General Terms and Conditions of Business

WEPS.AG is a project of BAYARTZ AG, represented by its CEO, Mr Hans Bayartz, Bennostraße 6, 52134 Herzogenrath, Germany. The project is described on the website www.WEPS.AG. The following Terms and Conditions of Business govern the contents of this website and all subpages under the domain name www.WEPS.AG.

WEPS.AG is a web-based platform and a meeting place for businesspeople from different sectors and countries occupying different positions. WEPS.AG is an open system; the platform is open to everyone and may be used by anybody.

These General Terms and Conditions of Business ("Terms and Conditions") shall govern the legal relations between the persons who benefit from the services provided by WEPS.AG.

The following Terms and Conditions shall form the basis of all agreements and offers in connection with WEPS.AG. They conclusively regulate all services agreed between WEPS.AG and the users of these services unless otherwise explicitly agreed. We expressly reject the incorporation of any differing terms and conditions of business.

(1) WEPS AG has the right to amend and adjust these Terms and Conditions during the user's current membership. WEPS.AG will send the users the amended Terms and Conditions, particularly drawing attention to new provisions and clauses. At the same time, WEPS.AG will allow users a reasonable period of time in which to submit their acceptance of the amended terms and conditions for the continuing use of the services. If no statement of acceptance is received during this period, the amended terms and conditions shall be deemed agreed. WEPS.AG will expressly draw the user's attention to this legal consequence at the beginning of the period. If any users object to the amendments to these Terms and Conditions, WEPS.AG shall have the right to terminate the contract for the use of the services without notice as soon as the Terms and Conditions of Use take effect in relation to other users.

(2) BAYARTZ AG has the right to transfer the WEPS.AG Internet platform to a different legal entity. This legal entity will then assume the entire rights and obligations under the contract with the user instead of BAYARTZ AG. WEPS.AG will notify users in text form of any forthcoming change, drawing attention to their right to terminate the contract for the use of the services at any time.

(1) WEPS.AG will provide an internationally accessible Internet platform that allows users to join existing communities or to form new communities, to organise their communities, to make contact with other users, to manage their contacts, to set up groups and forums and to make digital content and services accessible to other users.

(2) WEPS.AG will create the technical preconditions for the contractual use of the Internet platform. Unless otherwise agreed, WEPS. AG will not influence the legal form of the communities, their contents or their membership, particularly the internal rules regarding the conditions for admission and rules of conduct. Legal and interpersonal disputes in matters concerning membership of a community shall be conducted solely between the user and the community. The legal relations of the community members amongst themselves are independent of the contractual relationships between WEPS.AG and the individual users.

(3) The parties involved are aware that the transport of data over the Internet is something that WEPS.AG is not able to influence. WEPS.AG cannot therefore guarantee that transmitted data will safely reach the recipient in the correct form or will be properly displayed, if an error occurs during data transmission in an area that is beyond WEPS.AG's technical range of control. The features that WEPS.AG offers its users shall be accepted "as seen" without any guarantees.

(1) Only natural persons or legal entities can register as users of WEPS.AG. A legal entity may only be registered by a natural person with powers of representation. The personal data provided by users must be truthful and complete, as requested on the registration form. Users must keep these details up-to-date at all times.

(2) Users must keep their passwords secret, store them in a safe place and may not disclose them to third parties. Users' passwords are part of their WEPS-ID. If a user's password becomes known to any third parties, the member in question must immediately notify WEPS.AG by email or in writing so that the old password can be cancelled and a new password can be issued. Users are not entitled to make their user accounts available to third parties. Users acknowledge that they are fully responsible for the acts of third parties who are given access to their user accounts.

(3) During the registration process users will create a user account for themselves which will then be used for the central management of the communities that they form, their participation in other communities, their profile pages and their contacts. Users may create any number of profile pages under their user accounts and use them to make some of the data in their user accounts accessible to other users and retrievable through a search query.

(1) All registered users have the right to form one or several communities. However, communities may only be formed if they are to be used as communities. It is not permitted to form communities "in advance" or for purposes alien to the purpose of a community (resale, using Web space). If a community is not being used by at least two users within two months of its formation, WEPS.AG shall be entitled to close down the community.

(2) WEPS.AG will provide founding users with their own administrator accounts so that they can manage their communities. Founding users shall assume the function of the community founder who is responsible for the organisation and management of the community. The function of community founder may also be delegated to another member of the community at a later date. Users may not delete their own administrator accounts until a new administrator account has been activated for the new community founder.

(3) On forming a community, community founders must specify the common purpose of the community or the topics it will be dealing with; the community founder must choose a name for the community. The following purposes or topics are prohibited:

    * committing, supporting, and glorifying criminal offences and minor infringements of the law,
    * encouraging and disseminating racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, national-socialist, anti-democratic or
       inhuman ideologies
    * defaming, insulting or discriminating against any individuals or groups of individuals
    * running religious communities whose aims and ideas are inconsistent with the liberal and democratic principles on which the Federal Republic of Germany is based
    * providing content that is unsuitable for children and young persons unless this is done in a closed community that can only
       be accessed by members who are of full age.

(4) Users who form a community are at liberty to define the conditions for admission and the rules of conduct for the community. The conditions for admission and the rules of conduct must not be inconsistent with these Terms and Conditions of Use.

(1) WEPS.AG will provide registered users with free software for up to 100 users. From the 101st user the currently applicable flat rates published on WEPS.AG's website shall apply. Billing will be based on the number of registered users in the community in question at the end of a month.

(2) The flat rates shall be paid monthly on the 8th day after the issue of an invoice, at the beginning of the month following the month billed for. Payments shall be strictly net. BAYARTZ AG has the right to insist on a direct debit. Otherwise the net invoice amount is to be transferred to the account indicated.

(3) If two invoices are not paid, BAYARTZ AG shall have the right to disable or delete the community in question.

(1) Each community will be given its own subdomain under the WEPS.AG domain. Subdomains will be allocated on a "first come, first served" basis. WEPS.AG is under no obligation to investigate whether naming rights and trademark rights of an older priority already exist in relation to the subdomain.

(2) It is not permitted to use well-known names protected by trademark rights or naming rights in order to designate a subdomain. Apart from this, founders of a community have a duty to verify the legality of the subdomains they select. The founder and administrator of a community shall indemnify WEPS.AG against all third-party claims in relation to an infringing subdomain that is the founder's responsibility.

(1) Users may join any number of communities. In order to join a community, the community in question must either be an open community or the user's account must have been activated.

(2) As the communities themselves are responsible for defining the conditions for admission to a community and the rules of conduct, users cannot claim access and admission to a community from WEPS.AG and can only assert such claims against the community itself.

(3) WEPS.AG will provide community founders with the technical means for organising and managing the community which users may use on their own responsibility. It is therefore possible that users will only be able to make limited use of the possibilities offered by WEPS.AG.

(1) Users may use the services and applications provided by WEPS.AG only for the contractually agreed purposes (forming and managing communities, joining communities). Users may not abuse the service for activities that go beyond this specific purpose; this particularly includes the following acts:

    * systematically reading out the contact data of other users in order to disclose such data to third parties,
    * unacceptable harassment of other users, such as through aggressive, obscene, insulting, defamatory or obtrusive forum posts or messages,
    * unacceptable annoyance of other users through chain mail, junk mail, email spamming or advertising,
    * extensive or persistent use of the Internet platform to publish and disseminate content that is
       inappropriate to the purpose or the subject matter of the community in question and which
       may permanently make the Internet platform's less attractive for other users,
    * any measure that puts excessive strain on the system or leads to system disruptions,
    * manipulating the appearance of individual areas of the platform as designed by WEPS.AG,
       e.g. by suppressing or destroying advertising banners
    * registering, posting or sending messages under a different identity.

(2) Users must ensure that they do not infringe the rights of third parties when posting content (texts, images, photos, videos, names, trademarks, trade names and similar). Users shall indemnify WEPS.AG against all claims that third parties assert against WEPS.AG on grounds of an infringement of rights that these users have committed and are responsible for (e.g. the infringement of copyright, the violation of personal rights, breaches of competition law). Users must bear all the necessary costs of any legal defence in relation to such claims.

(3) WEPS.AG has established virtual "rules of the house" in the form of "Netiquette" for the use of the Internet platform. These rules are binding on all users.

(4) WEPS.AG has the right to delete the content posted by a user if it infringes the rights of third parties, if third parties assert claims due to an infringement of their rights, if this content violates the conditions set out in paragraph (1) or if it is inconsistent with "Netiquette".

(1) In the event of a culpable breach of the duty to refrain from the acts explicitly listed in clause 9 (1), the user undertakes to pay an appropriate contractual penalty to be set by WEPS.AG in the individual case and which may be reviewed by the competent court if necessary.

(2) Community founders shall be subject to the same obligation if they culpably set up a community for any of the purposes and topics that clause 5 (3) lists as being prohibited.

(3) The aforesaid provisions shall not affect any claims for damages that WEPS.AG may assert. However, any contractual penalty that has been paid shall be set off against such damages.

(1) WEPS.AG contains programming interfaces to the Internet services and Web applications of third-party providers. Users will therefore gain access to these services and applications through the user interface. Users will find a list of the current services and applications in their user accounts. The programming interfaces and the content will be made available by the providers in question. When using the services and applications, users are bound by the contractual terms and statements of the providers in question.

(2) WEPS.AG cannot influence the availability of the servers of third-party providers nor the availability of data paths and does not therefore accept responsibility if any data transmissions should fail.

(3) Users must also ensure that the content they transfer from external applications does not infringe the rights of third parties and shall indemnify WEPS.AG against any third-party claims in this connection.

(1) WEPS.AG reserves the right to place advertising material in the WEPS.AG applications.

