Last updated: 24th January 2023
1. PollenTree.com
These terms & conditions ("Terms") govern your use of the PollenTree website located at pollentree.com ("Site") and such other country specific PollenTree websites as may be introduced from time to time. Our Terms are drafted to protect the interests of our members and the PollenTree community as a whole.
2. Eligibility
2.1 You must be a minimum age of 21 to register on and use the Site. By registering and using the Site you warrant that you are 21 or older (subject to clauses 2.2 and 2.3 below) and understand your obligations under these Terms.
2.2 PollenTree reserves the right to remove accounts where the member in question is deemed above or below a suitable age to donate, co-parent or adopt. Subject to clause 2.1 above - as guidance we use the minimum and maximum ages as specified by clinics that provide fertility treatments and adoption agencies, in the case of adoption.
2.3 You are not eligible to join PollenTree if you are on bail for, charged with, previously convicted of, or have an unspent conviction for any criminal offence relating to cyber-bullying, harassment, assault, violence, sexual misconduct or fraud, or where you are, or have previously been subject to any civil court order for the same.
2.4 Failure by a member to disclose any relevant information is a breach of these Terms and will result in account removal.
3. Registration
3.1 As part of the registration process you will need to create an account, including a username & password. It is your responsibility to ensure that the information you provide is accurate, not misleading and relates to you. You may only create one account on PollenTree.
3.2 For reasons of privacy and security your username should not contain your surname or any other identifiable information, this includes usernames used on other websites and the wider Internet. PollenTree reserves the right with or without notice to suspend or terminate any account in breach.
3.3 You cannot create an account or username & password (including email address supplied by you) using the names and information of another person or using words that are the trademarks or the property of another party (including PollenTree), or vulgar, obscene or in any other way inappropriate. PollenTree reserves the right with or without notice to suspend or terminate any account in breach.
3.4 If for any reason you suspect that your username & password has been disclosed to or obtained by another party you should contact PollenTree immediately. Please note that PollenTree never contacts users requesting them to confirm their username & password or other details.
4. PollenTree Rules
4.1 PollenTree is intended to be a community where people can express views, comment and exchange messages ("Content"). The views expressed by any user on the Site are their own and not those of PollenTree. As a user you agree not to do any of the following:
1. Abuse, harass, threaten, stalk, defame or harm in anyway seek to violate the rights of another member, third party or a member of PollenTree staff.
2. Publish or seek to distribute any material or information that is unlawful, harmful, obscene, indecent, libellous, profane, defamatory, racist, or in any other way inappropriate or objectionable. Or be a member, current or past of any group that supports or promotes extreme political, religious, or social views, this includes anti-vaxxing and other pseudoscience. To avoid having to moderate profiles that state vaccination status, (whether vaccinated or unvaccinated) - all references to vaccination status will be removed. It is for members to establish the vaccination status of other members.
3. Use or harvest data provided by other members in a way they would object to.
4. Use data provided by other members for purposes other than contacting them via PollenTree.
5. Contact other members in ways they may find inappropriate.
6. Engage in or encourage illegal activity or activity that violates the rights of other PollenTree members or third parties, whether individuals or organisations.
7. Supply or post Content calculated to deliberately mislead other members or third parties, including Content falsely made to appear from or be endorsed by PollenTree.
8. To pose as another member, third party or organisation or PollenTree employee for the purposes of obtaining member or third party information. This includes members of the media, researchers or academics posing as (or allowing themselves to be treated as) regular PollenTree members in order to obtain the details of other members, or where attempting to solicit participation (overtly or covertly) in any media output, research or any other content or study. Furthermore PollenTree reserves the right to report any such behaviour to any relevant media regulatory body or academic ethics body.
9. Provide inaccurate or false information about themselves on the Health Questionnaire or profile pages on PollenTree. Including photos that are not you or where your face is obscured or only partially visible.
10. Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service or any other service or device to disguise or mislead as to your actual location or provide any Content that seeks to disguise or mislead as to your actual location.
11. Use third-party email forwarding or masking services to hide your actual email address.
12. Use PollenTree to advertise that they are willing to enter into a surrogacy arrangement.
13. To transmit or transfer any viruses, trojans, worms or any other malicious programs or code intended to spy on, gain control over, disrupt, destroy or in any other way impair any computer hardware or software or any other equipment.
14. Attempt to gain access to PollenTree servers or other equipment in order to disrupt, impair, overload or otherwise hinder or compromise the safety, security or privacy of any of the services provided by or relied upon by PollenTree and PollenTree members.
15. Reframe, repurpose the Site or any Content on it or remove or obscure any notices or advertising provided by PollenTree on the Site.
16. Load or provide access to Content on the Site or link to other content from the Site, which infringes the trademark, patent, trade secret or any other proprietary right of a third party or infringes any intellectual property law.
17. Make commercial posts or comment spam or attempt to disguise such spam as Content.
18. Send junk or spam emails or posts promoting pyramid schemes, chain letters or any other activity that invites members and others to participate in wasting their time and/or money.
19. Use any robot, spider, scraper or other technical means to access the Site or Content on the Site.
20. Use your PollenTree account or the PollenTree messaging service to send links to another website, whether a personal website or a third-party website.
21. Send messages or information intended to circumvent the messaging filters used on the Site with or without the express purpose of contacting other members who do not have a current or valid subscription. Furthermore, we reserve the right to suspend any such accounts for a period of time or until the member or members in question expressly agree to comply with these Terms.
4.2 If you breach these Terms by sending any unsolicited bulk email, (spam) or any other bulk communications to users (or to third parties where the email is purports to come from PollenTree) your actions will cause harm to PollenTree and the Site. Such harm is difficult to quantify and as such you agree to pay PollenTree the sum of £50/$100 (whichever is the greater) for each and every individual email or other communication sent to a member or third party.
4.3 Place email addresses, telephone numbers, skype, facebook, twitter, chat account details, direct contact information or details of any other third-party service or website on your profile page. Or include any such details as standard in messages sent to free members.
4.4 Use usernames and/or photos from other websites which could lead to being identified or your personal details being disclosed.
4.5 Use PollenTree to promote other websites or services, or your account on any such website or service. Or use your PollenTree account to encourage others to join any other website or service or contact you via any such website or service.
4.6 Place commercial messages, spam or off-topic unrelated content on your profile page, either by use of a photo or photos or text.
4.7 Use offensive or obscene words in any email address, PollenTree account name, PollenTree profile details or accounts with any other third-party service which are made accessible via PollenTree.
4.8 Send messages on PollenTree that contain obscene words or adult content or themes.
4.9 The above list is not intended to be exhaustive. PollenTree reserves the right to remove (with or without notice) Content and suspend or terminate (with or without notice) the account of any member who in the sole judgment of PollenTree is in breach of these rules or the spirit of these rules, and any other part of these Terms
4.10 PollenTree reserves the right to take legal action against any member who has been banned by PollenTree and subsequently and repeatedly goes on to create further accounts on PollenTree in order to avoid their ban. In such cases PollenTree will seek damages to recover all associated costs, (including administrative and technical) incurred in finding and removing such accounts. Furthermore PollenTree will seek to recover all legal costs and court fees incurred in any legal action.
5. Proper Use of PollenTree
5.1 PollenTree enables registered users to contact each other and exchange information.
5.2 PollenTree does not procure gametes for users.
5.3 PollenTree does not advertise for surrogates or on behalf of surrogates.
5.4 PollenTree does not allow members to seek or offer payment to other members, (except reasonable travel expenses).
5.5 The only acceptable method for sperm donation is artificial insemination - both parties must respect this.
5.6 PollenTree does not verify or guarantee the information provided by users or the identity of users.
5.7 PollenTree does not verify or guarantee the physical or mental health of users. It is for a user to request details and require proof of another user's health, including their sexual health. Any health information provided on PollenTree by a user should be independently verified by other users and should not be taken as evidence of the health status of the user providing such information.
