Terms of use

Last update : 13 avril 2023

By accessing the www.consortiumdouleuraudos.ca website (hereinafter the “Website”) developed and offered by the Université de Sherbrooke for the Quebec PainResearch Network collectively (hereinafter “QPRN”), (hereinafter referred to as “we” or “us”) as well as services (hereinafter the “Consortium Services”), you agree to all the terms and conditions of use of the Website (hereinafter the “Terms of Use”), as a person living with pain or any other user (hereinafter the “Users”). The QPRN and the Users are collectively referred to as the “Parties” or individually as a “Party”.
IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THESE TERMS OF USE, YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ARE PROHIBITED FROM USING THE WEBSITE AND, IN THE EVENT THAT YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THE WEBSITE, YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY CEASE USE.

1. The Website

1.1. The Website is intended for you to register for the research project: The Quebec Back Pain Study” (hereinafter the “Study”). By accessing the Website, you agree to do so voluntarily, without any external obligation or constraint.

1.2. The Website may contain hyperlinks to third party websites (the “Third Party Websites”) and third party websites”) and such third party websites may be subject to different terms of use and practices regarding the use of your personal information. Consequently, QPRN cannot be held responsible for the continued availability or accuracy of such third party websites and content, products and services available on such Third Party Websites. In any case, QPRN  reserves the right without prior notice to add or remove hyperlinks to Third Party Websites at any time. 

1.3. Due to the nature of the nature of the Internet, QPRN cannot guarantee the continuous, uninterrupted availability uninterrupted availability and accessibility of the Website. The QPRN may suspend temporarily the availability of the Website or certain parts or modules thereof if QPRN deems, in its sole discretion, that changes must be made to the Website, to protect the security or integrity of its servers, or to maintain or improve the Website. You acknowledge and agree that QPRN may improve, enhance or modify the Website or introduce new QPRN Services or remove Services from time to time.

1.4. The Website does not offer medical advice or purport to be a substitute in any way for services offered by duly qualified professionals in the field such as psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, physiotherapists, physiotherapists, nurses and/or any other health care professional. We recommend that you always seek the advice of a health care professional for any questions regarding your health. At any event, you should never exclude, avoid or delay following the recommendations made by your health care professional based on information provided through the Website and its pages, modules and features.

1.5. The Consortium Services should not be used if you require immediate assistance (e.g., acute pain, sudden severe pain, etc.) or in emergency situations. If you are facing an issue that requires immediate help or urgent assistance, you may:

• call the call the Info-Santé 811 telephone line by dialing 811 to communicate with a nurse
• call the information and the Quebec Chronic Pain Association’s information and support line by dialing 1-855-368-5387 and;
• in all cases of emergency, immediately call emergency services by dialing 911 or go promptly to an emergency department of the nearest health care facility where you are.

IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING SUICIDE OR THAT YOU COULD BE DANGEROUS TO YOURSELF OR OTHERS, YOU MUST STOP USING RQRD SERVICES AND CONTACT EMERGENCY SERVICES IMMEDIATELY BY CALLING EMERGENCY SERVICES BY CALLING 911 OR GO IMMEDIATELY TO THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT OF THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT OF THE HEALTH CARE FACILITY NEAREST YOU.

2. Eligibility for the Website

2.1. In order to access and use the Website, you must be a natural person of at least eighteen (18) years of age. Access to and use of certain components of the Website may also be subject to separate policies, standards or norms or may require you to agree to additional terms and conditions before you can access or use certain components of the Website. In the event that there is a conflict between the provisions of these terms and conditions applicable to any other part of the Website, the terms and conditions of such other part of the Website shall prevail, except as otherwise provided in such terms and conditions.

3. Content of user

3.1. The Website may, in whole or in part, be protected by copyright, trademark and/or other applicable laws of Canada and other countries. You acknowledge and agree that the Website including all intellectual property rights therein, are and shall remain the exclusive property of QPRN and/or its licensors or third parties who permit such use. You will not remove, alter or otherwise affect any copyright, trademark or other proprietary notices contained in or accompanying the Website. You acknowledge and agree that the trademarks, service marks, logos, trade names and other intellectual property rights of third parties used on or in connection with the Website are used for identification purposes only and may be the property of their respective owners.

