PLEASE READ CAREFULLY BEFORE ACCESSING ANY SERVICES VIA THIS PLATFORM:

This licence agreement (Licence) is a legal agreement between you (Licensee or you) and the University of Bristol, a body incorporated by Royal Charter under number RC000648 having its administrative offices at Senate House, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TH (Licensor, us or we) for:

  • Access to the OpenGWAS platform (Services).
  • Any online software applications provided as part of the Services, but excluding any open source software, which is not licensed under this License and which we are under no obligation to maintain (Software).
  • Any online documents provided as part of the Services (but excluding any Datasets made available via the Services) (Documents).

We make the Services, Software and Documents available to you on the basis of this Licence. We do not sell the Services, Software or Documents to you. We, or our licensors, remain the owners of the Services, Software and Documents at all times. Your attention is drawn in particular to conditions 2.3 to 2.8 inclusive which cover the limitations around Datasets and their use, and the obligations placed on Licensees with respect to Datasets.

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL USERS:

  • BY PROCEEDING TO USE THE SERVICES, YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS LICENCE WHICH WILL BIND YOU. THE TERMS OF THIS LICENCE INCLUDE, IN PARTICULAR, LIMITATIONS ON LIABILITY IN CONDITION 8.
  • IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS LICENCE, YOU MUST NOT ACCESS THE SERVICES, SOFTWARE OR DOCUMENTS.

1. LICENCE

1.1 The following defined terms are used in this Licence:

  1. Authorised Users means end users of the Services, the Software and the Documents.
  2. Dataset means a Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) summary dataset made available via the Service.
  3. Export Control Regulations means any United Nations trade sanctions, UK or EU legislation or regulation, from time to time in force, which impose arms embargoes or control the export of goods, technology or software.
  4. Good Industry Practice means the exercise of that degree of skill, care, prudence, efficiency, foresight and timeliness as would be expected from a leading company within the relevant industry or business sector, or an academic operating in the user’s field, as applicable.
  5. Licensee Data means the data inputted by or on behalf of you, for the purpose of using or facilitating your use of the Services, Software or Documents and any data generated by, or derived from your use of the Services, Software or Documents, whether hosted or stored within the Services, the Software or elsewhere.
  6. User Account means the account set up by each Authorised User to enable access to the Services.
  7. Virus means any code, device or similar which may: prevent, impair or otherwise adversely affect the operation of any computer software, hardware or network, any telecommunications service, equipment or network or any other service or device; prevent, impair or otherwise adversely affect access to or the operation of any programme or data, including the reliability of any programme or data; or adversely affect the user experience.
  8. Vulnerability means a weakness in the computational logic (for example, code) found in software and hardware components that when exploited, results in a negative impact to the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the Services, and the term Vulnerabilities shall be interpreted accordingly.

1.2 In consideration of you agreeing to abide by the terms of this Licence, we grant to you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence, without the right to sublicense, to access and use the Services (and the Software and the Documents in connection with the Services) on the terms of this Licence.

1.3 Except for Authorised Users covered by a commercial license with us (see condition 3 below), this Licence is strictly limited to access and use of the Services for private or non-commercial research purposes.

1.4 You shall:

  1. provide us with:
    1. all necessary co-operation in relation to this Licence; and
    2. all necessary access to such information as may be required by the Licensor,
    to the extent required to provide the Services, Software and Documents including but not limited to Licensee Data, security access information and configuration services;
  2. without affecting your other obligations under this Licence, comply with all applicable laws and regulations with respect to your activities under this Licence; and
  3. ensure that, exercising your rights pursuant to this License, you shall not breach or compromise, directly or indirectly, compliance with any Export Control Regulations.

1.5 You shall have sole responsibility for the legality, reliability, integrity, accuracy and quality of all Licensee Data. You hereby license us to use the Licensee Data for:

  1. the proper performance of the Services, including the provision of the Software and the Documents;
  2. the purposes set out in our Privacy Notice as described in condition 12; and
  3. all other purposes relevant to the proper exercise of our rights and obligations under this License.

1.6 You undertake that:

  1. you will not allow your User Account to be used by anyone other than you; and
  2. you shall comply with all applicable technology control or export laws and regulations.

