1. About these terms

These Terms & Conditions (the “Terms”) govern your access to and use of cottonhat.net and any content, functionality or service offered through it (the “Site”).

By using the Site you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the Site.

These Terms govern the Site itself. They do not, on their own, constitute an agreement for us to perform services — see section 6.

2. Who we are

The Site is operated by Cottonhat Software Unipessoal LDA, trading as Cottonhat Studio, a company incorporated in Portugal. The following details are published in accordance with Decreto-Lei n.º 7/2004 on information society services.

3. Using the Site

You may view, browse and print pages of the Site for your own information or for legitimate business evaluation of our services. You agree not to:

• use the Site for any unlawful or fraudulent purpose;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Site, its servers, or any connected system or network;
• introduce viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other malicious code, or launch a denial-of-service attack;
• scrape, crawl, mirror or systematically extract content except by a search engine crawler complying with our robots.txt;
• use the Site or its content to train an AI or machine learning model without our prior written permission;
• impose an unreasonable load on our infrastructure, or interfere with anyone else’s use of the Site;
• remove or obscure any copyright, trade mark or other proprietary notice.

We may suspend or withdraw access to all or part of the Site, without notice, where we reasonably believe these Terms have been breached. Breaching them may also be a criminal offence under Lei n.º 109/2009 (the Portuguese Cybercrime Law), and we will report it to the relevant authorities where appropriate.

4. Intellectual property

All intellectual property rights in the Site — including its text, graphics, photographs, logos, layout, design, source code and the selection and arrangement of its content — belong to us or to our licensors, and are protected by Portuguese and international copyright and trade mark law, including the Código do Direito de Autor e dos Direitos Conexos.

“Cottonhat” and the Cottonhat logo are our trade marks. You may not use them without our prior written consent.

You may quote short extracts from our blog for commentary, criticism or news reporting, provided you attribute them to Cottonhat Studio and link to the original page. Any other reproduction, distribution, modification, republication or commercial exploitation requires our written permission.

Rights in work we produce for a client are dealt with in the contract for that engagement, not here.

5. Information you send us

When you use the contact form or write to us, you agree that the information you provide is accurate, that you are entitled to provide it, and that it does not infringe anyone else’s rights or breach any law.

Please do not send confidential information through the contact form. Email is not a secure channel, and material sent before a non-disclosure agreement is in place is not treated as confidential. If you need to share something sensitive, tell us and we will arrange an NDA and a secure channel first.

If you send us an unsolicited idea, concept or proposal, you accept that we may already be working on something similar and that we are under no obligation of confidence, compensation or attribution in respect of it. Nothing in this paragraph affects a written agreement signed between us.

We handle personal data as described in our Privacy Policy.

6. Services and client engagements

The descriptions of services, case studies and indicative capabilities on the Site are for information only. They are an invitation to discuss a project, not an offer capable of acceptance, and they do not form part of any contract.

We only become obliged to perform services once we have signed a proposal, statement of work, master services agreement or equivalent written document with you. Those documents set out the scope, the deliverables, the timeline, the fees, the payment terms, the intellectual property arrangements, the confidentiality obligations and the liability position for that engagement.

Where a signed engagement document conflicts with these Terms, the engagement document prevails for matters relating to that engagement.

7. Accuracy of content and no professional advice

We take care over what we publish, but the Site — including blog posts and technical articles — is provided for general information. It is not technical, legal, financial or professional advice, and it must not be relied on as such.

Content reflects our view at the time of writing. Technology moves; we are under no obligation to update a published article, and we do not warrant that its content remains current, complete or accurate. Take your own advice before acting on anything you read here.

8. Third-party links and services

The Site links to and loads resources from third parties, including Google Fonts, Google Tag Manager and our content platform. Links are provided for convenience only. We do not control those sites and services, do not endorse them, and are not responsible for their content, availability or practices. Your use of them is governed by their own terms.

9. Availability and changes to the Site

The Site is made available free of charge. We do not guarantee that it will be available uninterrupted or error-free, and we may suspend, withdraw or restrict all or part of it for business or operational reasons, including maintenance, without notice or liability.

We may change the content of the Site at any time, and may amend these Terms as described in section 15.

You are responsible for arranging your own access to the Site and for ensuring that everyone who accesses it through your connection is aware of these Terms.

10. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Site and its content are provided “as is” and “as available”, and we exclude all conditions, warranties, representations and other terms that might otherwise be implied by statute, common law or equity, including as to accuracy, completeness, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement and freedom from error or malicious code.

We do not warrant that the Site or the server that makes it available are free of viruses or other harmful components. You are responsible for configuring your own devices and virus protection.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for wilful misconduct or gross negligence, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited under Portuguese law.

11. Limitation of liability

Subject to section 10, and to the fullest extent permitted by law:

• we exclude all liability for loss or damage arising from use of, or inability to use, the Site, or from reliance on any content on it;
• we are not liable for loss of profits, revenue, business, anticipated savings, goodwill, data, or for any indirect or consequential loss, however arising;
• where liability cannot be excluded, our total aggregate liability in connection with the Site is limited to €500.

Liability arising from a client engagement is governed by the contract for that engagement, not by this section.

If you are a consumer within the meaning of Lei n.º 24/96, these limitations apply only to the extent that Portuguese consumer protection law permits, and your statutory rights are unaffected.

12. Indemnity

If you use the Site in breach of these Terms in the course of a business or professional activity, you agree to indemnify us against any loss, liability, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) we incur as a result. This does not apply to consumers.

13. Privacy and cookies

Our handling of personal data, and our use of cookies and similar technologies, is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms. Please read it before using the Site.

14. General

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, the remainder continues in force, and the invalid provision is replaced by a valid one that comes closest to its commercial intent.

No waiver. If we delay in enforcing a right under these Terms, that is not a waiver of it, and it does not prevent us from enforcing it later.

Assignment. You may not assign or transfer your rights under these Terms. We may assign ours to a successor to our business, provided your rights are not adversely affected.

Third parties. Only you and we have rights under these Terms. No third party may enforce any of them.

Force majeure. We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including network or hosting failures, power outages, industrial action, acts of government, natural disasters and armed conflict.

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between us regarding use of the Site, and supersede any prior understanding on that subject.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may revise these Terms at any time. The revised version takes effect when published on this page, and the date at the top shows when it last changed. Please check back periodically — continuing to use the Site after a change means you accept the revised Terms. Terms of a signed engagement can only be varied in writing between the parties.

16. Governing law and disputes

These Terms, their subject matter and their formation are governed by the law of Portugal. The courts of the district of Lisbon have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or in connection with them.

If you are a consumer, this choice does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory rules of the country in which you are habitually resident, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country.

Consumer dispute resolution

Consumers may refer a dispute to an alternative dispute resolution entity under Lei n.º 144/2015. A list of the authorised entities is maintained by the Direção-Geral do Consumidor at www.consumidor.gov.pt. Complaints may also be submitted through the electronic complaints book at www.livroreclamacoes.pt.

Before that, we would rather hear from you directly — write to info@cottonhat.net and we will try to resolve it.

17. How to reach us

Questions about these Terms:

• Email: info@cottonhat.net
• Telephone: +351 927 344 725 (National mobile call)
• Post: Avenida D. João II, Edifício Infante 35, Piso 11A, Parque das Nações, 1990-083 Lisboa, Portugal