Privacy Policy
Introduction
1.1 Important information and who we are
Welcome to SeedLegals Limited’s Privacy and Data Protection Policy (“Privacy Policy”).
At SeedLegals Limited (“we”, “us”, or “our”) we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and personal data in compliance with the law and guidelines of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”)
This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, process and keep your data safe when you visit and use our website (“http://seedlegals.com” or the “Site”) or our platform (“https://app.seedlegals.com” or the “Platform”). The Privacy Policy will tell you about your privacy rights, how the law protects you, and inform our employees and staff members of all their obligations and protocols when processing data.
The individuals from which we may gather and use data can include Users, suppliers, business contacts, employees and/or staff members of our Users, users of our Users’ websites and any other people that the organisation has a relationship with or may need to contact.
This Privacy Policy applies to all our employees and staff members and all Personal Data processed at any time by us.
Please use the Glossary at the bottom of this policy to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this Privacy Policy.
1.2 Who is Your Data Controller and Data Protection Officer
SeedLegals Limited is your Data Controller and responsible for your Personal Data.
We have appointed a data protection officer (“DPO”) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights surrounding your Personal Data please contact the Data Protection Officer at [email protected] or postal address 296-302 High Holborn, Holborn, London WC1V 7JH
You have the right to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
1.3 Processing Data on Behalf of a Controller and Processors’ responsibility to you
In discharging the responsibilities of the Data Controller, we have Processors who deal with your data on behalf of the Data Controller. Therefore, the responsibilities described below may be assigned to an individual, or may be taken to apply to the organisation as a whole. The Data Processor has the following responsibilities:
- Ensure that all processing of Personal Data is governed by one of the legal bases laid out in the GDPR (see 2.2 below for more information on those bases).
- Ensure that persons authorised to process Personal Data have committed themselves to confidentiality or are under an appropriate statutory obligation of confidentiality
- Implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk associated with the processing of Personal Data
- Obtain the prior specific or general written authorisation of the Controller before engaging another Processor
- Assist the Controller in the fulfilment of the Controller’s obligation to respond to requests for exercising the data subject’s rights
- Make available to the Controller all information necessary to demonstrate compliance with the obligations laid down in the GDPR and allow for and contribute to audits, including inspections, conducted by the Controller or another auditor mandated by the Controller
- Maintain a record of all categories of processing activities carried out on behalf of a Controller
- Cooperate, on request, with the supervisory authority in the performance of its tasks
- Ensure that any person acting under the authority of the Processor who has access to Personal Data does not process them except on instructions from the Controller
- Notify the Controller without undue delay after becoming aware of a Personal Data Breach
- Designate a data protection officer where required by the GDPR, publish their details and communicate them to the supervisory authority
- Support the data protection officer in performing their tasks by providing resources necessary to carry out those tasks and access to Personal Data and processing operations, and to maintain his or her expert knowledge
Legal Basis for Data Collection
2.1 Types of Data / Privacy Policy Scope
Personal Data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of Personal Data about you which we have grouped together below. Not all of the following types of data will necessarily be collected from you but this is the full scope of data that we collect:
If you sign up to use SeedLegals and create a profile this will include:
- Profile/Identity Data: first name, last name and gender.
- Contact Data includes, address, email address.
- Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.
If you purchase a product on the platform or complete your funding round with us this will include:
- Billing Data: debit/credit card holder information (name/billing address) of whoever purchased something from SeedLegals (processed by Stripe)
- Financial Data: Although we rely on Stripe to retain and store your credit/debit card information and we do not retain it ourselves, in the course of your use of the Platform, you may state the salaries of yourselves or your staff.
- Transaction Data includes details about payments from you for products and purchases you have made from SeedLegals.
Also note, you will be inputting Company Financial Data into funding documents. This includes Company sort code and Company account number for your investors to send the investment to (if specified by the Company).
If you log onto the platform or contact us through our live-chat software:
- Technical Data: internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
- Customer Support Data includes feedback and survey responses. If you have done a webchat or contacted us by email or on live-chat we will retain a record of that conversation
- Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as deal data to help you to make data-driven funding decisions. For example, we could indicate that e.g. “Participating Preferences are selected 23% of the time.” Aggregated Data could be derived from your Personal Data but is not considered Personal Data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your Personal Data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as Personal Data which will be used in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Further, we may use anonymous data collected from SeedLegals Limited for site administration, analytics, advertising and promotional purposes, and we may share such information with other entities (such as service providers) for such purposes. We may also aggregate data to enable research or analysis so that we can better understand and serve you and others. For example, we may conduct research on your demographics and usage. Although this aggregated data may be based in part on Personal Data, it does not identify you personally. SeedLegals may share this type of anonymous data with others, including service providers, our affiliates, agents and current and prospective business partners.
