General Terms and Conditions for stusu UG (limited liability)

1. Scope of Validity

1.1. The general terms and conditions (hereinafter referred to as: “T&Cs”) apply for the utilisation of the “stusu” services of stusu UG, Graefestraße 83, 10967 Berlin (hereinafter referred to as: “stusu”) according to section 2 of this T&Cs, by the user and those directors, representatives, employees, associates and agents acting for it (hereinafter referred to as: the “User”).

1.2. These T&Cs in their respective version are applicable exclusively to contractual relationships between stusu and the User. They do not apply to contracts between the users. Deviating conditions of the User shall not be recognised by stusu, unless stusu has expressly agreed to their validity in writing.

2. Services of stusu

2.1. stusu is operator of a user-based online platform, which is available under www.stusu.com (hereinafter “Website”) with several functions as described in this section 2 (hereinafter also in general “Service”). Via the Website, registered Users (hereinafter also “Landlords”) can advertise premises, especially artists’ studios and working spaces (hereinafter “Premises”), offer them for rent to other registered users (hereinafter also “Tenants”) and contact each other via the Website’s integrated messenger in order to rent out or lease such Premises (hereinafter also “Membership Services”).

2.2. Browsing through the offers on the Website as well as the registration on the Website are initially free of charge. This allows the User to get an overview of the Premises offered and the Service available. To use the Membership Services, the User has to register via the Website (see section 3) and to purchase a so-called membership license (hereinafter also “Membership License”, see section 4.) in the user area of the Website (hereinafter “User Area”). The information provided by stusu via its Website represents a non-binding invitation (invitatio ad offerendum) to use the Service.

2.2. stusu is involved in the relationship between the Landlords and Tenants neither as a mediator nor as a party or as a representative of a party. Contracts initiated as a result of an advertisement posted via the Service or otherwise with the help of the Service are to be completed and fulfilled without the participation of stusu.

3. Registration and Setting up a User Account (free of charge)

3.1. The registration via the Website (hereinafter also “Registration”) is initially free of charge. Registration is only allowed for legal persons and unrestricted competent physical persons and partnerships. In particular, registration is forbidden for under 18s. To register, it is initially required that the User gives his/her correct first and last name, as well as a valid e-mail address.  By clicking the "Sign up" button to transfer the data of the User, an offer is made to conclude a contract for the use of the User Area, as validated by this T&Cs. However, this contract is only concluded when stusu sends an e-mail with a confirmation link that the User must click on. stusu is entitled to temporarily or permanently reject a Registration at any time without having to offer reasons therefore. In this case or if a Registration is not fully completed, stusu will immediately delete any data submitted by the User during Registration.

3.2. With the successful Registration, stusu creates a personal User Account for every registered User, with which the User has access to the User Area (hereinafter “User Account”). User Accounts are non-transferable. After Registration the User must set a suitable and secure password. For using the Service via the User Area, it is necessary to log in to the User Account by entering the e-mail address and password specified during Registration. In the “My Account” settings, the User may add or edit his/her User Account information in the category “Profile”.

3.3. The access data selected by the User during Registration are to be treated as confidential. The User is not permitted to allow third parties use of the Service via his/her access data. Common use of the account within a company and company location is however permissible. In the case of firm evidence of an abuse or of the knowledge of third parties of access data, the User must immediately inform stusu.

4. The Use of the Membership Services, Membership License and Costs

4.1. If the User wants to use the Membership Service, i.e. rent or lease Premises, the User must purchase a “membership license” (hereinafter “Membership License”).

4.2. The Membership License can be purchased at any given time by clicking the “pay to purchase membership license” button for 20 EUR (tax included), which also concludes the contract for the Membership Services. Payment has to be made by credit card. The Membership License is valid for a period of one year and expires automatically. The User can see the purchased Membership License in his/her account on the Website under the section “MY LICENSES”. Here s/he can find information on the status, the date when the Membership License was granted and when it will expire and the order details or download the invoice. 

4.3. Costs are also incurred when rental contracts are concluded between the Users. However, this payment is not made to stusu and cannot be made within the technical infrastructure of the Website.

5. Contents

5.1. The User is exclusively responsible for all content provided publicly or privately, sent or otherwise made available to third parties content (hereinafter referred to as: “Content”) via the Service, particularly data, texts, graphical representations, animated or stationary images. Only a purely technical transmission of the respective contents is carried out by the Service.

5.2. Content is exclusively restricted to content pertaining to the rental of Premises, in whole or in part for commercial purposes or for freelance use.

5.3. The Landlord is obliged to provide the Tenant with full and truthful information in relation to the Premises and the legal relationships pertaining to them, in particular existing rental contracts with third parties, the (sub) rental rate of the space and with regard to the other provided content, in order to give the Tenant a true impression of the Premises.

5.4. In connection with the use of the Service or any legal relationships resulting therefrom, Landlords and Tenants are themselves responsible for the adherence with all statutory provisions, particularly tax law and municipal statutes concerning residential rental.

5.5. Content made accessible by Users via the Service and their use by Tenants and/or Landlords and/or further third parties will not in principle be checked by stusu for legitimacy, accuracy, completeness, and/or quality. Stusu offers no guarantee for the legitimacy, accuracy, completeness, and/or quality for the respective Content and/or User data and/or the correct use by Tenants and/or Landlords and/or further third parties. Should stusu become aware of illegal actions within the Service, the relevant content will be removed immediately and/or the access to these will be blocked.

5.6. With the agreement with the validity of these T&Cs, the User assures that s/he, within the framework of the application of the Service, will neither make available any content nor engage in any actions which violate good practice or violate the rights of other Users and/or the Tenant or third parties, in particular personality rights as well as copyright and trademark rights, or which otherwise violate any applicable law or the T&Cs. Before making available access to his/her respective content on the Service and/or the use of the third party content, the User must ensure that the necessary rights of use to said content are entitled to him/her. In particular, the User may not upload content, otherwise make available to the public and/or otherwise use which contains representations of violence, or sexual, discriminatory, insulting, racist or slanderous elements.

5.7. In the presence of concrete evidence of an infringement of the rules noted above in Figs. 5.6., stusu reserves the right at any time, depending on the gravity of the infringement, to delete the content and to warn Users that the use of the Service may be restricted and that User accounts may be provisionally or permanently blocked.

5.8. The User shall exempt stusu, its directors, agents, employees, associated and agents from all claims that arise as a result of or in connection with an infringement by the User of these provisions or the violation of the rights of other Users and/or the Tenant and/or third parties. This also includes the necessary costs of legal defence and prosecution.

5.9. In the event of a claim by a third party, the User is obliged to immediately communicate to stusu all information required for a consideration of possible claim of the third party. Further compensation claims of stusu against the User remain unaffected.

5.10. The User obligations noted above in Figs 5.8. and 5.9. do not apply where the User is not responsible for the relevant infringement.

6. The Granting of Rights to use stusu

6.1. The User grants stusu during the time of the use contract a chronologically and geographically unrestricted, free, simple and transferable right to use the content made accessible by him/her via stusu, in particular photos of the Premises but not the private communications between the Users via the Website’s messenger, (hereinafter referred to as: “Usage Rights”). The Usage Rights are exclusively made use of within the framework of the Service and of its offer. The Usage Rights include in particular also the right to the reproduction, distribution, making publicly accessible, and editing of the content provided by the User, as well as the use of the Content for marketing purposes by stusu on other websites, including social media, in particular Instagram, software applications, e-mails or print, radio and television marketing campaigns and presentations, at internal and public events such as trade fairs, seminars and training courses. The User shall declare his/her agreement for the translation of his/her contents may be undertaken for integration into foreign websites and software applications.

6.2. The Usage Rights are revocable with effect for the future at any time. The User can revoke such by e-mail at office@stusu.com or in writing to stusu UG (limited liability), Graefestraße 83, 10967 Berlin by supplying his/her Users data. The revocation of the Usage Rights shall be without prejudice to the existing Usage Rights, which were transferred by stusu to third parties, or otherwise used by stusu, before the exploitation of this revocation by the User, this applies particularly to images made publicly available by the User via the Service.

