Website Terms of Use

Who we are and how to contact us

This Website is owned and operated by Alliance Against Counterfeit Spirits Ltd (AACS). Unless stated otherwise, we use the terms “we” and “us” on this Website to refer to AACS through the Website Terms, which include these Website Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy and our Cookies Policy.

We are a limited company by guarantee without share capital registered in England under company number 05460509 and have our registered office at 21 Holborn Viaduct, London, EC1A 2DY.

If you want to ask us anything (whether about our services, this Website, any of our terms and conditions or otherwise), then please contact us.

Website Terms of Use

The Website Terms apply to your use of the website at www.aacs-global.com (the "Website"). The Website Terms apply regardless of how you access the Website, including any technologies or devices by which we make the Website available to you at home or on the move. You must read these Website Terms carefully, and we recommend that you keep a copy for your future reference. By accessing, browsing, using, or contacting us through the Website, you confirm that you have read, understood and agree to these Website Terms in their entirety. If you do not agree to these Website Terms in their entirety, please do not use this Website.

Other terms that may apply to you

These terms of use refer to the following additional terms, which also apply to your use of our Website:

Our Privacy Policy sets out the terms on which we process any personal data. The AACS respects the privacy of its Website users and is committed to protecting that privacy. The Privacy Policy demonstrates AACS’s firm commitment to privacy.

Our Cookies Policy sets out information about the cookies on our Website.

Changes to these Website Terms

We reserve the right to change and update these terms from time to time. We recommend that you revisit this page regularly to keep informed of the current terms that apply to your use of this Website. By continuing to access, browse and use this Website you will be deemed to have accept any changes or updates to these terms.

These terms were most recently updated on 22/04/2020.

Accessing our Website

Access to our Website is permitted on a temporary basis. We aim to improve, develop and update our Website regularly and for this reason we reserve the right to modify, withdraw or amend the service we provide and the content we publish on our Website without notice. If the need arises, we may suspend access to our Website, or part of it, or close it indefinitely. We will not be liable if for any reason our Website, or any material on our Website, is unavailable at any time or for any period.

Any of the material or information published on our Website may be out of date at any given time and we are under no obligation to update such material. From time to time, we may restrict access to some parts of our Website, or our entire Website, to users who have registered with us.

You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary to allow you to access our Website. You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our Website through your internet connection are aware of these Website Terms, and comply with them.

Suspension or withdrawal of our Website

Our Website is made available free of charge.

We do not guarantee that our Website, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend or withdraw or restrict the availability of all or any part of our Website for business and operational reasons. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any suspension or withdrawal.

You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our Website through your internet connection are aware of these Website Terms and other applicable terms and conditions, and that they comply with them.

UK based

AACS is based in England and our Website is operated from England. We do not represent that content available on or through our Website is appropriate for use or available in other locations. Those who choose to access this Website from locations outside of England are responsible for compliance with local laws if and to the extent local laws are applicable.

Reliance on information

We will make every effort to ensure that any materials or information posted on our Website are accurate. However, materials and information posted on our Website are not intended to amount to advice on which reliance should be placed. We therefore disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such materials by you or by any visitor to our Website, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents.

Any opinions expressed by any user of our Website are solely the opinions of that user(s) involved. We do not endorse any opinions expressed by any user of our Website and disclaim all liability and responsibility arising as a result of those opinions being expressed by any user of our Website.

Use of material on our Website

We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our Website, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved. You may view this Website and print hard copies of written material on it for your personal, non-commercial use. All other copying whether in electronic, hard copy or other format is prohibited and all other rights reserved.

Your use of the Website and its contents grants no rights to you in relation to our intellectual property rights, or that of third parties, in the Website or its contents. By submitting information (other than your personal data), text, photos, graphics or other content to the Website you confirm that you have the right to use the same and grant us a right to use such materials at our own discretion (with or without accreditation) in any media including, without limitation, to edit, copy, reproduce, disclose, post and remove such materials from the Website.

You further agree to execute all such documents and do all such act and things as we may reasonably require in order to assign any such rights to us and to waive any moral rights you acquire in or to the Website.

Links to other websites

Where our Website contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. Such links should not be interpreted as approval by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them.

We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources.

Damage to your computer or other device

We use reasonable efforts to ensure that this Website is free from viruses and other malicious or harmful content. However, we cannot guarantee that your use of this Website (including any content on it or any website accessible from it) will not cause damage to your computer or other device. You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform to access our Website. You should use your own virus protection software.

Our liability

The materials and information displayed on our Website are provided without any guarantees, conditions or warranties as to its accuracy. We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or the negligence of our employees, agents or subcontractors and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

We exclude all representations, warranties, conditions and terms (whether express or implied by statute, common law or otherwise) to the fullest extent permitted by law. We accept no liability for any losses or damages which are not reasonably foreseeable arising out of or in connection with these Website Terms or your use of the Website. We have no liability to you for any loss of income, revenue or profit, loss of business or contracts, loss of data, loss of goodwill, business interruption, wasted management or office time, or loss of business opportunity.

If defective digital content that we have supplied, damages a device or digital content belonging to you and this is caused by our failure to use reasonable care and skill, we will either repair the damage or pay you compensation. However, we will not be liable for damage that you could have avoided by following our advice to apply an update offered to you free of charge or for damage that was caused by you failing to correctly follow installation instructions or to have in place the minimum system requirements advised by us.

These exclusions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law. If any provision of these disclaimers and exclusions shall be unlawful, void or for any reason unenforceable then that provision shall be deemed severable and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of the remaining provisions.