We may use your anonymous data outside of SeedLegals to improve third party marketing or use your data in combination with third party data to improve your experiences both in and outside SeedLegals. We may retain your IP address and/or other device-identifying data in order to help us diagnose problems with our servers, to administer SeedLegals including personalizing content or links relevant to your geographic area or device-type, to verify that your account is not being used by others, to gather broad anonymous demographic data (such as the number of visitors from a geographic area), to enforce compliance with our Terms of Use for our Site, Terms of Service or otherwise in order to protect our services,Site, Platform, Users, or other third parties. We use analysis tools including Google Analytics, HubSpot and/or others. These provide us with information about how our users use the Site or Platform.
We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
2.2 The Legal Basis for Collecting That Data
There are a number of justifiable reasons under the GDPR that allow collection and processing of Personal Data. The main avenues we rely on are:
- Consent: Certain situations allow us to collect your Personal Data, such as when you tick a box that confirms you are happy to receive email newsletters from us, or ‘opt in’ to a service.
- Contractual Obligations: We may require certain information from you in order to fulfil our contractual obligations and provide you with the promised service.
- Legal Compliance: We’re required by law to collect and process certain types of data, such as fraudulent activity or other illegal actions.
- Legitimate Interest: We might need to collect certain information from you to be able to meet our legitimate interests – this covers aspects that can be reasonably expected as part of running our business, that will not have a material impact on your rights, freedom or interests. Examples could be your address, so that the platform can include that address at the bottom of forms it generates so the recipient of the form knows who to contact; or a founder’s salary found within a shareholders’ agreement, necessary for your investors to know, and a document that we store on the platform for you for future reference.
How is your Personal Data Collected?
3.1 Direct Interactions
You may give us your identity, contact and financial data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by phone, email or otherwise. This includes Personal Data you provide when you:
- Inquire about or purchase our products or services and go on to use them
- Speak to our support team using our live-chat support
- Create an account on our Platform
- Request marketing to be sent to you
- Give us feedback or contact us
3.2 Automated Technologies or Interactions
As you interact with our Site or Platform, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this Personal Data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our Cookie Policy for more information.
3.3 Third-parties or Publicly Available Sources
We will receive Personal Data about you from various third parties including:
- Analytics providers such as Google
- Advertising networks such as LinkedIn and Google
- Financial and Transaction Data from providers of payment and delivery services such as Stripe
- Identity and Contact data from publicly available sources such as Companies House.
How we use your personal data
4.1 Our Uses
We will only use your Personal Data when the law allows us to. Set out below is a table containing the different types of Personal Data we collect and the lawful basis for processing that data. Please refer to section 2.2 for more information on the lawful basis listed in the table below.
Examples provided in the table below are indicative in nature and the purposes for which we use your data may be broader than described but we will never process your data without a legal basis for doing so and it is for a related purpose. For further inquiries please contact our Data Protection Officer.
| Purpose/Activity
| Type of data
| Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
|
| User visiting the public website for the first time | (a) Technical (b) Usage | (a) Legitimate Interest We need to understand where you are logging in from so we know whether you can take advantage of our services, and what browser you are using so we can understand our customer demographic to help diagnose service provision issues, to keep our records up-to-date and analyse how customers use our services. |
| When a non-registered User uses our live chat support
| (a) Potentially identity/contact (depending on the contents of the conversation) (b) Technical (b) Contact (d) Marketing and communication
| (a) Consent We ask you for your email so we can easily get back in touch with you and connect the conversation history to an individual It also allows us to register you as a User to be able to enter into a contract with you. You must volunteer this information. We will not extract it from you without your consent (b) Legitimate Interest We need to understand where you are logging in from so we know whether you can take advantage of our services, and what browser you are using so we can understand our customer demographic to help diagnose service provision issues, to keep our records up-to-date and analyse how customers use our services. |
| When a User uses our live chat support and voluntarily leaves their email address or has previously logged into the Platform | (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Marketing and communication | (a) Consent We ask you for your email so we can easily get back in touch with you and connect the conversation history to an individual. It also allows us to register you as a User to be able to enter into a contract with you. (b) Legitimate Interest We need to understand where you are logging in from so we know whether you can take advantage of our services, and what browser you are using so we can understand our customer demographic to help diagnose service provision issues, to keep our records up-to-date and analyse how customers use our services. |
| A User requesting and attending a live demo of our products/services or inquiring into our services through a call with members of our sales/support team | (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile | (a) Consent Certain company information will be taken at this time, including names of founders and existing shareholders in the Company. (b) Legitimate Interest We need this information to be able to help you build your capitalisation table and complete any individual agreements for example Employment Contracts or Founder Service Agreements. (we will sometimes record audio or video calls with you so that both of us can refer back to it if necessary) |