7. Restrictions on Use

7.1. The User must use the Service in such a way that no impairment, overloading or damage occurs to stusu and that the objective and functionality pursued by the Service is neither endangered or bypassed. The User will neither bypass nor alter the stusu security arrangements by itself or via a third party. The use of hyperlinks referring to the domain www.stusu.com, www.stusu.de or stusu.net and/or associated subdomains, does not in principle constitute any relevant exploitative action.

7.2. Other integration of the Service into other private or commercial services is subject to the written approval of stusu.

8. Availability

8.1. stusu is committed to attaining the highest possible level of availability of the service, and to the remedying of problems in as short a time as possible. A lasting and trouble-free availability of the Service is not however guaranteed. The User thus has no claim to a permanent and continuous availability of the Service.

8.2. stusu assumes no guarantee for the permanent availability of its technical systems or the completeness, correctness or topicality of the information made available to the User, or for any errors in data transfer.

9. Backup of the own data

The User is obliged to provide adequate safeguards to ensure that the information made visible on the network and stored by stusu, is secured in a state of the art fashion. It is the responsibility of the User therefore, to save and/or print particularly important information on suitable media - ideally at the end of each use of the Service - so that full access to the data is possible independently of the Service.

10. Cancellation and Termination of Service

10.1. The User may terminate the Service at any time for any reason and without notice in the User Account’s settings.

10.2. The contract with the User may also be cancelled with a two week notice period in the event that stusu cease to provide its Service completely. In this case, the User may demand that any Membership Licence fee paid is refunded to him proportionately. The right to termination on important grounds and the right to block or restrict a User Account, particularly but not exclusively according to the above-mentioned Figs 5.5. and 5.6. remain unaffected.

10.3. Upon termination of the respective contract, the User Account and all personal data will be permanently deleted, unless storage of which is required for the execution of the contractual relationship or their storage is required with regards to the claim, exercise or defence of legal claims and there is no reason to believe that the protection interest of the User outweigh such collection, processing or use.

11. Liability

11.1. stusu is liable without limit pursuant to the statutory provisions for damages which are caused by deliberate or grossly negligent behaviour of stusu and his vicarious agents as well as for damage to body and health and damage according to the product liability law as well as in cases of acquisition of guarantees.

11.2. For damages caused by slight negligence, stusu is liable only insofar as they affect to essential contractual duties (cardinal duties). Cardinal duties are such obligations whose fulfilment makes the due performance of the contract possible in the first place, and upon which the User regularly relies and on whose compliance the User might rely. As far as a liability of stusu for slight negligence exists, this is limited to liability by stusu to typically foreseeable damage.

11.3. The foregoing limitations of liability shall also apply in favour of the subcontractors of stusu.

11.4. stusu shall not be liable for any expenses incurred by the User through the use of services not expressly offered by stusu. This applies in particular for costs incurred as a result of the data transfer to or from the mobile device of the User.

11.5. stusu is only liable for deficient functions present at the beginning of the Service, if stusu or its agents are responsible for said deficiency. Strict liability for initial defects, within the scope of rental law, is excluded.

12. Property Rights

All stusu brands and/or commercial property rights represented within the scope of the Service and/or the commercial property rights of partners, customers and advertisers connected with the Service, remain the property of the entitled party, even if the respective representations or logos are nor marked with appropriate protective signs. Duplication and/or other use of these trademarks, copyrights and/or logos without the consent of the respective owner is not permitted.

13. Data protection

13.1. stusu collects, uses and processes the personal data of the User in the framework of the implementation of the contract in accordance with the statutory provisions.

13.2. In addition, subject to the consent of the User, the provisions of the data protection declaration are valid.

14. Right of withdrawal regarding the use of the Membership Services

Instructions on withdrawal

Right of withdrawal

You have the right to withdraw from this contract within 14 days without giving any reason.

The withdrawal period will expire after 14 days from the day of the conclusion of the contract for the Membership Service.

To exercise the right of withdrawal, you must inform us (stusu UG (haftungsbeschränkt) Gräfestraße 83 10967 Berlin Germany, phone: +491729210106, e-mail: office@stusu.com) of your decision to withdraw from this contract by an unequivocal statement (e.g. a letter sent by post, fax or e-mail). You may use the attached model withdrawal form, but it is not obligatory.