3.2. You will not use, copy, adapt, modify, prepare, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, transmit or transfer, publicly display, transmit or otherwise exploit the Website. No license or right is granted to you implicitly or otherwise under any intellectual property right owned or controlled by QPRN or its licensors, except for the licenses and rights granted herein.

3.3. Subject to your compliance with these Terms of Use, the QPRN grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable exclusive, non-assignable, revocable, non-transferable sublicense to use the Website.

3.4. The QPRN respects all copyright laws and expects its Users to comply with it as well. If you believe that any content on the Website infringes any intellectual property rights you may have, please notify us by emailing us at info@qprn.ca.

4. Intellectual Property

4.1. The Website may, in whole or in part, be protected by copyrights, trademarks and/or other applicable and/or other applicable laws of Canada and other countries. You acknowledge and agree that the Website, including all intellectual property rights therein associated with it, are and shall remain the exclusive property of the QPRN and/or its licensors or third parties who permit such use. You will not remove, alter or otherwise interfere with any copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights incorporated in or accompanying the Website. All trademarks, logos, trade names and any other intellectual property, if any, used on or related to the Website are trademarks or registered trademarks of QPRN in Canada. You acknowledge and agree that the trademarks, service marks, logos, trade names and other intellectual trademarks, service marks, logos, trade names and other intellectual property rights of third parties used on or in connection with the Website are used for identification purposes only and may be the property of their respective owners.

4.2. You will not use, copy, adapt, modify, prepare, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, transmit or otherwise exploit any of the Website. No license or right granted to you by implication or otherwise under any intellectual property rights owned or controlled by QPRN or its licensors, except for the licenses and rights granted in these Terms of Use. Subject to your compliance with these Terms of Use, the QPRN grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Website.

4.3. The QPRN respects and complies with all copyright laws and expects its Users to respect and comply with them as well. If you believe that any content on the Website infringes on the  intellectual property rights of a intellectual property rights of a third party, please notify us by email at the following address info@qprn.ca.

5. Special conditions governing certain modules of the Website

5.1. Each User, specifically persons living with pain, must provide accurate, current and complete information at all times when registering.

5.2. The QPRN reserves the right to accept, refuse, cancel or not process any not process any User’s request for information or any registration to any module of the Website, in its sole discretion, including if any information registration information is inaccurate or not up to date.

5.3. By providing the information required for use of or registration for any module of the Website, you agree to do so voluntarily, without payment, of any consideration, without any obligation and no consequences in case of refusal on Your part.

5.4. Each User acknowledges that the mere fact of being duly registered or of using a module of the Website does not create any promise or commitment on the part of the QPRN to provide anything. For example, any information provided to a User in relation to a research project is discretion of the QPRN and is subject to the availability of available research projects. In the same vein, in no way is the QPRN obligated to provide information regarding research projects, particularly in the event of their unavailability, for any reason whatsoever. Also, in any event, the information provided in relation to research projects is for Your personal use only and the resale or use of it in a commercial context is not permitted.

5.5. By choosing to register or use a module of the a module of the Website, any User does not become a contractual party dealing with contracting party with the QPRN for a given research project, which remains a third party. Also, nothing in these Terms of Use shall be deemed to create or be of a nature to create a relationship between Users and the QPRN, of principal and agent, employer-employee, partnership or joint venture, it being understood and agreed that no provision or any action of the Parties shall be deemed to create between them a relationship other than between independent parties.

5.6. Any research project in which information is provided to persons living with pain shall remain the research project of a researcher for which the researcher assumes sole and exclusive responsibility and accountability with his or her institution of affiliation. In the same way, any modality and condition of a research project cannot in any way be attributable to the QPRN, either in form or in substance; for example, the QPRN has no control over any eligibility criteria for a research project.