| User signing up to the platform and creating an account | (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical (d) Profile (e) Usage (f) Marketing and communications | (a) Consent You will need to include Personal Data when filling in the Company profile on the platform so the content you create is linked to your profile (b) Contractual Obligation In order to use our Platform you need to contract with us under our Terms of Service and so this data is necessary to form the contract between us (c) Legitimate Interest We need to understand where you are logging in from so we know whether you can take advantage of our services, and what browser you are using so we can understand our customer demographic to help diagnose service provision issues, to keep our records up-to-date and analyse how customers use our services |
| User makes makes a purchase on the Website | (a) financial (b) transaction (c) profile (d) usage | (a) Consent You will need to include Personal Data when filling in the Company profile on the Platform so the content you create is linked to your profile We will retain the name that is stated on the credit/debit card you enter into our Stripe API but all other card details are stored by them and not retained by us (b) Contractual Obligation In order to use our Platform you need to contract with us under our Terms of Service and so this is necessary to form the contract between us We need to retain your Transactional Data so that we can comply with our legal obligation to send you an invoice following a purchase (c) Legitimate Interest We need to know who you are so that we know who to deliver the service to once it has been purchased. It also enables us to provide support to the right individual in case there is an issue with the purchased product |
| User support with specific products | (a) Identity (b) Transaction (c) Profile (d) Usage | (a) Consent We may need your telephone number or other further contact details if reaching out to you is best achieved via those details instead of our live chat (b) Legitimate Interest We will retain records of the transactions you have made with us and what you have used on the Platform so when you come to us with an issue we can quickly identify what your issue relates to and provide you with the most efficient support
|
| Sharing Personal Information with third parties and of third parties (funds/investors) | (a) Identity (b) Contact | (a) Legitimate Interest The user has inputted certain Personal Data about connected third parties and circulated that Personal Data to other connected third parties because those third parties have indicated that they wish to participate in a funding round or enter into another contractual relationship. The User will have obtained consent from the third parties prior to entering the data into the Platform |
| To administer and protect our business (the Site and Platform) including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data
| (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical
| (a) Legitimate interests for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise (b) Contractual Obligation To be able to comply with all legal obligations surrounding data collection, processing and retention.
|
| To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences
| (a) Technical (b) Usage
| (a) Legitimate interest To define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our Site and Platform updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform users about marketing strategy |
4.2 Marketing and Content Updates
You will receive marketing and new content communications from us if you have created an account and by doing so opt into receiving those communications. From time to time we may make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you.
4.3 Change of Purpose
We will only use your Personal Data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact our Data Protection Officer.
If we need to use your Personal Data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
Your rights and how you are protected by us
5.1 What Control Do I Have Over SeedLegals’ Use Of My Personal Data?
You may delete your account at any time – this will remove your account page from the Platform and our related software. We do not guarantee the ability to delete all stored data. If you would like us to delete/correct personally identifiable data, let us know and we will action your request as soon as practicable.
Your account information will be protected by a password for your privacy and security. You need to prevent unauthorized access to your account and personal information by selecting and protecting your password appropriately and limiting access to your computer or device and by signing off after you have finished accessing your account.
You can access information associated with your account by logging into SeedLegals.
California Privacy Rights: Under California Civil Code sections 1798.83-1798.84, California residents are entitled to ask us for a notice identifying the categories of personal customer information which we share with our affiliates and/or third parties for marketing purposes, and providing contact information for such affiliates and/or third parties. If you are a California resident and would like a copy of this notice, please submit a written request to [email protected]
5.2 How Does SeedLegals Protect Customer Data?
We are concerned with keeping your data secure and protecting it from inappropriate disclosure. We implement a variety of security measures to ensure the security of your Personal Data on our systems. Any Personal Data collected by us is contained behind secured networks and is only accessible by a limited number of employees who have special access rights to such systems and are bound by obligations of confidentiality. Where sensitive data is collected by us it will be transmitted and protected via a secure protocol and encrypted in our databases to be accessed only as stated above. If and when we use subcontractors to store your data, we will not relinquish control of your Personal Data or expose it to security risks that would not have arisen had the data remained in our possession. However, unfortunately, no transmission of data over the internet is guaranteed to be completely secure. It may be possible for third parties not under the control of SeedLegals to intercept or access transmissions or private communications unlawfully. While we strive to protect your Personal Data, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any Personal Data you transmit to us. Any such transmission is done at your own risk. If you believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please contact us.
5.3 Opting Out Of Marketing Promotions
You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by logging into the website and checking or unchecking relevant boxes to adjust your marketing preferences OR by contacting us at any time.
Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, we will continue to retain Personal Data provided to us as a result of a product/service purchase, product/service experience or other transactions.
