation, trademark, patent, and copyright), licenses, consents, and/or permissions to use, and authorize EDN to use, such submissions in the manner contemplated by EDN and this User Agreement; and (ii) you have the written consent, release, and/or permission of each and every identifiable individual person in such submissions to use the name or likeness of each and every such identifiable individual person to enable inclusion and use of such submissions in the manner contemplated by EDN and this User Agreement. In furtherance of the foregoing, you agree that you will not: (i) submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant EDN all of the rights granted herein; (ii) publish falsehoods or misrepresentations that could damage EDN or any third party; (iii) submit material that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, violate any law, or is otherwise inappropriate; or (iv) post advertisements or solicitations of business.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notification and Counter Notification Guidelines

9. If you are a copyright owner or agent thereof and believe that User Content displayed on EDN infringes upon your copyright, please submit written notice, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512(c)), via regular mail or fax to our Copyright Agent as identified below, with the following information: (i) an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright; (ii) a description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed; (iii) the URL of the location on the Service containing the material that you claim is infringing; (iv) your address, telephone number, and email address; (v) a statement by you that “I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;” (vi) a statement by you that “I swear (or affirm), under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner, or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”

Our Copyright Agent can be reached as follows:

By mail: EyeDocNews, c/o Envoy Messaging, Inc., 445 Park Avenue, Suite 9000, New York, NY 10022.
By phone: 866.833.6245
By fax: 718.504.3773

Please note that notifications may not be accepted via email unless otherwise agreed to between you and us.

Please further that you may be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing your copyrights. Indeed, in a recent case (please see http://www.onlinepolicy.org/action/legpolicy/opg_v_diebold/ for more information), a company that sent an infringement notification seeking removal of online materials that were protected by the fair use doctrine was ordered to pay such costs and attorneys fees. The company agreed to pay over $100,000. Accordingly, if you are not sure whether material available online infringes your copyright, we suggest that you first contact an attorney.

10. The provider of affected content may make a counter notification pursuant to sections 512(g)(2) and (3) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. When we receive a counter notification, we may reinstate the material in question.

To file a counter notification with us, you must provide a written communication via regular mail or fax to our Copyright Agent as identified above, with the following information: (i) the specific URLs or other unique identifying information of material that EDN has removed or to which EDN has disabled access; (ii) your name, address, telephone number, email address, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which your address is located (or New York, New York, if your address is outside of the United States), and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided notification as per our guidelines above, or an agent of such person; (iii) a statement by you that “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that each search result, message, or other item of content identified above was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled, or that the material identified by the complainant has been removed or disabled at the URL identified and will no longer be shown.”

Please note that you may be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is not infringing the copyrights of others. Accordingly, if you are not sure whether certain material infringes the copyrights of others, we suggest that you first contact an attorney.

Indemnification

11. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless EDN and its affiliates, and their respective members, directors, officers, managers, employees, shareholders, agents, principals, and licensors, from and against all losses, expenses, damages and costs, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, arising out of, or resulting from (i) your use of the Service, and (ii) any violation or breach by you of this Agreement. We reserve the right to take over the exclusive defense of any claim for which we are entitled to indemnification under this Section. In such event, you shall provide us with such cooperation as is reasonably requested by us.

Disclaimers

12. THIS SERVICE IS AVAILABLE “AS IS.” WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THIS SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE. THERE MAY BE DELAYS, OMISSIONS, INTERRUPTIONS AND INACCURACIES IN THE NEWS, INFORMATION OR OTHER MATERIALS AVAILABLE THROUGH THIS SERVICE. WE DO NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THOSE OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THIS SERVICE OR ANY INFORMATION OR GOODS THAT ARE AVAILABLE OR ADVERTISED OR SOLD THROUGH THIS SERVICE. WE DO NOT MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS, NOR DO WE ENDORSE THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, TIMELINESS OR RELIABILITY OF ANY MEDICAL OR OTHER ADVICE, OPINION, STATEMENT OR OTHER MATERIAL OR DATABASE DISPLAYED, UPLOADED OR DISTRIBUTED IN THIS SERVICE OR AVAILABLE THOUGH LINKS IN THIS SERVICE. WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO CORRECT ANY ERRORS OR OMISSIONS IN THIS SERVICE. ALTHOUGH WE INTEND TO TAKE REASONABLE STEPS TO PREVENT THE INTRODUCTION OF VIRUSES, WORMS, “TROJAN HORSES” OR OTHER DESTRUCTIVE MATERIALS TO THIS SERVICE, WE DO NOT GUARANTEE OR WARRANT THAT THIS SERVICE OR MATERIALS THAT MAY BE DOWNLOADED FROM THIS SERVICE DO NOT CONTAIN SUCH DESTRUCTIVE FEATURES. WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR HARM ATTRIBUTABLE TO SUCH FEATURES.

