General conditions of use

These general conditions of use determine the rules for access to the site and users confirm that they accept them, unconditionally, as soon as they are connected to the site. Special conditions determine the conditions of use of areas made available to members for the free communication and/or free publication ("Interactive Services") that users must subscribe to in order to gain access to it.

This site is published by:
Manufacture Française des Pneumatiques Michelin
Place des Carmes Déchaux
63040 Clermont-Ferrand Cedex 9
France
Telephone: (33) 4 73 32 20 00 Fax: (33)4 73 32 63 81
Limited partnership with a share capital of 304,000,000 euros.
855 200 507 R.C.S. Clermont-Ferrand
SIREN N° 855 200 507
Intra-Community VAT N° FR33855200507
Publication Manager: Gérald Sézille, Challenge Bibendum Marketing and Communication Manager.

Hosting:

LINKBYNET
39 Bd Anatole France
93200 Saint Denis
France

Please read these conditions of use carefully before consulting this site.
The companies in the Michelin Group have their own corporate existence and an autonomous corporate personality. However, to simplify communication of the information presented on this site, the following terms may be used: "Michelin", "Group", "Michelin Group" and "we". These terms are used to refer to all the Michelin Group companies, each of which does business independently.

ARTICLE 1: PURPOSE

The purpose of these general conditions of use is to define how Michelin is making the site available to you and how you can access and use this site. All connections to the site are subject to compliance with these general conditions of use, which Michelin reserves the right to modify or update at any time. Access to and use of the site imply your agreement with the present conditions of use and your consent to Michelin’s confidentiality and personal data protection practices.

ARTICLE 2: ACCESS TO THE SITE

Michelin strives to keep the site accessible, without however being subject to any obligation to achieve this. It is specified that access to the site may be modified or interrupted for the purposes of maintenance, updating or any other reason, notably of a technical or legal nature. Under no circumstances shall Michelin be liable for these interruptions and the consequences which could result from them for you.
You are committed to refrain from accessing the site in any fraudulent manner and, notably the interactive services.

ARTICLE 3: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

The contents (notably and non restrictively information, texts, graphs, data, images, photos, illustrations, videos and soundtracks, as well as the form of all these elements and this site) are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. The contents are the exclusive property of their respective publishers. None of the contents may be fully or partially copied, reproduced, represented, used, adapted, altered, modified, translated or broadcast, whether they belong to Michelin or a third party, which assigned rights to Michelin, by any means whatever, with the exception of the restrictive rights that are conceded to you in article 4 below and/or the single copy reserved exclusively for the private use of the copier. The contents presented in this site are liable to modification without prior notice and are presented without any express or tacit guarantee and are not considered as giving any rights of compensation. The contents are protected by copyright © 1997-2009 Michelin or covered by its partners' copyright. The logos are registered trademarks.

ARTICLE 4: USE OF THE CONTENTS

Any alteration and modification of contents or their use for another purpose than previously authorised constitutes an infringement of the property rights of Michelin or of a third party.
Michelin grants you the right to download and broadcast contents within the following limits: (i) when the downloading function is available (ii) for non-commercial purposes (iii) in good faith and (iv) by leaving the indications of property intact as well as the on-lining date stated in the contents, if this information is shown. This right must in no way be interpreted as a license, notably involving brands or logos.

ARTICLE 5: ADVERTISING SPACE

Michelin reserves the right to insert or authorise any third party to insert advertising, promotional and/or sponsoring messages, but however without any intervention on contents. Thus, the video areas included in the proposed video display tool are only managed by the host. These areas are separate from the contents themselves and can under no circumstances call into question the site editor’s content host status.
You are also reminded that the areas reserved for the host can be subject to partnerships and notably be presented with the site host/editor’s name and/or all the latter’s partners’ names.