5.4 How to Request your Data and the Process for Obtaining it
You will not have to pay a fee to access your Personal Data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, if your request is clearly unfounded, we could refuse to comply with your request.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity (for example we may ask how you are related to the company in question) and ensure you have the right to access your Personal Data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that Personal Data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
Your data and third parties
6.1 Will We Share Your Data With Third Parties?
We may share non-personal data with third parties to, for example (but not by way of limitation), improve SeedLegals and to enable data aggregation as described above.
We may share your Personal Data with subcontractors (only when necessary and with your consent) or affiliates (subject to confidentiality obligations to use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them and pursuant to our instructions).
We may also share Personal Data with interested parties in the event that SeedLegals anticipates a change in control or the acquisition of all or part of our business or assets or with interested parties in connection with the licensing of our technology.
If SeedLegals is sold or makes a sale or transfer, we may, in our sole discretion, transfer, sell or assign your Personal Data to a third party as part of or in connection with that transaction. Upon such transfer, the Privacy Policy of the acquiring entity may govern the further use of your Personal Data. In all other situations your data will still remain protected in accordance with this Privacy Policy (as amended from time to time).
We may share your Personal Data at any time if required for legal reasons or in order to enforce our Terms of Use for our Site/Terms of Service or this Privacy Policy.
6.2 Third-Party Links
This Site may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our Site, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.
How long we will retain your data for?
We will only retain your Personal Data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for. For example, we are bound to retain contracts made on the platform as they act as a record moving forwards, equally, we need to retain profile information so we know which profiles are attached to which companies. In contrast, conversations you have with us over email or through our live chat software will be retained while the matter is ongoing, but once our conversation ends we may delete the record of that conversation.
We may retain your Personal Data for a longer period than usual in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
Age limits for our users
You must not use SeedLegals unless you are aged 18 or older. If you are under 18 and you access SeedLegals by lying about your age, or are otherwise in breach of our Terms of Use for our Site or Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy, you must immediately stop using SeedLegals and terminate your Account.
This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.
International transfer of data
Your information may be stored and processed in the US or other countries or jurisdictions outside the US where SeedLegals has facilities. We are currently storing data in the EU and so, by using SeedLegals, you are permitting and consenting to the transfer of information, including personal data, outside of the US.
Notification of changes and acceptance of policy
We keep our Privacy Policy under review and will place any updates on this webpage. This version is dated Oct 7th 2019. By using SeedLegals, you consent to the collection and use of data by us as set out in this Privacy Policy. Continued access or use of SeedLegals shall constitute your express acceptance of any modifications to this Privacy Policy.
Interpretation
All uses of the word “including” mean “including but not limited to” and the enumerated examples are not intended to in any way limit the term which they serve to illustrate. Any email addresses set out in this policy may be used solely for the purpose for which they are stated to be provided, and any unrelated correspondence will be ignored. Unless otherwise required by law, we reserve the right to not respond to emails, even if they relate to a legitimate subject matter for which we have provided an email address. As a matter of common sense, you are more likely to get a reply if your request or question is polite, reasonable and there is no relatively obvious other way to deal with or answer your concern or question (e.g. FAQs, other areas of our website etc.).
Our staff are not authorised to contract on behalf of SeedLegals, waive rights or make representations (whether contractual or otherwise). If anything contained in an email from a SeedLegals address contradicts anything in this policy, our terms or any official public announcement on our website, or is inconsistent with or amounts to a waiver of any SeedLegals rights, the email content shall be read down to grant precedence to the latter. The only exception to this is genuine correspondence expressed to be from the SeedLegals legal department.
Terms of use / Terms of service
Please also see our Terms of Use for our Site, and Terms of Service which set out the terms, disclaimers, and limitations of liability governing your use of SeedLegals.
Glossary
- GDPR: The General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR)
- Users: Any individual who either browses the public website, engages with our chat support feature, speaks with our employees and staff members, creates a profile or uses our Platform as a signed-up user.
- Personal Data: Information relating to an individual who can be directly identified from the information. Personal Data includes factual information as well as expressions of opinion or intentions.
- Data Controller / Controller: The organisation that determines the manner and purposes for which Personal Data is to be processed. In our case, SeedLegals Limited.
- DPO: The Data Protection Officer.
- Personal Data Breach: Loss, theft or unauthorised access, use or disclosure of Personal Data.
- Privacy Policy: Our Privacy and Data Protection Policy
- Aggregated Data: Statistical or demographic data derived from your personal data but not consider personal data in law as the data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity.
- Processors: Employees of SeedLegals Limited authorised to discharge the responsibilities of the Data Controller.
If you have any other questions about the interpretation of this Privacy Policy please get in contact with our DPO using the contact information above.