5.8 PollenTree does not act as an adoption agency or facilitate adoptions.
6. Content Ownership
6.1 As a user you retain all ownership rights to Content provided by you, except for navigation and navigation headings and introductory text suggested or provided by you for any categories or articles. Navigation and navigation headings, article titles and introductory text are excluded because other users may subsequently add other categories or articles to any category. Therefore such navigation headings and text become part of the Site and pass under the ownership of PollenTree in order to preserve continuity and navigation on the Site.
6.2 By submitting, posting or displaying your Content on the Site you agree to grant a non-exclusive royalty-free licence to PollenTree to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and distribute such Content on the Site. This allows us to place your Content on the Site and let all users, whether registered or not to view your Content. It also allows PollenTree to compress or alter the size of any files you may post onto the Site to ensure that they can be readily displayed for other users.
6.3 As this is a non-exclusive licence you as an individual are free to provide your Content to other websites or other parties, without restriction.
6.4 This licence is also royalty-free, which means that the Content is provided free of charge to PollenTree, and PollenTree will not pay for the Content or account for any revenue generated on the Site or on any specific Content pages.
6.5 This licence is also sub-licensable, which means that PollenTree's partners and affiliates can also use the Content.
6.6 You also agree to allow PollenTree to post your Content, (including profile details and photos) on third-party social media websites, whether direct to those websites in the form of a feed or other service, or via any account(s) managed by PollenTree on such sites.
6.7 This licence also applies worldwide because the Site can be accessed from anywhere in the world, at any time.
6.8 Also as part of the licence you warrant that any Content provided by you does not belong to a third party whose rights have been violated by the Content being posted on to the Site. Furthermore if any Content is owned by a third party you agree to pay all royalties owed to that party, without seeking any contribution from PollenTree.
6.9 Your profile, the content on your profile and any other Content on the Site is free to be indexed by search engines and made searchable by them. Because of this you should not publish personal contact information or your full name on your profile page or other Content pages on the Site.
7. Copyrighted Material
7.1 PollenTree does not condone or encourage in any way the posting of copyrighted or proprietary content or information by any users who are not the legal owners of such content.
7.2 Where notified of such breaches by the owner of such content PollenTree will remove the content from the Site as soon as practicable, but only where the true owner of such content can be reasonably ascertained.
7.3 If as the owner of such content you believe that your rights have been infringed you should use the report link on the Site to notify PollenTree and provide all the information requested on the report form and submit the form to PollenTree electronically and in writing. By submitting the form you warrant that you are, (or act as an agent) for the owner of the content and that you are (or represent) the owner of the content.
8. Content Monitoring and Moderation
8.1 PollenTree reserves the right, (but has no obligation) to moderate and monitor all Content, including member profiles and messages sent via PollenTree.
8.2 Instances where accounts may be moderated and edited, include, (but not limited to) - where a profile contains information that may risk the member being identified, such as profession, personal details, names, ages, profile photos etc. Account profiles may also be edited for the purposes of brevity or to remove details that we deem irrelevant.
8.3 By signing up for an account members agree to moderation and editing of their account - at any time, and solely where PollenTree deems it appropriate to moderate or edit an account.
8.4 If at any time PollenTree decides to monitor or moderate any Content on the Site on any occasion it does not assume any on-going responsibility for removing any Content or the conduct of any users.
8.5 Where a member disagrees with the moderation or editing process or continues to add the particular details back into their account, PollenTree reserves the right to remove the relevant member account - without notice.
9. Subscriptions
9.1 On receipt of a valid payment subscribing members agree to receive full and immediate access to and use of all subscription features, as a consequence in accordance with the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 we do not provide a cooling-off period for cancellation of your subscription, by subscribing you agree to this waiver.
