Hydroland website terms and conditions

The Terms and Conditions outline the rules and regulations for using the Company's website located at General conditions for Hydroland website use

I. Obligation to provide information

Any operator of a website providing remunerated services electronically is a provider of information society services. For such merchants, the regulations stipulate an obligation to provide information identifying the operator of the page as a party to the transaction.

To ensure that you don't miss any mandatory requisites, it is recommended that the following content be placed as an introduction or preamble to the site's terms of use:

name/company of the site operator;
your permanent address/ registered office and address of management;
the address at which he carries out his business, if it is different from the above-mentioned address;
correspondence data, including telephone and e-mail address;
data for entry in a commercial or other public register;
information about a control authority, when the trader's activity is subject to a permit/license regime;
information on membership in a professional organization, exact professional title and applicable regulations regarding - the right to exercise the trade or profession and instructions on access to them;
instruction for registration under the Value Added Tax Act.

The above information must be available to every user of the site, regardless of whether a specific transaction will be concluded with him.

In addition, however, potential customers to whom an offer to enter into a contract is made by electronic means must be additionally notified of:

the technical steps of concluding the contract and their legal significance;
whether the contract will be stored by the service provider and how to access it;
the technical means for identifying and correcting errors in the entry of information before the statement for concluding the contract is made;
the languages in which the contract may be concluded.

In a large number of cases, a party to the contract concluded through the website will be the user, i.e. a natural person who orders a product or service for personal use outside the scope of his professional activity.

For these cases, website operators are obliged to provide their users with the following additional information:

the main characteristics of the goods or services;
the final price of the goods or services, including all taxes and fees, as well as expenses related to the conclusion and performance of the contract at a distance;
the terms of payment, delivery, performance;
the conditions, term and method of exercising the right to withdraw from the contract and possible costs related thereto;
a reminder of the existence of a legal guarantee of compliance of the goods with the sales contract;
term of the contract or conditions for termination of an open-ended contract;
the functionality of the digital content, including applicable technical security measures, as well as the interoperability of the digital content with certain types of hardware and software.

II. Responsibility of the site operator

It is recommended that the terms of use of a website contain relevant clauses stating the limited liability of the site operator for (foreign) content published on it.

In addition, the website owner should clearly describe the limits of his responsibility for the specific services/goods offered by him. This liability may be limited as follows:

according to the form of fault (to be liable only for gross negligence and intent);
according to the value of the damage (no liability for minor damages; limits of compensation);
for the actions of certain persons (for example own employees).

However, it is important to know that the limits of liability for many types of transactions are regulated by law, so such a limitation under the terms of use of a website is permissible only within the framework of the regulatory framework. An example of such a legislative framework is the liability for damages caused by a defect in a product provided for manufacturers in the Consumer Protection Act.

Therefore, any clause (in a contract or general terms and conditions) that provides for the release or limitation of the manufacturer's liability to the injured party for damages caused by a product defect is null and void.

III. Protection of intellectual property

The website is a collection of files containing images and text, incl. unique page design, logo, content prepared specifically for the specific site, etc. All these elements are subject to copyright. In the Internet, the violation of intellectual property rights is facilitated in view of the access of third parties to the entire content of the page, which is why the need to protect it arises. One of the ways to do this is to define the limits for the use of the elements presented on your website - an object of intellectual property.

It is important to define what rights to which parts of the page you have and what the consequences of their violation are (civil and criminal liability). To do this, first determine how and to what extent site users can use the content provided to them, and then describe in as much detail as possible what actions constitute infringement. This clause in the general terms and conditions does not guarantee the non-infringement of intellectual property rights, but at least it is a preventive measure of protection acting to discipline potential infringers.

IV. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

In principle, the parties to any contract can freely agree on the substantive law applicable to the specific legal relationship. This also applies to transactions regulated by general conditions. Therefore, the terms of use may contain a provision in which the website operator indicates the law of which country will govern its contractual relations with recipients of the services provided by it. However, restrictions on the freedom to choose the applicable law apply to users. According to the so-called Rome I Regulation, a contract concluded between consumers and a trader is governed by the law of the country where the consumer has his habitual residence, provided that the trader:

carries out its commercial or professional activity in the country of the user's habitual residence, or in any way directs this activity to the relevant country or to several countries, including this country;
the contract falls within the scope of this activity.

I.e. a choice of law clause contrary to this rule will be invalid and will not apply to user contracts concluded between the operator of the site and its users. However, this does not apply in the case of a contract for the supply of services where the services are to be provided to the consumer exclusively in a country other than the one in which he has his habitual residence. The parties to a private legal relationship may also agree on the jurisdiction of disputes related to this legal relationship. Including a common practice is the conditioning of the jurisdiction of a given (national) court through general conditions of one of the parties to the transaction. Here again, however, exceptions apply to consumers under European law, according to which consumers can choose which court to bring their claim against a trader - before the court of the country in which the trader is established or before the court of the country in which they have habitual residence. In contrast, merchants can only bring claims against consumers in the consumer's country of residence. However, these rules apply only if the trader is established in the Member State of residence of the consumer or has directed his activities to the territory of this Member State. A provision in the website's terms of use contrary to these principles is invalid and does not apply to users.

V. Special provisions for consumer protection

In conclusion, it can be summarized that, insofar as in most cases the visitors of a given Internet page and potential customers of its operator are users, special rules apply in their favor, preventing the limitation or violation of their rights through unequal provisions. Unilaterally prepared conditions creating inequality between the parties to a given transaction are considered as such by presumption.

Unfair clauses in consumer contracts are terms that have as their subject or result including:

excluding or limiting the legal liability of the seller or supplier for the death or personal injury of the user resulting from an act or omission of the same seller or supplier;
unjustified exclusion or limitation of the user's legal rights vis-à-vis the supplier/seller in case of non-fulfillment of contractual obligations;
an agreement binding on the user, according to which the performance of the services provided by the seller or supplier depends solely on their own will;
a condition whereby the consumer is required to pay an unreasonably high penalty as compensation when he defaults;
the right of the seller or supplier to cancel the contract on unfair terms, and the consumer does not have this right;
giving the seller or supplier the right to terminate an open-ended contract without notice, except where there are serious grounds for doing so;
final binding of the user to conditions with which he had no real opportunity to familiarize himself before the conclusion of the contract;
giving the seller or supplier the right to unilaterally change the terms of the contract without a valid reason, which is indicated in the contract itself;
giving the seller or supplier the right to unilaterally and without good reason change the characteristics of the delivered products or service;
giving the seller or supplier the right to determine alone whether the delivered goods and services are in accordance with the contract, or the exclusive right to interpret the terms of the contract;
obliging the user to fulfill his obligations, even when the seller or supplier does not fulfill theirs;
excluding or impairing the user's right to bring a claim or use other legal remedies.

If any provision of the terms of use of a website appears to be unfair in the above sense, it remains inapplicable in relations with users.