AIPPI International Cookie and Privacy Policy 

1.  Introduction

AIPPI International – International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property, a Swiss entity having the address Toedistrasse 16, 8002 Zurich, Switzerland, values your privacy. This Privacy Policy demonstrates our commitment to ensure the privacy and the confidentiality of the personal data you, or your National or Regional Group on your behalf, share with us (“Personal Data“). 

Any processing of your Personal Data is consistent with this Privacy Policy and the applicable laws and regulations. 

2.  Personal Data we Collect 

We collect the Personal Data you provide to us when creating your AIPPI account or later, e.g. when updating your account information or when contacting us via the contact form (such as your name, username, contact details, profession and title, gender, profile picture, languages, country of residence). We never see your password as it gets encrypted during the creation of your account and when logging in. If you contact us through e-mail, we collect and process Personal Data about you such as your name, email address, other contact details you provided and your message. We keep records of your correspondence with us. 

If you attend one of our events, we will keep a record of your attendance and any feedback you have provided on the event. This will include your name and contact details and potentially information relating to your job title or employer as well as other details of your attendance. 

When you use our website, we collect certain Personal Data, such as name, family name, email addresses, gender, picture and year of birth. By using cookies and similar technologies, we may process your IP address, your coarse geographic location as indicated by your IP address, the content you access, the website from which the request originates, the search terms you enter on this website, information about the type of device you use to access this website, the operating system and your browser type. 

The provision of your Personal Data is generally not required by law. However, in order to use the relevant service/function (such as contacting us, becoming an AIPPI member, attending one of our events or using our website), depending on the relevant service/function, at least the provision of some Personal Data will be necessary or else we are not able to provide the relevant service/function. In the relevant forms where we collect the data, it is generally made clear which data is mandatory and which data can be added voluntarily (such as adding an optional profile picture).  

3. Purposes for Processing your Personal Data 

We process your Personal Data in relation to the provision of services to interested individuals, Independent Members and members of AIPPI’s National or Regional Groups, including management of your membership in AIPPI International, informing you about activities and events of AIPPI International and management of your participation in such events. We also process your Personal Data for administrative purposes and to enhance our membership services in the future. Then, we may also use your Personal Data to send you electronic and/or paper form marketing and other materials relating to our events as well as to respond to your requests.  

In addition, we process your Personal Data to operate and improve this website (see section “Cookies” for further information). 

Finally, we process your Personal Data to comply with legal obligations which we are subject to and to manage risk and to assert and defend claims in legal disputes and official proceedings which is in our (or, as the case may be, a third party’s) legitimate interest. 

We do not subject you to automated decision-making. 

4. Categories of recipients of your Personal Data and Transfer Abroad

For the purposes set out above, we may disclose your Personal Data to the following categories of recipients: 

• To our suppliers (who are obliged to protect your Personal Data to the same extent as we are) to provide you with our services. These suppliers include technology suppliers as well as third-party providers of the services connected with the events you register for. 

• To National or Regional Group of the country of your residence or principal business or professional activity (see article 4.1. and 4.2. AIPPI statutes). This Group is a separate data controller than AIPPI International and processes your Personal Data on the basis of its privacy policy. 

• If you are a member of AIPPI International, we make available [your name, profession and title as well as, if applicable, data you voluntarily share, such as your contact details and a profile picture] with other members of AIPPI International. As a member organization, we believe it is in your legitimate interest to do so and it does not have a detrimental effect upon you. 

• To third parties, such as AIPPI International’s service providers for events and logistics, and authorities if such disclosure is necessary to comply with legal obligations, to manage risk and to assert and defend claims in legal disputes and official proceedings, or in the event of a corporate sale, merger, reorganization, dissolution or similar event. 

We do not sell or otherwise transfer your Personal Data to third parties without your prior consent unless we are required under applicable law or regulation. 

Certain recipients may be within Switzerland, other recipients may be located in any country worldwide, among others Germany and the United States of America. Transfers of your Personal Data outside the EEA and Switzerland generally occur to countries for which the European Commission and/or the Swiss Federal Council found that the relevant country provides for an adequate level of data protection. Transfers to a jurisdiction without such adequacy finding are conducted in accordance with data processing agreements for which AIPPI International uses EU Model Contractual Clauses approved by the EU Commission, which may be read here, and, if applicable, amended to Swiss law. At the moment, AIPPI International has such a data processing agreement in place with its providers in the US. 

5. Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of text sent to your browser when you visit a website. They serve a variety of functions, like enabling us to remember certain information you provide to us as you navigate between our pages. You can set your browser to not accept cookies (opt out), but this may limit your ability to use our websites. Unless you opt-out, we use cookies for the following purposes: 

(i)          Remembering of logged in users;
(ii)         Tracking pages you visit together with the duration of the visit and the 
              origin of your visit via analytical software tools, or 

(iii)        enabling the technical provision of services through our websites 
 

For the use of Google Analytics we will request your prior consent. 

6.  Our basis for processing your Personal Data

When processing your Personal Data for the purposes described above, we mostly rely on our legitimate interests in maintaining business-relationships and communicating with you, as a business contact, about our operations and our events, and to comply with our legal obligations under non-EU laws, such as Swiss law (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR). Beyond that, another ground for lawful processing of your Personal Data under the applicable laws and regulations may apply, namely 

• processing to perform or enter into a contract (Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR); 

• processing to comply with our legal obligations under EU-/EU-member state laws (Art. 6 (1) (c) GDPR); and 

• to the extent we ask for your consent, the legal basis is your consent (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR). 

7. Protecting your Personal Data

We restrict the use and access to your Personal Data to those who have an absolute need-to-know to provide our services. We maintain appropriate technical and organisational measures, including encryption of data in transit and at rest, to preserve the confidentiality and integrity of your Personal Data. All Personal Data is stored exclusively in a secure hosting environment located in Germany, and we ensure compliance with all applicable data protection and security laws. Please note that these security measures cannot fully eliminate security risks associated with disclosure of personal data. 

8. Your Rights

We grant you all individual data protection rights as per the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as applicable: 

You have the right to be informed by us on any processing of your Personal Data and obtain a copy thereof to verify the lawfulness of processing (right of access). If you are affected by incorrect or incomplete Personal Data, you may request rectification or completion of any relevant data (right to rectification). In certain cases, you may request the deletion of your Personal Data (right to erasure) or a temporary restriction of processing (right to restriction of processing). In certain cases, you may also object to the processing of your Personal Data (right to object), and you have the right to receive your Personal Data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format or have your Personal Data transferred to another data controller if technically feasible (right to data portability). Where our processing of your Personal Data is based on your consent, you may also choose to withdraw it; please note that even if you exercise this right, continued processing of your Personal Data might be possible if required or permitted by law.  

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

9. Retaining your Personal Data

We store your Personal Data only for as long as necessary to provide you with our services and for the above-mentioned purposes. Your AIPPI account can be deleted at any time upon your instruction provided to AIPPI International. A user deletion request results in the user’s Personal Data being removed from AIPPI International’s database and those of any National or Regional Group, by consequence the AIPPI membership will be deleted, unless retention is required by applicable laws or regulations.

10. Contacts

In case you are dissatisfied with any aspect of processing of your Personal Data, we would like to understand how we can remedy the issue. Please contact us at publications@aippi.org. Our data protection officer is: Sue Paredi, AIPPI Executive Director, Toedistrasse 16, 8002 Zürich.  

Our EU representative can be reached at the following address: 

Simone VANDEWYNCKEL