2. RESTRICTIONS

2.1 Except as expressly set out in this Licence, you shall not:

  1. circumvent technical limits or rate limits;
  2. use automated means to access the Services except via the APIs in accordance with the documentation set out at https://api.opengwas.io/api/;
  3. interfere with the operation of the Services;
  4. use the Services to identify any living individual;
  5. use the Services or the Datasets in any way which could breach (or put us in breach of) applicable Dataset licences;
  6. attempt to copy, modify, duplicate, create derivative works from, frame, mirror, republish, download, display, transmit, or distribute all or any portion of the Software, Services and/or Documents (as applicable) in any form or media or by any means (this does not prevent you from accessing and using the Datasets made available via the Services); or
  7. attempt to de-compile, reverse compile, disassemble, reverse engineer or otherwise reduce to human-perceivable form all or any part of the Software or Services;
  8. access all or any part of the Services, Software or Documents to build a product or service which competes with the Services, Software or the Documents;
  9. use the Services, Software or Documents to provide services to third parties;
  10. license, sell, rent, lease, transfer, assign, distribute, display, disclose, or otherwise commercially exploit, or otherwise make the Services, Software or Documents available to any third party; or
  11. attempt to obtain, or assist third parties in obtaining, access to the Services, Software or Documents, other than as provided under this Licence (or by such third party entering into a separate license to enable such activity).

2.2 You shall not use the Services to:

  1. distribute or transmit to the Licensor any Viruses or Vulnerability and shall implement procedures in line with Good Industry Practice to prevent such distribution or transmission;
  2. store, access, publish, disseminate, distribute or transmit any material which:
    1. is unlawful, harmful, threatening, defamatory, obscene, infringing, harassing or racially or ethnically offensive (including, without limitation, using the Service or the data available through the Service to make claims about racial superiority or in any way which might stigmatize, discriminate against, or persecute vulnerable populations);
    2. facilitates illegal activity;
    3. promotes unlawful violence;
    4. is discriminatory based on race, gender, colour, religious belief, sexual orientation, disability; or
    5. is otherwise illegal or causes damage or injury to any person or property,

and we reserve the right to disable your access to the Services, Software and Documents in the event that you breach this condition.

2.3 No licence to Datasets: unless specified within an individual Dataset the Licensor does not own the Datasets and does not grant any licence or make any representation regarding rights to use any Dataset. You are solely responsible for determining and obtaining any necessary rights, permissions or approvals required from the owner or licensor of the relevant Dataset for its intended use (including, without limitation, for any commercial use, where you are using the Services pursuant to a commercial license). The Licensor does not mediate or guarantee any such rights (including any commercial use).

2.4 Licence metadata and flags: where licence or usage information is provided by the relevant Dataset owner or is otherwise publicly available, the Licensor will endeavour to surface that information within the Services (e.g., metadata fields and “Open Access” flags) to assist your assessment and compliance with condition 2.3 above. The Licensor does not warrant that such information is accurate, complete or up-to-date.

2.5 Restricted Datasets: the Licensor may restrict or disable access to particular Datasets (including, without limitation restricting access for Datasets by flagging them as “Restricted Access”). Such restrictions may change at any time to reflect information from or requirements of Dataset owners or licensors.

2.6 Exclusion of Warranties: we do not warrant that:

  1. Datasets (and / or any licensing information provided in respect of the same) made available via the Services will be accurate or up to date (including, without limitation, where Datasets have been harmonised or otherwise modified by us);
  2. your use of the Services will be uninterrupted or error-free;
  3. that the Services, Documentation and/or the information obtained by you through the Services will meet your requirements;
  4. the Software or the Services will be free from Vulnerabilities or Viruses;
  5. the Software, Documentation or Services will comply with any specific cybersecurity requirements.

2.7 The Services, Software, Documents and Datasets are not intended to be used as:

  1. a medical device to directly diagnose a disease or other condition;
  2. a primary diagnostic tool by physicians; or
  3. a substitute for professional healthcare advice,

and you are responsible for ensuring compliance of your work with applicable international, national and local clinical laboratory regulations and other applicable specific accreditation requirements.

2.8 Subject to any minimum service levels which apply users accessing the Services by virtue of a valid organisation-level platform subscription agreement only (in respect of which see section 3 below), the availability and scope of the Services (and any Software or Datasets made available through the same) may be modified, suspended, or discontinued at any time without notice, in accordance with resource constraints.

3. COMMERCIAL USERS

3.1 Commercial users are able to access the Services by virtue of an organisation-level platform subscription agreement. This agreement contains other important terms governing the use of the Services by Authorized Users for commercial purposes (including on payments access by individual Authorized Users, overage rates and important information about limitations on access to certain Datasets).

3.2 If you use the Services for commercial purposes without having a commercial license in place, this will be a breach of this License, and in the case of such breach we reserve the right to charge you our current annual fees from time to time for commercial access.

3.3 If you do not have a commercial license but wish to purchase one, please get in touch via email at ieu-opengwas@bristol.ac.uk.

4. API LIMITATIONS

4.1 You understand and agree that the number of calls the Customer may make through the APIs provided as part of the Services are limited based on those levels set out at https://api.opengwas.io/api/.

4.2 We reserve the right to throttle or suspend access to the APIs to ensure stability, security, and availability, or in the case of a breach by you of this License.

4.3 You agree that you will not attempt to download Datasets in bulk through API queries (even where this is made available via the Services) or otherwise use the Services, in each case in a way that might adversely affect the performance or operation of the Services for other users.

