Cultural Gems Terms and conditions

General remarks

Cultural gems (hereinafter the "Application") is an interactive repository of data and information on cultural and creative places in European cities.

Cultural gems is operated by the European Commission. By using the Application users agree to these Terms and Conditions of use (hereinafter "Terms"). The European Commission (hereinafter the "Commission"), reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to change, modify, add or remove portions of these Terms at any time without notice to you. You should check these Terms periodically for changes. If you do not agree to these Terms, you should not use the Application.

If you have any questions about the information below, please contact us by using the following contact address: JRC-COIN@ec.europa.eu. This address can also be used to report any wrong information found in Cultural gems or any content that is considered to be inappropriate, offensive or infringes copyright, personality rights or any other third-party rights.

Cultural gems is open data

Cultural gems uses and builds upon OpenStreetMap open data and is licensed under the same licence as this project, the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL). The following paragraphs providing the essential information for reusing Cultural gems data. However, for your full rights and responsibilities, please refer to the full legal text of the OBdl licence.

You are free to reproduce, distribute and communicate data from Cultural gems, as long as you acknowledge its source as:

Cultural gems: © European Union and Cultural gems contributors, with data from OpenStreetMap (openstreetmap.org) contributors, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License.

In addition, please refer to any additional source present in each point of interest. This information is available under the point of interest description in the user interface and in the JSON output of API requests.

If you modify or adapt the data from Cultural gems and further distribute it, you must do so under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).

Content

The application allows users to view information about cultural and creative spaces in European cities (hereinafter the "Content").

The Content published on the Application may be protected by intellectual property rights. The users who shared information on Cultural gems in the period 2018-2023 (when the application used to welcome users' contributions) warrant that they own or that they have obtained all the necessary authorisations in order to be entitled to use and license the Content posted by them on the Application, and that they do not violate, misappropriate or infringe any law or any third parties' rights, including, without limitation, privacy rights, copyrights, trademarks and/or other intellectual property rights.

Users warrant that they have obtained all the appropriate authorisations, permissions or consents from the holders of copyright, related rights, image rights and other intellectual property rights pertaining to the Content, as well as written authorisations of persons depicted in photographs, images or playing in videos or moving images.

Content provided by users does not reflect the official position of the Commission.

By posting Content to the Application the users retain all their ownership rights in their Content, but they granted the following licences:

1. to the Commission, the City Administrators or Offices of tourism a licence upon this Content on a royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable and sub-licensable basis. The licence of the Content covers all territories worldwide and is valid for the whole duration of intellectual property rights. The Commission, the City Administrators or the Offices of tourism have the right to host, use, store, reproduce, modify, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such Content, sub-licence, and create derivative works at their own discretion, but in accordance with the present Terms.
2. to the other users of the Application, a licence upon this Content on a royalty-free, non-exclusive and irrevocable basis. The licence of the Content covers all territories worldwide and is valid for the whole duration of intellectual property rights. The other users of the Application have the right to access your Content throughout the Application, and to use, reproduce and download the Content, to the extent permitted by the functionalities of the Application.

In addition, as Cultural gems uses and builds upon OpenStreetMap open data, by posting Content to the Application, Users licence it under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL). Anyone is free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt this data, as long as they acknowledge its source as 'Cultural gems: © European Union and Cultural gems contributors, with data from OpenStreetMap (openstreetmap.org) contributors, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License'.

Protection of your personal data

As of the 1^st of July 2023, Cultural Gems no longer collects any personal data.

User geolocation data is not collected. If the user uses the geolocation function, the coordinates are only used by the browser to zoom the map to the user's position. No data on users' location is transmitted or stored by the application.

The previous version of cultural gems allowed users to register and contribute, and therefore treated personal data. You can find detailed information on the data treatment in the previous version of Cultural gems in this privacy statement.

All personal data stored in the previous version of Cultural gems are being permanently deleted. This process will be completed by July 31^st. For additional information, please feel free to send an email to JRC-COIN@ec.europa.eu.

Applicable law and jurisdiction

The exercise of the rights granted hereunder shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of the European Union, complemented where necessary by the substantive laws of Belgium. The General Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg shall have exclusive jurisdiction for any dispute related to or deriving from the use of the Application.

Liabilities and warranties

The Content published in the Application by the users is the sole responsibility of the user that has submitted it. In particular the Commission makes no representations or warranties whatsoever express or implied as to the quality, appropriateness, accuracy or completeness of the Content. The Commission shall not be responsible or liable for the use of the Content by other users or any third party and reserves the right to remove Content that is inappropriate or breach the present Terms. Users undertake to indemnify, defend and hold harmless the Commission from and against claims, demands or actions against the Commission, as well as any costs or expenses, including legal costs relating to legal judgements and proceedings concerning liabilities arising from the published Content on the Application.