Legal, privacy and process stuff

‘We’, ‘Eicolab’, and ‘Eidesign’ and ‘Eicolab’ means Eidesign Pty Ltd (ACN 076 488 401, ABN 71 076 488 401). Eidesign is a registered Australian company operating in the state of New South Wales. Eicolab (NSW BN98230313) is a trading name wholly owned by Eidesign Pty Ltd.

1. Initial meeting and engagement process
2. Invoices and payments
3. Types of clients
4. Overseas or interstate clients
5. Privacy and confidentiality
6. Intellectual property
7. Warranty
8. Compliance and ethics
9. Subcontractors
10. Subcontracting
11. Responsibilities
12. Websites terms of use
13. Copyright
14. Email disclaimer

1. Initial meeting and engagement process
   1. First contact via email or phone.
   2. Introductory meeting to gain an overall understanding of each other and your project.
   3. Follow up questions.
   4. If detailed specification and requirements are required, this is quoted as a project phase.
   5. An initial project plan; with project phases, outcomes/deliverables. A fixed quote or cost estimate for each of the phases.
   6. With your agreement to the project plan (or detailed specification and requirements if such a document were produced), we start work. Sometimes, an upfront partial payment is required.
   7. As each project phase is completed, we send you an invoice, which you pay. Sometimes, we may ask for a partial payment upfront to kick-off the project.

   

2. Invoices and payments
   1. Most projects with specific deliverables are done on a fixed quote basis.
   2. Some projects are done on an hourly, half-day or full-day rate basis; when our time and attention are needed for an unknown length of time. Our time is rounded up to the nearest hour.
   3. Within reason, we generally don’t charge for project admin things like emails, phone calls, and printing. Of course, if you want us to spend time phone conferencing with you, or carry out an extended email discussion, or print production quantities of documents, they will be quoted as part of your project.
   4. We don’t charge for travel time or costs within the metro area of the city we work in.
   5. Our terms are 14 days from the date on each invoice. You can discuss alternatives to this with us if you like.
   6. If you are late with payment, we will be less attentive.
   7. If you refuse to pay, we will take back our work, which means you can’t use it without breaking copyright laws. And we will never work with you again.
   8. If we do the work, we expect to be paid. If the work does not meet the agreed expectations, we will fix it, or give you your money back.
   9. You can make payments via electronic fund transfer and company cheques. You can also arrange to pay by VISA, MasterCard or American Express – although these may incur an extra charge.
   10. You are responsible for paying any fees that may be charged by your financial institution in the course of transferring funds to us.
   11. If you are a pro-bono client we may issue you with an invoice anyway, as a record of the value of our contribution. But no payment is expected naturally.

   

3. Types of clients
   1. We don’t care how big or little you are, as long as you have the right attitude.
   2. We don’t care what industry sector you are in, as long as you have the right attitude.

   

4. Overseas or interstate clients
   1. We are currently based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
   2. We are open to working with clients from anywhere. This can be done via email and phone, and we may also travel to your location. We will quote on these projects on a case by case basis.

   

5. Privacy and confidentiality
   1. We keep all your details private. We hate spam, junk mail, and intrusive cold calls. We don’t work with or support businesses that use these practices.
   2. Our websites do not secretly collect or store information that can be used to identify you as an individual.
   3. We have a default, blanket non-disclosure practice. Everything we discuss will remain private between us. The only third parties who can access this information are our subcontractors (if they are working on your project) or law enforcement agencies (if they have just cause).
   4. When we talk about your project as a case study, or showcase your project on our online portfolio, we will take care to hide any details that may be construed as “trade secrets”.
   5. If you don’t want us to talk about your project as a case or success story, just let us know.

   

6. Intellectual property
   1. Your intellectual property and trade secrets are yours. We will not lay claim to them.
   2. Our intellectual property and trade secrets are ours. You will not lay claim to them.
   3. In most cases, once you have paid our fees, what we deliver to you will become your intellectual property – where we have the right to hand that ownership to you.
   4. Some of what we deliver may incorporate material licensed from third parties (such as stock photo libraries or open-source and other third party software code) in which case the copyright ownership may not be ours to give away.
   5. Generally, you will be able to use what we create for you for its intended purpose, forever, and without any further payments to us. Of course, we may have a separate agreement to this one that is different.
   6. You may have to pay other third parties – like the web hosting provider, or ongoing licensing fees to third party software vendors.