To meet the withdrawal deadline, it is sufficient for you to send your communication concerning your exercise of the right of withdrawal before the withdrawal period has expired.

Effects of withdrawal

If you withdraw from this contract, we shall reimburse to you all payments received from you, including the costs of delivery (with the exception of the supplementary costs resulting from your choice of a type of delivery other than the least expensive type of standard delivery offered by us), without undue delay and in any event not later than 14 days from the day on which we are informed about your decision to withdraw from this contract. We will carry out such reimbursement using the same means of payment as you used for the initial transaction, unless you have expressly agreed otherwise; in any event, you will not incur any fees as a result of such reimbursement.

Important notice:

By using the Membership Service, you expressly agree that we may begin to provide the contract execution before the end of the withdrawal period. Upon beginning of the contract execution you lose your right of withdrawal.

Model withdrawal form

If you want to withdraw from the contract while using a model withdrawal form, please fill out this form and send it back.

 

To

[here the trader’s name, geographical address and, where available, his fax number and e-mail address are to be inserted by the trader]:

I/We (*) hereby give notice that I/We (*) withdraw from my/our (*) contract of sale of the following goods (*)/for the provision of the following service (*),

Ordered on (*)/received on (*),

Name of consumer(s),

Address of consumer(s),

Signature of consumer(s) (only if this form is notified on paper),

Date

 

(*) Delete as appropriate.

15. Contract language, Applicable law, place of jurisdiction, Online Dispute Resolution

15.1. Contract language is English. The communication between stusu and the User shall be conducted either in English or German.

15.2. The law of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding the UN Sales Convention, shall apply. This also applies if the User has its domicile in another Member State of the European Union and not in the Federal Republic of Germany. Mandatory consumer protection regulations of the law of the state in which the User who is a consumer has his usual residence remain unaffected by this. A consumer is any natural person who concludes a legal transaction for purposes that can predominantly be attributed neither to his/her commercial nor his/her independent professional activity.

15.3. The place of provision of the Service is Berlin, Germany.

15.4. If the User is a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law or if the platform user does not have a general place of jurisdiction in the Federal Republic of Germany, the exclusive place of jurisdiction is the seat of stusu (currently: Berlin) for all current and future claims arising from or as a result of the business relationship between stusu and the User.

15.5. The European Commission provides an Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) platform for consumers. This can be accessed at: www.ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr. The e-mail address of stusu is: office@stusu.com. stusu is neither obliged nor willing to participate in dispute resolution proceedings under the Consumer Dispute Resolution Act (Verbraucherstreitbeilegungsgesetz - VSBG).

16. Agents

For the purpose of fulfilling the terms of the contract in the framework of the Service, stusu may use third parties as agents.

17. Reservation of the right to make amendments

These T&Cs may be altered by stusu at a later date. Changes will only be made by stusu to the T&Cs for good reason. In the event of a change, stusu will communicate the amended T&Cs and to emphasise the changes. If the User does not agree with these changes, s/he may contradict them within a timeframe of one month following their announcement. Stusu will be separately informed with regards to right to contradict, the importance of user behaviour and legal consequences. Where no contradiction is raised within this timeframe, the amendments shall be deemed as approved. In the event of contradiction, the contract will continue unaltered, however, stusu, where applicable, will make use of its ordinary termination right.

18. Availability of these T&Cs; storage of the contract text

18.1. The User will be sent these T&Cs – the contract text - by e-mail after Registration according to section 3 of these T&Cs. The User can save the current version of the T&Cs as well as stusu’s data protection declaration at any time via the Website to his end device and store them.

18.2. stusu will not storage the contract text but the invoice and other information on the Membership License (see Figs 4.2).

19. Severability clause

Should any provision of the contract with the User, including these T&Cs, be or become totally or partly ineffective, this will not affect the validity of the remaining provisions. In the case of translation of the T&Cs into another language, the German language version will prevail where there doubt or disagreements.

Date of Last Revision: June 11, 2020