5. THIRD PARTY PROVIDERS

5.1 You acknowledge that the Services may enable or assist you to access the published content of third parties (including, without limitation, the Datasets, in respect of which your attention is drawn to conditions 2.3 to 2.8 inclusive above) and you do so solely at your own risk.

5.2 We make no representation, warranty or commitment and shall have no liability or obligation whatsoever in relation to the content or use of, or correspondence with, any such third-party published content (including, without limitation, the Datasets), or any engagement between you and any such third party.

5.3 We recommend that you refer to the third party's website or platform terms and conditions and privacy policy prior to using the relevant third-party content. We do not endorse or approve or warrant the accuracy of any third-party content made available via the Services (including, without limitation, the Datasets).

6. CREDITS

6.1 You agree to cite any use of the Services in accordance with the following provisions:

If data is accessed through the APIs provided as part of the Software, you should cite:

The MRC IEU OpenGWAS data infrastructure. Ben Elsworth, Matthew Lyon, Tessa Alexander, Yi Liu, Peter Matthews, Jon Hallett, Phil Bates, Tom Palmer, Valeriia Haberland, George Davey Smith, Jie Zheng, Philip Haycock, Tom R Gaunt, Gibran Hemani. bioRxiv 2020.08.10.244293v1. doi: 10.1101/2020.08.10.244293

The MR-Base platform supports systematic causal inference across the human phenome. Hemani G, Zheng J, Elsworth B, Wade KH, Baird D, Haberland V, Laurin C, Burgess S, Bowden J, Langdon R, Tan VY, Yarmolinsky J, Shihab HA, Timpson NJ, Evans DM, Relton C, Martin RM, Davey Smith G, Gaunt TR, Haycock PC, The MR-Base Collaboration. eLife 2018;7:e34408. doi: 10.7554/eLife.34408

If using GWAS-VCF files, the Customer should cite:

The variant call format provides efficient and robust storage of GWAS summary statistics. Matthew Lyon, Shea J Andrews, Ben Elsworth, Tom R Gaunt, Gibran Hemani, Edoardo Marcora. bioRxiv 2020.05.29.115824; doi: 10.1101/2020.05.29.115824

6.2 You agree to observe and comply with any notice requiring citation of the original source of any Datasets in your analyses in the form set out in such notice, whenever you publish or otherwise publicly disclose results derived from the use of the same (Pubmed IDs are made available through the meta data).

7. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

7.1 You acknowledge that all intellectual property rights in the Services, Software and Documents anywhere in the world belong to us or our licensors, that rights in the Services, Software and Documents are licensed (not sold) to you, and that you have no rights in, or to, the Services, Software or the Documents other than the right to use them in accordance with the terms of this Licence.

7.2 You agree and acknowledge that, unless specified within an individual Dataset, we do not own the Datasets which are accessible via the Services and we do not assert any intellectual property rights in them.

7.3 You acknowledge that you have no right to have access to any Software in source code form.

8. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

8.1 You accept responsibility for the selection of the Services to achieve your intended results and acknowledge that the Services, Software and Documents have not been developed or designed to meet or support any individual requirements you have, including any particular cybersecurity requirements you might be subject to, or any regulated activity that you may be engaged in, including the provision of an online intermediation service, an online search engine (each a Regulated Activity).

8.2 If you use the Services for any Regulated Activity you agree to comply with any requirements that apply to such Regulated Activity from time to time (including in any jurisdiction in which you operate or where the Regulated Activity is undertaken) and you shall defend, indemnify and hold us harmless against any loss or damage (including regulatory fines or penalties) costs (including legal fees) and expenses which we may suffer or incur as a result of your breach of this condition 8.2.

8.3 You assume sole responsibility for the results obtained from the use of the Services and any Datasets and for conclusions drawn from such use.

8.4 We shall not in any circumstances whatever be liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, arising under or in connection with the Licence for:

  1. loss of profits, sales, business, or revenue;
  2. business interruption;
  3. loss of anticipated savings;
  4. wasted expenditure;
  5. loss or corruption of data or information;
  6. loss of business opportunity, goodwill or reputation; or
  7. any special, indirect or consequential loss, damage, charges or expenses.

8.5 Subject to condition 8.6, and other than the losses set out in condition 8.4 (for which we are not liable), our maximum aggregate liability under or in connection with this Licence whether in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise, shall in all circumstances be limited to one hundred pounds £100. Our liability in the case of a commercial license is capped under the agreement between us and the organisation who has purchased the license, and in no circumstances shall our liability (whether to you or the entity who signs the commercial license) exceed that cap.

8.6 Nothing in this Licence shall limit or exclude our liability for:

  1. death or personal injury resulting from our negligence;
  2. fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; or
  3. any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law.