(2) As regards the positioning of paid advertising material on behalf of third parties (e.g. banners, sponsored links, advertisements, recommendation marketing), users and communities are limited to the offers of cooperation partners provided by WEPS.AG, i.e. users and communities may not incorporate paid advertising material for third parties into their own profile pages or into the community unless the advertising material is provided by WEPS.AG or WEPS.AG approves this material in writing.

WEPS.AG has the right to alter the content and services available at www.WEPS.AG at any time and also all sub-pages under the domain name WEPS.AG. If such changes affect the contents of the basic modules provided by WEPS.AG (particularly any features), without the users being offered an equivalent, users shall have a special right to terminate the contract. Users shall have no retrospective claims to reimbursement.

The basic modules are the profile setting, the search function for profiles, the diary and the groups. Additional features provided by WEPS.AG are optional. WEPS.AG may modify or remove these features without this entitling the users to make any claims.

Users acknowledge that for technical reasons it is not possible to generally guarantee full availability (100 %) on a permanent basis. WEPS.AG reserves the right to suspend or restrict the services for brief periods in order to carry out maintenance work, for security reasons or on grounds of capacity. WEPS.AG cannot be held responsible for unavoidable, unforeseeable and extraordinary events that may cause the services it provides to become unavailable, such as power cuts, hacker attacks and failure of the telecommunication lines from the exchange point to the Internet.

(1) Users have the right to terminate the contract for the use of the services provided by WEPS.AG at any time without giving any reasons or observing a period of notice. Notice of termination must be given in text form. If the contract is terminated, the user's profile will be deleted. However, the user's posts published in groups and any further content published and transmitted in places other than the user's profile will not be deleted, but will no longer be linked to the user's profile.

(2) WEPS.AG has the right to terminate the services with one month's notice to the end of a month.

(3) WEPS.AG has the right to terminate the contract without notice if there is an important reason for doing so. A particularly important reason is if any users

    * are guilty of a sustained and serious breach of their contractual obligations,
    * commit a culpable and serious breach of the law when using WEPS.AG.

(4) If an important reason arises that gives WEPS.AG the right to terminate the contract without notice, WEPS.AG shall also be entitled to deactivate the user account and refuse to open a new account for this user for a reasonable period of time.

(5) WEPS.AG shall furthermore have the right to terminate the contract and delete the user account if the user has not logged on at WEPS.AG for at least one year.

(6) WEPS.AG has the right to close down a community if its members fail to observe the restrictions set out in clause 5 (3)

(1) WEPS.AG will compile a database from the data provided by users. A database is a collection of works, data or other independent elements that are systematically or methodically arranged, individually accessible by electronic means or accessible in a different way and whose procurement, examination or presentation requires a substantial investment in terms of the type of investment or its magnitude. The main investment to determine the manufacturer of the database will be made by WEPS.AG.

(2) WEPS.AG will only collect information provided by its users. Users' data will be processed in accordance with German law, particularly the requirements of the Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz, BDSG). This means that WEPS.AG particularly has the right to process personal data or to have such data processed by third parties, in as far as this is necessary in order to perform the contract (inventory data) or for billing purposes (billing data). Personal data are individual details concerning the personal situation or objective circumstances of a certain or identifiable natural person.

(3) Users are aware that the functionality of WEPS.AG requires the data that they enter to be collected, processed and used. Users hereby consent to WEPS.AG making their data available to other users and sending them regular email newsletters and production information.

(4) By entering their passwords users may view and modify the data provided to WEPS.AG at any time on the website of WEPS.AG. Furthermore, users may revoke their consent in writing at any time indicating their user name and password. This should be done by sending an email to team@weps.ag.

(5) Personal inventory data are collected, processed and used for counselling, advertising and market research purposes and in order to organise WEPS.AG in such a way that it meets the needs of its users. The data will never be disclosed to third parties or published.

(1) WEPS.AG's liability in cases of intent or gross negligence shall be governed by the statutory provisions. WEPS.AG shall be strictly liable in the case of guarantees. In the case of slight negligence WEPS.AG's liability shall be governed solely by the provisions of the Product Liability Act in the case of injury to life, limb or health or a breach of fundamental contractual obligations. Claims for damages for a breach of fundamental contractual obligations due to slight negligence, however, shall be limited to the typical, foreseeable damage unless WEPS.AG is liable due to injury to life, limb or health. WEPS.AG shall be liable to the same extent for damage caused by its vicarious agents and representatives.

(2) The provisions of the foregoing paragraph (1) apply to damages in addition to performance, damages in lieu of performance and compensation for needless expenditure, irrespective of the legal basis, including liability due to defects, delay or impossibility.

This contract shall be exclusively governed by German law. The Introductory Act to the German Civil Code (Einführungsgesetz zum Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuch, EGBGB) shall not apply.

If the user is a businessperson, a legal entity under public law, a special fund under public law or has no general place of jurisdiction in the Federal Republic of Germany, it is agreed that the place of jurisdiction shall be Aachen for all disputes arising from or in connection with any contractual relationship with WEPS.AG.

If any terms of this contract should be or become void or unenforceable, this shall not affect the validity of its remaining terms.