ARTICLE 6: ELECTRONIC MAIL

You must fill in the e-correspondence forms proposed on the site to correspond with Michelin via e-mail. Michelin’s answers to e-mails, as well as access to the site and contents cannot be related to or be proven to be part of an advertising, promotional or commercial activity in the country where the internaut is located.

ARTICLE 7: PROTECTION OF PERSONAL DATA

You can usually visit our site without having to state your identity or supply any personal information. However, Michelin can sometimes ask you for information, for example, to answer one of your requests, provide you with a service, process an order or for marketing purposes.
Data collected by our site is only intended for Michelin as well as its selected partners and/or service-providers.
Michelin collects anonymous data about your browsing on our site (consulted pages, date and time of inquiry, etc…) in order to offer you a better service. Michelin can use this data to analyse trends or establish Web site statistics and traffic figures. We inform you that you can oppose the recording of these cookies.

However, if you chose to refuse the cookies, then you may not be able to access certain parts of our site. You are entitled to a right of access, rectification and deletion, in compliance with French Law "Informatique et Libertés" (IT and Freedom) n°78-17 of 6 January 1978, modified by Law n°2004-810 of 6 August 2004 for any personal data that you may send to us.
You can also refuse, without charges, that your data is collected and processed by Michelin. Also, you have the right to oppose the use of your data for prospecting, notably for commercial purposes, by way of the "Informatique et Libertés" law. Please write to the following address in order to exercise these rights: MFPM, Place des Carmes Déchaux, 63040 Clermont Ferrand Cedex 9 (department to be filled in).
Our site can contain links to other sites. We inform you that Michelin does not share your personal data with these sites. Also, once you have left our site, you may be subject to other personal data protection practices over which Michelin has no control whatsoever and for which it is not responsible. For further information, please consult: Pratiques de Michelin en matière de confidentialité et de protection des données à caractère personnel (Michelin confidentiality and personal data protection practices) (hypertext link).

ARTICLE 8: GUARANTEE AND LIABILITY

The contents supplied on the site are provided 'as they stand', without any express or tacit guarantee of any kind. Michelin reserves the right to modify, correct, interrupt and/or delete the site's contents or access at any time, without prior notice. Michelin cannot be held responsible in the event of contamination of your computer equipment as a result of the propagation of a virus or other computer 'infections'. You must take all appropriate measures to protect your computer equipment.

Michelin, its employees, suppliers or the partners mentioned on the site cannot be held responsible, under any circumstances, for claims involving contractual responsibility, criminal responsibility or any other claims, for all indirect or direct damage, incidents and accessories of whatever nature or for any prejudice, particularly of a financial or commercial nature, resulting from the use of its site or any item of information obtained from its site.
It is strictly prohibited to set up a hypertext link to any illicit content, as specified in article 2 of the "Special interactive service conditions". The site can contain surface or deep links to Michelin partner or third party sites and deep links must be authorised by the latter. Michelin has no control over these sites and, consequently, cannot be held responsible for their accessibility, relevance, availability, contents, advertising material, products and/or services available at or through these sites. Thus, Michelin is not responsible for any direct or indirect damage that may arise from your access or use of the partner site or due to non-compliance of this site with given regulations.

ARTICLE 9: LEGAL JURISDICTION AND APPLICABLE LAW

Any disputes relating to the site or to these conditions of use shall be brought before the court at Clermont-Ferrand and will be governed and analysed according to French law, on their merits, independently of the rules concerning conflicting legislation. Use of the site indicates the user’s express agreement with the application of this clause. In the event of one of the elements of these conditions of use being judged illegal, null or inapplicable for whatever reason, it will no longer be considered part of the conditions of use and will not affect the validity or application of the other elements.
Special Interactive Service Conditions

The Site Editor makes the following areas available to site users: notably unrestricted areas reserved for free communication between users (forum, on-line debates, possibility of voting about various contents or establishing an interface between the site and your social network site account, etc…) and/or for free publication by users (blog, video-sharing, possibility of posting comments and/or articles, expert advice, etc…) hereafter called "Interactive Services". Thus, the Site Editor acts exclusively as the host of Interactive Services ( hereafter called "The Host") that he makes available for users.