5.7. At any event, people living with pain to register or use any module of the Website use any module of the Website, and the fact that the QPRN to transmit information to them, in particular with respect to research projects does not create any professional relationship between a professional and a patient and in no way constitutes an opinion, medical treatment of a particular pathology, and is provided exclusively for the purpose of providing information, particularly in relation to research projects of QPRN researchers.

6. Prohibited activities and conduct

6.1. As a User of the Website, you acknowledge that you are solely responsible for complying with all laws, rules, regulations and obligations that may apply to you in connection with your use of the Website.

6.2. In connection with your use of the Website, you agree not to:

• violate or circumvent any applicable law or regulation, any agreement relating to the rights of employers, partners, third parties or the Terms of Use or the policies or standards or policies or standards adopted by the QPRN;
• use the Website for commercial or other purpose not expressly permitted by these Terms of Use or in a manner that falsely implies or otherwise misleads others about your affiliation with the QPRN;
• copy, store or otherwise access or use any information, including any personal information about another User contained on the Website in any manner that violates the QPRN’s Privacy Policy or these  erms of Use or otherwise violates the privacy of Users and third parties,
• use, display the Website or any individual item found within the Website, the QPRN name, any QPRN trademark, logo or other intellectual property right or design of any page contained on the Website, without the express prior written consent of the QPRN;
• dilute, impair or otherwise violate any trademark owned by the QPRN in any way, including unauthorized including unauthorized use of QPRN Content by registering and/or using the QPRN name or derivative terms in domain names, trade names, trademarks or otherwise by registering and/or using domain names, trademarks or other identifiers that closely mimic or are confusingly similar to the domain name or trademark of the QPRN’s domain name or trademark;
• use any malware to access and/or collect any data about any User of the Website and/or QPRN content found on the Website;
• attempt to decipher, compile or reverse engineer or do anything similar to any software used to provide the Website;
• take any action that damage or affect the performance or proper functioning of the Website; or proper functioning of the Website; or
• violate or infringe the rights of any person or otherwise cause injury to any person.

6.3. You acknowledge that QPRN has no obligation to monitor any User’s access to or use of the Website by any User or to review or edit any QPRN content or block access to anyone but has the right to do so in order to i) operate, secure and improve the Website; ii) ensure compliance and enforcement of the Terms of Use  (iii) comply with any applicable law, order or requirement of a court or other governmental organization; or (iv) otherwise as more fully set forth in these Terms of Use.  The Users agree to cooperate and assist the QPRN in good faith and to provide the information and to take any action that may be reasonably required by the QPRN to comply with any investigation undertaken by the QPRN or a representative of QPRN with respect to the use or misuse of the Website.

7. Warranty exclusions

7.1. The QPRN makes no representations and warranties regarding the proper working order of the Website, its condition, its suitability for use or the absence of errors or interruptions during its use.  The QPRN makes no representation or warranty representations or warranties as to the accuracy, truthfulness or representativeness of any other content that QPRN may make available through the Website.

7.2. Without limiting the the generality of the foregoing, whereas the Website contains hyperlinks to hyperlinks to third party websites and that QPRN has no control over the content of of such third party websites, the QPRN makes no warranty and shall not be liable for the validity of the content, products and services offered, if applicable, on the Third Party Websites, any compatibility issues with the Third Party Websites with your computer equipment and systems, contamination by computer viruses due to the use of the Third Party Websites, or the lack of data protection, if any, on the Third Party Websites, the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information on such third party websites.

7.3. THE COMPONENTS OF THE WEBSITE COMPONENTS, CONTENT AND/OR QPRN SERVICES (IF ANY) ARE PROVIDED TO YOU “AS IS” AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. “AS IS” AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. QPRN DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS, WRITTEN OR ORAL, STATUTORY OR CONTRACTUAL, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF QUALITY, DURABILITY, SUITABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

7.4. The QPRN shall not be liable for any damages arising from your use of the Website and the QPRN Services offered on the Website. QPRN makes no representations or warranties and expressly excludes by these Terms of Use any liability for any treatment or action following information offered, or submitted directly or indirectly, if any through the Website.

