The Global Partnership for Safe and Sustainable Agriculture

Terms and Conditions for the Use of the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems

1. Introduction and subject of these Terms and Conditions

1.1 FoodPLUS GmbH, Spichernstr. 55, 50672 Cologne, Germany (hereinafter referred to as “GLOBALG.A.P.”) offers electronic databases and associated IT systems that contain specific producer and product information for worldwide certification management and related services (hereinafter referred to as “the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems”). GLOBALG.A.P. approved certification bodies use the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems to register and manage their clients’ certification data. The GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems are furthermore an important part of the GLOBALG.A.P. Integrity Program and link certification information to other traceability data in the supply chain.

1.2 These Terms and Conditions for the Use of the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems (hereinafter referred to as “these Terms and Conditions”) govern the use of the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems by any public or registered user (hereinafter referred to together as “the Customer”).

1.3 For registered users, these Terms and Conditions apply in conjunction with the underlying contract concluded between the parties that regulates the registered user's access to the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems (hereinafter referred to as “the Contract”). In case of any conflict between the provisions of these Terms and Conditions and the Contract, the provisions of the Contract shall prevail.

1.4 Unless the Contract grants the Customer the right to access the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems, GLOBALG.A.P. reserves the right to deny registration and access to the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems without giving any reason.

2. Availability of data

2.1 The GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems shall be generally accessible for use at least ninety-seven-point five (97.5) percent of the time on a monthly average.

2.2 Downtimes in regular maintenance windows, and downtimes that occur due to external factors such as internet disruptions, DDoS or other hacker attacks, power outages, or similar incidents over which GLOBALG.A.P. has no control and which GLOBALG.A.P. could not have prevented with reasonable security or other measures, including downtimes for emergency maintenance works resulting from such incidents, shall not be considered in the calculation of the actual availability.

2.3 GLOBALG.A.P. reserves the right to shut down parts or the whole of the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems without prior notice to resolve urgent technical issues that may arise at any time.

2.4 Regular maintenance shall not normally take place during regular business hours, but during off-peak periods, shall not take longer than one (1) hour, and shall be announced to the Customer with at least twenty-four (24) hours’ notice in text form.

3. Use of GLOBALG.A.P. APIs

3.1 If the Customer uses the functionalities of an API interface provided by GLOBALG.A.P. (hereinafter referred to as “GLOBALG.A.P. API”), the following applies (unless otherwise agreed in the Contract):

  • a) The Customer shall limit the number of requests sent in parallel. The number of requests processed simultaneously for each Customer shall be limited to avoid performance issues.
  • b) If internal errors are recurrently received, the Customer shall take action to stop sending requests resulting in errors.
  • c) Permanent breaches of the web application firewall are prohibited.
  • d) The Customer shall contact the GLOBALG.A.P. Customer Support team to identify and solve the issues described in b) and c).
  • e) GLOBALG.A.P. offers a test system for the implementation of the GLOBALG.A.P. API. The Customer shall use it to implement any GLOBALG.A.P. API connection. The GLOBALG.A.P. Customer Support team shall be contacted for access to the test system.

    • 3.2 If GLOBALG.A.P. provides an API that allows the bookmarking of certain data (hereinafter referred to as “Bookmarking API”), the following applies in addition to the provisions of section 3.1 (unless otherwise agreed in the Contract):

  • a) Each individual GLOBALG.A.P. Number (GGN) shall, if possible, only be bookmarked once. If bookmarks are created at product level or additional information (e.g., article name or variety, GTIN, traceability codes such as SSCC, delivery date) is added to the individual bookmarks, GGNs may be bookmarked multiple times.
  • b) Procedures that bookmark recurrently or query the necessary information and delete the bookmark afterwards are prohibited to avoid performance issues. They contradict the purpose of bookmarking as described in the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems wiki (https://wiki.globalgap.org). This also includes recurrently creating and deleting bookmarking lists for this purpose.
  • c) Bookmarking lists with one bookmark each are prohibited, since querying them generates an unnecessary workload and expenses and contradicts the purpose of bookmarking.
  • d) In order to avoid performance issues, the number of GGNs per bookmarking list shall be as limited as far as possible and shall not exceed five hundred (500) GGNs.
  • e) The account used for the Bookmarking API shall be registered with the contact data of the responsible technical contact person (telephone number and email address).

    • 3.3 The Customer shall not modify, edit, revise, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or translate the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems or attempt in any other way to transform the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems into source code, except in the cases permitted by statutory law (sections 69d and 69e German Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz)).

    3.4 If the Customer culpably and materially violates the provisions of this section 3, GLOBALG.A.P. shall be entitled to close the interface/account and terminate the Contract that allows the Customer to use the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems for good cause.

    4. Intellectual property rights

    4.1 The GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems, including all their functionalities, shall remain the exclusive property of GLOBALG.A.P. and are copyrighted. All rights are reserved.

    4.2 The content data (e.g., master data, certificate status data) which is provided via the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems is proprietary to the data suppliers, e.g., the individual producers/producer groups or certification bodies. GLOBALG.A.P. grants the Customer access to such data in accordance with the GLOBALG.A.P. data access rules (see https://www.globalgap.org /documents).