9.2 You may cancel your subscription at any time via your PollenTree account or via your PayPal account, (depending upon the payment method used to subscribe), alternatively, you can also email us directly requesting cancellation. It is for you, the subscriber, to cancel or request cancellation of your subscription. On cancellation the subscription features of your PollenTree account will continue until the expiration of your current subscription period. Please note we do not offer refunds for the period from cancellation to expiration of your subscription period.
9.3 In the event of a disputed transaction we reserve the right (without notice) to remove the associated account and any other account associated with that member - any removal is permanent. We further reserve the right to ban and remove (without notice) any subsequent account. For the avoidance of doubt any ban is permanent.
9.4 Where any transaction is charged back we reserve the right to pass details of the chargeback to credit reference agencies in order to limit fraud.
9.5 Where you have a current and valid subscription and your account is suspended or deleted for breach of these terms and conditions or our code of conduct (or for any other reason) you will not be entitled to any refund of your subscription, regardless of whether the subscription period has been used or is unused.
9.6 All subscriptions purchased in the UK in GB Pounds are subject to VAT at the prevailing rate at the time of purchase. Our VAT registration number is 701648748.
10. Termination
10.1 PollenTree may terminate your user account and all Content and materials associated with it at any time where these Terms have been breached - whether you have a free account or are a current subscriber. Such termination can be with or without notice. As a user you can choose to terminate your account at any time and are free to remove any Content you have created on termination, except for navigation and navigation headings and introductory text.
10.2 Various clauses within these Terms are designed to survive and continue after termination, including (but not limited to) clauses 6, 9, 13, 14, 21.
11. Access
PollenTree takes all reasonable steps to ensure that the Site is available and functioning fully at all times. However, PollenTree does not accept any responsibility for "down-time" or poor performance of PollenTree fileservers or where the Site or any PollenTree service is unavailable for any other reason, whether within or outside the direct control of PollenTree.
12. Disclaimer
12.1 PollenTree is not responsible for the accuracy of any Content on the Site nor any advertisements placed on the Site.
12.2 PollenTree is not responsible for any links to third party websites from the Site and the inclusion of any link does not imply an endorsement of a third party website by PollenTree.
13. Limitation of Liability
PollenTree shall not be liable for any indirect, consequential, exemplary, incidental, special or punitive damages, including loss of profit.
14. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold PollenTree, its subsidiaries, affiliates and partners and their respective officers and employees harmless from any loss, fines, fees, liability or claim made by any third party arising from your breach of these Terms whilst using the Site or any other PollenTree service.
15. Privacy
Use of the Site is also governed by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into this Agreement by this reference.
16. Trademarks & Copyright
16.1 The PollenTree name and logo are the registered trade marks of PollenTree Limited ("PollenTree") and must not be used in any form without the prior written approval of PollenTree.
16.2 The underlying code, (including but not limited to) html, css and php code, look, feel, design, features and layout of the Site are the property of PollenTree, and as such cannot be copied, cloned, scraped or adapted in any form without our express prior written permission.
17. Alteration of Terms
PollenTree is free to alter or revise these Terms at any time and without the requirement to notify users.
18. Acceptance
Your use of PollenTree and any service contained within constitutes acceptance of these Terms.
19. Entire Terms & Conditions
These Terms set out the entire agreement and understanding between you and PollenTree.
20. Severability
The foregoing paragraphs, sub-paragraphs and clauses of these Terms shall be read and construed independently of each other. Should any part of this agreement or its paragraphs, sub-paragraphs or clauses be found invalid it shall not affect the remaining paragraphs, sub-paragraphs and clauses.
21. Waiver
Failure by PollenTree to enforce any accrued rights under these Terms is not to be taken as or deemed to be a waiver of those rights unless PollenTree acknowledges the waiver in writing.
22. Jurisdiction
These Terms shall be interpreted, construed and enforced in accordance with English law and shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts - regardless of where you reside.