7.5. The use of the Website and the QPRN Services is at your sole risk.

8. Limitation of liability

YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE ENTIRE RISK RESULTING FROM YOUR ACCESS AND USE OF THE WEBSITE, THE PROVISION OF QPRN SERVICES OR THE USE SERVICES OR USE OF ANY OTHER SERVICES OR ANY OTHER INTERACTION YOU MAY HAVE, WHETHER IN PERSON OR ONLINE, REMAINS YOURS. NEITHER THE QPRN NOR ANY OTHER PARTY INVOLVED IN CREATING, PRODUCING OR DELIVERING THE WEBSITE BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST INCLUDING LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF GOODWILL, INTERRUPTION OF LOSS OF GOODWILL, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, COMPUTER DAMAGE, SYSTEM FAILURE, REPLACEMENT COSTS OR FOR ANY DAMAGES OR INCONVENIENCE OR ANY HARM RELATED TO:

• THESE TERMS OF USE,
• THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE WEBSITE, OR
• ANY COMMUNICATION, INTERACTION OR MEETING, IF ANY, WITH ANY PERSON WITH WHOM YOU MAY COMMUNICATE, INTERACT OR MEET AS A RESULT OF YOUR USE OF THE WEBSITE (INCLUDING HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS AND MEMBERS), WHETHER BASED ON STATUTORY WARRANTY, CIVIL AND EXTRA-CONTRACTUAL LIABILITY (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), PRODUCT LIABILITY OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY AND WHETHER OR NOT QPRN HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

9. Indemnification

9.1. To the maximum extent permitted by permitted by any applicable law, you agree to release, defend (at QPRN’s option), indemnify and hold QPRN, including but not limited to their officers, directors, employees and agents, from and against all claims, liabilities, damages, losses and expenses including, without limitation, all legal and accounting fees, arising out of or in any way related to:

• your violation of these Terms of Use or any other QPRN policy or standard
• your improper use of the Website or the QPRN Services,
• your violation of any law, regulation or third party right.

10. Privacy

10.1. The QPRN may collect personal information that you provide when you visit the Website. Access to and use of personal information is subject to the terms and conditions of the QPRN’s Privacy Policy.

10.2. The QPRN may provide hyperlinks to third party websites on the Website. These third party websites may contain terms and conditions and privacy policies that are different from those of the QPRN. The QPRN is not responsible for personal information that is collected, used or disclosed by any third party website and the QPRN expressly disclaims any liability related to such collection, use or disclosure.

11. Changes to Terms of use

11.1. In general, we reserve the right to modify these Terms of Use at any time without notice. You can check to see if these Terms of Use have been modified and updated by referring to the “Last Updated” date at the top of this document. In any event, your continued use of the Website after any changes to the Terms of Use constitutes your acceptance of such modification.

12. General

12.1. These Terms of Use shall be governed by the applicable laws of the Province of Quebec.

12.2. If any provision of these Terms of Use is or becomes invalid or unenforceable, the Parties will continue to be bound by the remaining provisions of these Terms of Use. In such event, the Parties will replace the invalid or unenforceable provision with provisions that have, to the greatest extent possible, a similar effect to the invalid or unenforceable, taking into account the content and purpose of these Terms of Use.

12.3. You agree that these Terms of Use and all of the agreements that form part of them may be automatically assigned by QPRN at its sole and absolute discretion without notice to you, subject to applicable law.

12.4. The headings in these Terms of Use are for reference purposes only and may not be used in any way to interpret any section. The words “including” shall be deemed to be followed by the words “without limitation”.

12.5. Failure of a Party to act on a breach by another Party shall not constitute a waiver of that Party’s rights to act with respect to subsequent or similar violations.  

12.6. These Terms of Use govern your use of the Website and supersede any agreement and/or understanding, if any, between the Parties whether oral or written.

12.7. Any notice required to be given under the Terms of Use, any question relating to the Website or the QPRN Services must be sent to the QPRN by e-mail at the following email address: info@qprn.ca.