1. User on-lining of contents
The Interactive Services are not part of the Site Editor’s editorial activity. The latter only makes the Interactive Services available to users and stores the contents on his/her own site (photos, videos, texts, files, sound, images etc). Thus, the published contents cannot be considered to reflect the opinions of the site’s editorial staff, but only commit their author. A blog user notably recognises that he/she is the editor.
Also, you can request that the moderator (hypertext link) modifies or deletes contents published under your name, at any time, but you must indicate the publication date and subject of the contents.
It is strictly prohibited to publish on the site any content that may be an infringement of laws and regulations, that is contrary to public policy and morality or harm or undermine a third party’s rights, such as notably contents that are defamatory, injurious, obscene, discriminatory, menacing or contrary to the site’s spirit, counterfeiting a third party’s intellectual property rights, containing a third party’s personal data, containing the picture of a person who has not authorised its publication, violating a person’s privacy without the latter’s authorisation.

2. Illicit contents and abuse
You formally recognise that you are informed that moderation is implemented to control or delete the contents published by the users of Interactive Services that would seem to be an infringement of existing laws and regulations or that have been pinpointed as such by a judicial authority and that you cannot claim any compensation.
Also, if you do not comply with the provisions of these conditions of use, you are liable to be subject to the following measures: deletion of all or part of your contents, suspension of your account for a period of (to be filled in) weeks or deletion of your account and prohibition of any registration in all Michelin sites.
You can also inform us of the publication of any illicit content on the site that you are aware of by clicking on "report illicit contents" (hypertext link). Your misuse of this option may give rise to liability on your part.

3. Limited liability of the host
Michelin is not legally bound to control the contents published on the site by users. Michelin disclaims all liability concerning the given contents and their verification, as users are the only parties responsible for the damaging consequences of the contents that they publish. The host’s liability is that of a technical service-provider as specified in article 6.I-1 of the French Law called "Confiance dans l’Economie Numérique" (Confidence in the Electronic Economy) of 21 June 2004.

However, Michelin can freely inspect all or part of site contents, before or after their publication, at any time. Whatever control facilities may be implemented, the host is not bound by a general obligation to monitor its stored data nor a general obligation to search for facts or circumstances that reveal illegal activities nor a general obligation to guarantee the accuracy, probity or integrity of information published by users due to the high volume of published data.
Users are the sole parties responsible for the contents that they publish on the site. They must guarantee to Michelin that they have all the rights and authorisations required to publish these contents. They guarantee Michelin against any claim, demand, action or remedy by a third party who may claim that all or part of the contents published by a user on the site or via the user are illicit, an infringement of laws and regulations, contrary to public policy and morality or to these conditions of use or undermine the rights of a third party or are detrimental to the latter.
If Michelin is given a sentence after legal proceedings due to such motives, the user who published the contentious contents is committed to reimbursing Michelin of the full amounts that Michelin may have been ordered to pay, including solicitor’s fees and legal expenses.

4. Storage and video sharing area
The host makes technical tools available to users, which enable them to manage their videos, notably reference them and/or enable them to use them in various ways. The host makes reading and/or content access tools available, as well as tools enabling them to produce a list of favourite contents, which users choose on their own and are subject to their sole liability. The host proposes a customised video player, via which users can read their contents or allow the reading of contents referenced by users or authorise a distinct way of reading their contents via the player.
In all cases, users are the sole editors and are responsible for these videos and contents, including when they choose to allow to watch their videos in the distinct player, and for the conditions of use of their contents.
Users are full aware that the contents that they propose on the storage platform can be re-used by third-parties in compliance with conditions of use specified by the users and do hereby accept their sole liability and any consequences.
The host supplies the storage management tools and the platform hosting the contents withholding any liability and without any maintenance obligation.