    4.3 Unless otherwise stipulated in the Contract or these Terms and Conditions, the Customer shall not duplicate, distribute, sell, offer on a website or platform or similar to third parties, commercially exploit, create derivative works from, or otherwise make available any information obtained from the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems.

    5. Liability

    5.1 All data provided via the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems is provided by third parties and is not controlled by GLOBALG.A.P. GLOBALG.A.P. makes no warranty regarding the accuracy, completeness, correctness, reliability, or otherwise with respect to such data.

    5.2 Apart from that, GLOBALG.A.P. shall be liable for the full extent of any damage in the event of intentional conduct (“Vorsatz”) or gross negligence (“grobe Fahrlässigkeit”), in the case of culpable injury to life, body, and health and under the German Product Liability Act (“Produkthaftungsgesetz”). In the case of a slight negligent breach of essential contractual obligations, i.e., principal obligations which enable the proper execution of the Terms and Conditions and upon which the Customer therefore relies and may rely, GLOBALG.A.P. assumes liability on the merits; in such case GLOBALG.A.P.’s liability shall be limited to damage which is typical for the Terms and Conditions and which can be reasonably foreseen. Any further liability of GLOBALG.A.P. shall be excluded. This limitation of liability shall also apply in favor of GLOBALG.A.P.’s statutory representatives, executives (“leitende Angestellte”), and vicarious agents (“Erfüllungsgehilfen”).

    6. Updates of services

    GLOBALG.A.P. reserves the right to modify or update the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems, provided that such a change (i) is necessary for compliance with mandatory legal requirements, (ii) serves as an adjustment to the current state of the art, and (iii) does not go beyond what is customary for comparable IT solutions and does not disappoint the Customer's legitimate expectations regarding the continued use of the core functions of the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems. GLOBALG.A.P. shall provide reasonable notice of any relevant modifications of the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems by email to the Customer which is a registered user.

    7. Use of the data from the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems

    Unless otherwise agreed in the Contract, the Customer shall use the data from the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems for the internal operation of their organization only. If registered, all accounts of the Customer shall be assigned to a specific person and may only be used by such person (named user). The Customer may access and use the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems through the GLOBALG.A.P. web interface or through a GLOBALG.A.P. API interface (if provided).

    8. Data protection

    8.1 Details regarding the content and recipients of information published in the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems can be found in the GLOBALG.A.P. data access rules (see the GLOBALG.A.P. website, https://www.globalgap.org/documents/).

    8.2 The Customer shall comply with applicable data protection laws and regulations at all times. Further information on data protection can be found in the GLOBALG.A.P. privacy policy (see link), which the Customer shall bring to the attention of each of its employees who is granted access to the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems and thus inform them about the processing of their personal data by GLOBALG.A.P.

    9. Assignment of rights

    The Customer shall not be entitled to assign any rights or obligations under these Terms and Conditions to any third parties without GLOBALG.A.P.’s prior written consent.

    10. Confidentiality

    10.1 The Customer is obliged to treat as strictly confidential all confidential matters and business secrets of GLOBALG.A.P. or undertakings associated with GLOBALG.A.P., including in particular the data of the GLOBALG.A.P. IT Systems, of which the Customer obtains knowledge during the exercise of its duties for GLOBALG.A.P. or which are designated as confidential by GLOBALG.A.P.

    10.2 The confidentiality obligation shall not apply to information and documents:

  • a) Which are already known to or in the possession of the Customer prior to the receipt of such information from GLOBALG.A.P.
  • b) Which are legally received by the Customer from a third party without breaching any confidentiality obligation
  • c) Which are in the public domain or enter the public domain through no wrongful act of the Customer
  • d) Which can be proven by the Customer to have been developed independently by the Customer
  • e) To the extent and in the manner approved in writing by GLOBALG.A.P.
  • f) Which the Customer is required to disclose by applicable law, regulation, or legal process

    • 11. Governing law and jurisdiction

    11.1 These Terms and Conditions are exclusively governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Germany.

    11.2 Unless otherwise agreed between the parties in the Contract, all disputes arising out of or in connection with these Terms and Conditions or their validity shall be finally settled in accordance with the Arbitration Rules of the German Institution of Arbitration (DIS) without recourse to the ordinary courts of law. The number of arbitrators is three (3). The place of arbitration is Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and the language of the arbitration proceedings is English.

    12. Miscellaneous

    12.1 These Terms and Conditions set out the entire agreement and understanding between the parties relating to the matters addressed herein and supersede all other agreements, whether oral or written, previously made between the parties with regard to such matters. For the avoidance of doubt, the provisions of the Contract shall remain unaffected by these Terms and Conditions.

    12.2 If any of the provisions of these Terms and Conditions are unenforceable or invalid for any reason whatsoever, such unenforceability or invalidity does not nullify these Terms and Conditions in total. In such cases, the statutory provisions shall apply (section 306(2) of the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch)) until the parties agree on a valid provision to replace the invalid or unenforceable provision which shall reflect as closely as possible the original economic purpose. The same applies if, during the course of the execution of these Terms and Conditions, an omission requiring rectification arises.

    12.3 A waiver of any breach or default under these Terms and Conditions by either party does not constitute a waiver of any other or subsequent breach or default. The failure by either party to enforce compliance with any term or condition of these Terms and Conditions does not constitute a waiver of any such term or condition unless such term or condition is expressly waived in writing.