8.7 This Licence sets out the full extent of our obligations and liabilities in respect of the supply of the Services, Software and Documents. Except as expressly stated in this Licence, there are no conditions, warranties, representations or other terms, express or implied, that are binding on us. Any condition, warranty, representation or other term concerning the supply of the Services and Documents which might otherwise be implied into, or incorporated in, this Licence whether by statute, common law or otherwise, is excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law.

8.8 The creation of the Software has been made possible by contributions from various third party funders. Acknowledging this, we hereby exclude (and the Customer hereby agrees the exclusion of) all warranties by Cancer Research UK, Cancer Research Horizons or any other third party funder, in respect of the Services, the Documentation or the Software.

9. TERMINATION

9.1 We may terminate this Licence immediately by written notice to you if you commit a breach of this Licence.

9.2 On termination for any reason:

  1. all rights granted to you under this Licence shall cease;
  2. you must immediately cease all activities authorised by this Licence; and
  3. you must immediately and permanently delete or disable interfaces to the Services from all computer equipment in your possession, and immediately destroy, delete or return to us (at our option) all copies of the Documents and Software then in your possession, custody or control and, in the case of destruction or deletion, certify to us that you have done so.

10. COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN US

10.1 We may update the terms of this Licence at any time on notice to you in accordance with this condition 10. Your continued use of the Services, Software and Documents following the deemed receipt and service of the notice under condition 10.3 shall constitute your acceptance to the terms of this Licence, as varied. If you do not wish to accept the terms of the Licence (as varied) you must immediately stop using and accessing the Services, Software and Documents on the deemed receipt and service of the notice.

10.2 If we have to contact you, we will do so by email.

10.3 Any notice:

  1. given by us to you will be deemed received and properly served 24 hours after it is first posted on our website, or 24 hours after an email is sent; and
  2. given by you to us will be deemed received and properly served 24 hours after an email is sent.

10.4 Where you serve notice under this License, a copy of such notice must be sent in the same manner to: Legal Services, Office of the University Secretary, Beacon House, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1QU with a copy sent by email to legal-services@bristol.ac.uk.

10.5 In proving the service of any notice, it will be sufficient to prove, in the case of posting on our website, that the website was generally accessible to the public for a period of 24 hours after the first posting of the notice; and, in the case of an email, that such email was sent to the email address of the recipient given for these purposes.

11. EVENTS OUTSIDE OUR CONTROL

11.1 We will not be liable or responsible for any failure to perform, or delay in performance of, any of our obligations under this Licence that is caused by an Event Outside Our Control. An Event Outside Our Control is defined below in condition 11.2.

11.2 An Event Outside Our Control means any act or event beyond our reasonable control, including without limitation failure of public or private telecommunications networks.

11.3 If an Event Outside Our Control takes place that affects the performance of our obligations under this Licence:

  1. our obligations under this Licence will be suspended and the time for performance of our obligations will be extended for the duration of the Event Outside Our Control; and
  2. we will use our reasonable endeavours to find a solution by which our obligations under this Licence may be performed despite the Event Outside Our Control.

12. DATA PROTECTION

12.1 Under data protection legislation, we are required to provide you with certain information about who we are, how we process the personal data of those individuals who use the Services, Software and the Documents and for what purposes and those individuals’ rights in relation to their personal data and how to exercise them. This information is provided at https://opengwas.io/policies/privacy (Privacy Notice) and it is important that you read that information prior to using the Services.

13. OTHER IMPORTANT TERMS

13.1 We may transfer our rights and obligations under this Licence to another organisation, but this will not affect your rights or our obligations under this Licence.

13.2 You may only transfer your rights or your obligations under this Licence to another person if we agree in writing.

13.3 This Licence and any document expressly referred to in it constitutes the entire agreement between us and supersedes and extinguishes all previous and contemporaneous agreements, promises, assurances and understandings between us, whether written or oral, relating to its subject matter.

13.4 You acknowledge that in entering into this Licence you do not rely on and shall have no remedies in respect of any statement, representation, assurance or warranty (whether made innocently or negligently) that is not set out in this Licence.

13.5 You agree that you shall have no claim for innocent or negligent misrepresentation or negligent misstatement based on any statement in this Licence.

13.6 A waiver of any right or remedy is only effective if given in writing and shall not be deemed a waiver of any subsequent right or remedy.

13.7 A delay or failure to exercise, or the single or partial exercise of, any right or remedy does not waive that or any other right or remedy, nor does it prevent or restrict the further exercise of that or any other right or remedy.

13.8 Each of the conditions of this Licence operates separately. If any court or competent authority decides that any of them are unlawful or unenforceable, the remaining conditions will remain in full force and effect.

13.9 This Licence, its subject matter and its formation (and any non-contractual disputes or claims) are governed by English law. We both irrevocably agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.