Terms of Service

1. The subject matter of the contract is the services of the contractor agreed in the respective offer, in particular the design and delivery of hackathons, workshops, training and events in the field of artificial intelligence, plus related consulting, service and work performance.

2. The contractor owes careful performance in line with the state of the art at the time of performance, unless otherwise agreed. The service is to be provided in German, unless otherwise agreed. The contractor is obliged to remain neutral when providing the service.

3. Insofar as consulting or training services are agreed, the contractor owes professional performance, not a specific economic outcome.

1. The contracting parties ensure through organisational measures that the contractor's staff engaged in delivering the service are subject solely to the contractor's right of direction and disciplinary authority. There is no integration into the client's organisation.

2. Both parties name one responsible point of contact each. The client sends requirements exclusively to this point of contact and does not instruct any other engaged staff directly. The engaged staff do not enter into any employment relationship with the client, even when providing services on the client's premises.

3. The contractor generally determines the place and time of the service itself. Time-related, location-related and professional requirements must be observed insofar as they follow from the service description or from agreed schedules or service plans, or are necessary to achieve the purpose of the engagement. The contractor is responsible for the necessary work equipment itself, unless otherwise agreed.

1. Unless otherwise agreed in the contract, upon full payment of the agreed fee the contractor grants the client a simple (non-exclusive), unlimited in time and place, transferable and permanent right to use, store, reproduce and edit the work product created specifically for the client (e.g. concepts, analyses, reports, presentations, individually created prototypes and documentation) for its own business purposes within the client's company.

2. Pre-existing works of the contractor, in particular methods, frameworks, templates, software components, checklists and formats (including the concept and delivery methodology of hackathons and training), remain the contractor's property. The client only receives the right to use them within the scope of using the work product. Independent exploitation, transfer or sublicensing of these pre-existing works is only permitted with separate written consent and, where applicable, against additional payment.

3. The right of use under paragraph 1 only takes effect once the fee owed for it has been paid in full. Until then, use is only permitted for testing and alignment purposes.

4. The moral rights of the contractor and its staff remain unaffected.

1. Where the contractor runs a hackathon, workshop or comparable event for the client, the substantive results developed by the client's participants during it (ideas, prototypes, drafts) belong to the client as between the parties, unless otherwise agreed.

2. The event format, methodology, task briefs, coaching material and the tools and templates provided by the contractor remain the contractor's property (Section 3 paragraph 2).

3. If third parties who are not employees of the client take part in the event, the rights to their results must be arranged separately. The contractor will point out any such need for arrangements but assumes no liability for this.

1. The client supports the contractor in performing the contract and provides the necessary staff, information and access in good time. The client grants the contractor access to the required business premises during normal business hours. If the client fails to meet its cooperation duties in good time, agreed dates shift accordingly; any resulting additional effort may be invoiced separately.

1. If no service hours are agreed, Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (excluding statutory holidays at the contractor's place of business) apply as service hours.

2. If no response times are agreed, work on the relevant service begins without delay after receipt of the corresponding notification within service hours.

1. Statements on delivery dates are non-binding unless expressly confirmed in writing as binding. Partial performance is permitted.

2. Delivery periods are extended by the period during which the contractor is prevented from performing by labour disputes, force majeure, supplier failure, staff illness or other unforeseeable events beyond its control, plus a reasonable restart period. The same applies for as long as the contractor is waiting for information or cooperation from the client.

3. Reminders and deadline notices from the client require text form. If the contractor falls into delay, claims only arise after a reasonable grace period of at least twelve working days has passed without result.

1. Payments are due without deduction within 14 days of receipt of the invoice. The interest rate for maturity and default interest is 9 percentage points above the respective ECB base rate (Section 288 (2) BGB); statutory provisions apply otherwise.

2. The contractor is a small business under Section 19 of the German VAT Act; all prices are therefore stated without VAT shown.

3. The client may only set off undisputed or legally established claims. The client only has a right of retention for claims arising from the same contractual relationship.

1. Insofar as work services are owed, the contractor may, upon completion, request a written statement from the client that the service has been delivered as contracted. The statement must be given within two weeks. Acceptance is deemed to have occurred if the client uses the service for more than four weeks after delivery without giving written notice of material defects, or if the client pays without reservation.

2. For pure services (e.g. ongoing consulting), no acceptance takes place.

1. The client must give written notice of obvious defects within a reasonable period, describing the defect precisely. Late or unfounded notices release the contractor from its performance obligations to that extent; if the contractor nonetheless takes action, it will invoice the effort.

2. If a subsequent remedy has finally failed, the client may reduce the fee or withdraw from the contract. Section 11 applies to damages.

3. The contractor supports the client in troubleshooting even where a defect has not been established. If the service turns out to be free of defects, the contractor will invoice the effort.

4. The warranty lapses if work products have been altered and the client does not prove that the defect is independent of that alteration.

5. The warranty period is one year from acceptance, unless otherwise agreed.

1. The contractor is liable without limitation for intent or gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the Product Liability Act, and for guarantees given.

2. In other cases, the contractor is only liable for breach of a material contractual obligation (cardinal obligation), the fulfilment of which makes proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance the client may regularly rely, and then only limited to the foreseeable, contract-typical damage. Liability is otherwise excluded.

3. No-fault liability for defects already present at the time the contract was concluded (Section 536a BGB) is excluded.

4. Claims for damages against the contractor become time-barred within one year from the start of the statutory limitation period, except in the cases of paragraph 1.

1. The contractor warrants that no third-party rights stand in the way of the rights granted under this contract. If a third party asserts conflicting protective rights against the client, the client will notify the contractor without delay in writing. The contractor may defend against or settle the claims at its own expense, reimburse the client for defence costs, or exchange the affected services for equivalent ones within a reasonable period.

1. The contracting parties keep confidential all confidential information, documents and data that become known to them in the course of the cooperation, do not make them available to third parties, and do not use them outside the purpose of the contract. They bind their engaged staff to confidentiality in writing. The contractor deletes provided data on request and returns or destroys provided documents, insofar as no statutory retention obligations stand in the way. The confidentiality obligation continues after the end of the contract.

1. The parties observe the applicable data protection provisions in each case, in particular the GDPR and the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG).

2. If the contractor processes personal data on the client's behalf, the parties conclude a data processing agreement under Article 28 GDPR before processing begins.

3. Information on the processing of personal data by the contractor as controller can be found in its privacy policy.

1. The client grants the contractor the simple, non-transferable right, revocable at any time for good cause, to use the client's company name and logo as a reference (in particular on the website, in presentations, offers, case studies and on social media). Use is exclusively for the contractor's marketing and advertising purposes, subject to any brand guidelines of the client and without any disparaging or misleading representation. Confidential information will not be disclosed.

2. The client agrees to provide, on request, a short written testimonial after completion of the project or defined project phases. The contractor may only publish positive feedback naming the company name and logo. The testimonial will be submitted to the client for review before publication; approval may not be unreasonably withheld or delayed. Editorial shortening without changing the substance is permitted.

3. These rights apply for an unlimited period, but exclusively for the purpose of the contractor's own promotion. The use of personal data (e.g. names or photos of the client's employees) only takes place with the separate, prior consent of the person concerned. The confidentiality obligations under Section 13 remain unaffected.

1. The place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from this contractual relationship is Berlin, provided the client is a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law.

2. Amendments and supplements to this contract require text form. This also applies to any waiver of this form requirement.

3. The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies exclusively, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

4. Should a provision of these terms be or become invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions remains unaffected.