THIS SERVICE MAY CONTAIN VARIOUS COMBINATIONS OF TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIOVISUAL PRODUCTIONS, OPINIONS, STATEMENTS, FACTS, ARTICLES, MARKET DATA, STOCK QUOTES OR OTHER INFORMATION CREATED BY EDN OR BY THIRD-PARTIES. DUE TO THE NUMBER OF SOURCES FROM WHICH CONTENT IN THIS SERVICE IS OBTAINED, AND THE INHERENT HAZARDS OF ELECTRONIC DISTRIBUTION, THERE MAY BE DELAYS, OMISSIONS OR INACCURACIES IN SUCH CONTENT. ACCORDINGLY, SUCH CONTENT IS FOR YOUR REFERENCE ONLY AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON BY YOU FOR ANY PURPOSE. SUCH CONTENT IS NOT INTENDED FOR THE PURPOSE OF TAX OR INVESTMENT ADVICE AND IT DOES NOT ADVOCATE THE PURCHASE OR SALE OF ANY SECURITY OR INVESTMENT.

INFORMATION CREATED BY THIRD PARTIES THAT YOU MAY ACCESS ON THE SERVICE OR THROUGH LINKS IS NOT ADOPTED OR ENDORSED BY EDN AND REMAINS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF SUCH THIRD PARTIES.

BECAUSE THE INFORMATION ON OUR WEBSITE PROVIDED VIA THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS,” IF YOU RELY ON THIS SERVICE AND ANY INFORMATION AVAILABLE THROUGH THE SERVICE, YOU DO SO SOLELY AT YOUR OWN RISK.

IF YOU ARE A MEDICAL OR OTHER HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL, YOU SHOULD EXERCISE YOUR PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT IN EVALUATING ANY INFORMATION, AND WE URGE YOU TO CONFIRM THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON OUR WEB SITE WITH OTHER SOURCES BEFORE UNDERTAKING ANY TREATMENT BASED ON IT.

IF YOU ARE A PATIENT OR CONSUMER, WE URGE YOU TO EVALUATE ANY INFORMATION FOUND ON OUR WEB SITE WITH YOUR PHYSICIAN OR OTHER QUALIFIED HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS WEB SITE SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE MEDICAL OR OTHER ADVICE OF AN APPROPRIATELY QUALIFIED AND LICENSED PHYSICIAN OR OTHER HEALTH CARE PROVIDER. PLEASE CHECK WITH A PHYSICIAN IF YOU SUSPECT YOU ARE ILL.

13. We are not responsible for the availability or content of other websites, blog or other services of third parties (“third party services”) that may be linked to this Service, or to which this Service may link. Because we have no control over such third party services, you acknowledge and agree that we are not responsible for the availability of such external third party services, and that we do not endorse and are not responsible or liable for any content, accuracy, quality, advertising, products or other materials on or available from such third party services. You further acknowledge and agree that EDN shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services available on or through such third party services.

Limitation of Liability

14. EDN and its affiliates, and their respective members, directors, officers, managers, employees, shareholders, agents, principals and licensors shall not be liable for incidental, indirect, consequential, special, punitive, or exemplary damages of any kind, including, without limitation, lost revenues or profits, loss of business or loss of data, in any way related to your use of the Service, or for any claim, loss or injury based on errors, omissions, interruptions or other inaccuracies in this Service (including, without limitation, as a result of breach of any warranty or other term of this Agreement).

The amount of damages recoverable by you against us on account of any and all claims or causes of action arising from, or in connection with, your use of the Service shall be limited to the amount you paid, if any, for use of this Service.

Discontinuing Use of the Service

15. This Agreement represents the sole and exclusive agreement between you and EDN governing the use of the Service. This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the United States and the State of New York, without regard to conflict of laws principles. You hereby agree that any dispute arising hereunder shall be determined in a judicial proceeding venued in the federal or state courts of New York State in the United States of America, and you hereby consent to the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of said courts to adjudicate any dispute arising hereunder. Subject to paragraph 11 above, in any such dispute, each party shall be solely responsible for its own attorneys’ fees.

16. BY CONTINUING TO USE THE SERVICE, YOU AGREE TO ABIDE BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. If you do not wish to abide by the terms and conditions of this Agreement at any time, you may discontinue your use of the Service at such time, provided that Sections 3 through 16 of this Agreement shall survive any such discontinuance.

Privacy

We appreciate your readership and value your personal privacy. To review a copy of our privacy policy, click here. Such policy is hereby incorporated into this User Agreement, and made a part hereof.