   

7. Warranty
   1. We provide a lifetime warranty against bugs in any software code we have written ourselves, provided that the software is still being used for its original agreed purpose, and on the originally specified hardware and operating system platforms.
   2. If we use a third party subcontractor to write code, their warranty may differ from ours. In this case, their warranty applies.
   3. We can’t provide warranty on open source software code or code licensed from third parties.

   

8. Compliance and ethics
   1. We have public liability and workers compensation insurance.
   2. We comply with the relevant state and federal corporations and fair trading regulations.
   3. We operate an ethical and legal business. We abide by the law; we treat people fairly; and we contribute to our community.
   4. We do the right thing by the environment – primarily by recycling, minimising printouts, transferring files and purchasing software online, and using power efficient equipment like laptops.
   5. We do the right thing by you our clients. We are into enabling and encouraging your self sufficiency and self reliance; we tell it like it is; and we say no to projects we can’t or won’t do.
   6. We are wary of potential conflict-of-interest situations with clients who are direct competitors. If taking a project for a new client will clearly compromise what we have done for an existing client (who is a direct competitor of the new client), we will decline the new project. We may also discuss any potential conflict-of-interest situations with both the existing and the new client. We never work concurrently on similar projects from directly competing businesses.
   7. We do the right thing by ourselves. We look after ourselves, we stay fresh and interested, and we make sure our business activities support our lives (not the other way around).

   

9. Subcontractors
   1. Except where exceptions are stated, our subcontractors generally work under the same terms outlined in this document.

   

10. Subcontracting
    1. Sometimes we act as subcontractors to other businesses.
    2. In that case, we will be working under the terms and conditions of the business we are subcontracting to. Their terms may be different to ours.

    

11. Responsibilities
    1. We are responsible to you insofar as our work is concerned.
    2. We conduct ourselves ethically and legally and with a high level of transparency.
    3. We look after your interests as well as we do our own.
    4. We are not responsible for your person, your people, your actions, your decisions, the correctness or suitablity of any material you supply us, or how you run your business and conduct your affairs.

    

12. Websites terms of use
    1. All the information on our various websites are presented “as-is”. We will change things when it suits us, and without telling you about it.
    2. We do try our best to spell things corectlu, acknowledge sources, check facts, and say (mostly) responsible things. But we are not perfect, so you need to exercise your best judgement at all times.
    3. Feel free to link to our websites. Feel free to tell others to link to our websites.
    4. If you wish to reproduce any of the material on our websites (in a book or article for example), please ask us before you do so.

    

13. Copyright
    1. Copyright © 2006 Eidesign Pty Ltd, ACN 076 488 401. All rights reserved. Although the content on this site is protected by international copyright laws, we trust that you have the moral decency to do the right thing.
    2. All trademarks and copyrighted intellectual property remain the sole property of their respective owners as appropriate, where indicated or implied. In other words, we are dead serious about intellectual property and would never ever claim ownership of anything that does not belong to us.
    3. Third party content on this site is displayed with the owners’ permission. We have modified some case studies to remove identifying information and trade secrets.
    4. Any information you submit to us via web forms on our websites become our property. Unless it is your trade secret, or it already belongs to someone else.

    

14. Email disclaimer
    1. This disclaimer applies to every email sent by us (written by humans or a machine under our control) through all our email accounts.
    2. This email is intended for the recipient only. It may contain confidential information. If you have mistakenly received this email, please let us know, and then delete this email.
    3. We have scanned this email for viruses at our end. But we cannot guarantee that no viruses have crept in along the way. You need to be responsible for scanning your emails before opening them.
    4. Where it is in our right to do so, we own the copyright of this email.
    5. We use emails a lot to discuss the terms and scope of projects prior to starting actual work. Sometimes, discussion points can unintentionally come across like a contract. Unless we specifically say so in the email, this email is not automatically a binding contract or a promise to do something for you. Please ask us to clarify anything that may be confusing.
    6. Do you really need to print this email or this document?