Nothing in these Website Terms shall exclude or limit our liability for personal injury or death caused by our negligence. In addition, these Website Terms shall not limit or exclude any other liability that we are not permitted to limit or exclude under applicable law.

Use of our Website

You may use our Website only for lawful purposes. You may not use our Website:

in any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation;
in any way that is unlawful or fraudulent, or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect;
for the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way;
to send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any material which does not comply with the content standards set out in these Website Terms;
to transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (spam), without our express prior written consent;
to knowingly transmit any data, send or upload any material that contains viruses, trojan horses, worms, timebombs, logicbombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer codes or material which is malicious or technologically harmful or is designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware;
to reproduce, duplicate, copy or re-sell any part of our Website in contravention of the provisions of these terms;
to delete or revise any portion of the Website or any material posted or submitted to the Website by any other user, person or entity;
by attempting to gain unauthorised access to, interfere with, damage or disrupt any part of our Website, the server or network on which our Website is stored, any software used in the provision of our Website, or any equipment, server, network, computer or database connected to our Website; or
by attacking our Website by a denial of service attack or a distributed denial of service attack.

Content standards

These content standards apply to any and all material which you submit or contribute to our Website (contributions), and to any interactive services associated with it.

You must comply with the spirit of the following standards as well as the letter. The standards apply to each part of any contribution as well as to its whole.

Contributions must:

be accurate and not misleading (where they state facts);
be genuinely held (where they state opinions); and
comply with applicable law in the UK and in any country or territory from which they are posted.

Contributions must not:

contain any material which is defamatory of any person;
contain any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory;
promote sexually explicit material;
promote violence;
promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
infringe any copyright, database right, trade secret, trade mark, privacy right or any other intellectual property right of any other person including any moral rights that may exist in the contribution;
be likely to deceive any person;
be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence;
constitute or promote any illegal activity;
be threatening, abusive or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety;
be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person;
be an advertisement or otherwise designed to solicit business;
contain any viruses, trojans, worms, logicbombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful or has an equivalent effect;
be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person;
give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case; or
advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse.

Uploading material to our Website

Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload material of any nature to our Website (whether or not solicited by us), or to make contact with other users of our Website, you must comply with the content standards set out in these terms. You warrant that any such contribution does comply with those standards, and you have the right to upload or post any material uploaded or posted by you to our Website. You agree to indemnify us for any breach of these warranties.

Any material you upload to our Website will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary, and we have the right to use, copy, amend, publish, make derivative works of, distribute, disclose or licence to third parties and make any other use, whether or not for gain, of any such material for any purpose whatsoever. Additionally, you agree to waive any of your moral rights that may subsist in any material posted or uploaded by you to our Website. We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any material posted or uploaded by you to our Website constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.

In the event that any material you upload to our Website is protected by any third party intellectual property, proprietary or confidentiality rights whatsoever, you agree to take (at your own expense) any further action and execute any documents as may be reasonably required of you by us to ensure that we may exercise the rights in relation to such material as set out in the paragraph above. We will not be responsible, or liable to any third party, for the content or accuracy of any materials posted by you or any other user of our Website.

Whether any material posted or submitted to our Website is published or used is at our sole discretion and we are under no obligation to publish or use any such material. When posting or submitting material to our Website you must provide your full name and email address so that we may contact you if we have any questions about the material you have provided. By posting or submitting material to our Website you agree that we may show your name and location, but not your email address, in conjunction with any such material if that material is published or used on the Website, or otherwise used by us.

We have the right to remove any material or posting you make on our Website if, in our opinion, such material does not comply with the content standards set out in these terms.

Viruses, hacking and other offences

You must not misuse our Website by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our Website, the server on which our Website is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our Website. You must not attack our Website via a denial of service attack or a distributed denial of service attack.

By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our Website will cease immediately.

Suspension and termination

Failure to comply with any of our Website Terms constitutes a material breach of these terms. In such circumstances, your right to access our Website shall cease immediately, and may result in us taking, in our absolute discretion, all or any of the following actions:

immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use our Website;
immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any posting or material uploaded by you to our Website;
issue of a warning to you;
legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach;
further legal action against you;
disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary.

The responses described in these terms are not limited, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.

In the event of such a breach of these terms you agree to indemnify and hold us, our group companies, Other regional distribution companies, our employees and our agents harmless from and against all liabilities, damages, losses, costs and other expenses (including legal fees) arising out of any breach by you of these terms, or any other liabilities arising out of your use of our Website.

Rules about linking to our Website

You may link to our home page, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it.

You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists.

You must not establish a link to our Website in any website that is not owned by you.

Our Website must not be framed on any other site, nor may you create a link to any part of our Website other than the home page.

We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.

If you wish to link to or make any use of content on our Website other than that set out above, please contact us using one of the methods on our contact page.

Other legal notices

There may be other legal notices on other areas of this Website which relate to your use of the Website, all of which will, together with these Website Terms, govern your use of this Website.

Third party rights

Only you and us shall be entitled to enforce these Website Terms. No third party shall be entitled to enforce any of these Website Terms, whether by virtue of the Contracts (Rights of third Parties) Act 1999 or otherwise.

Entire Agreement

These Website Terms set out the entire agreement between you and us and supersede any and all prior terms, conditions, warranties and representations to the fullest extent permitted by law.

Law, jurisdiction and language

Please note that these terms of use, their subject matter and their formation, are governed by English law. You and we both agree that the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction.