Privacy and Personal Data Protection
We make sure we protect the information you give us. References to “we”/“us”/”our” are to:
* International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC), 104 Oxford Rd, Houghton Estate, Johannesburg, 2198, South Africa
* Third World Network, 131 Jalan Macalister, 10400 Penang, Malaysia
* Médecins Sans Frontières Access Campaign, Route de Ferney 140 P.O. Box 1224, CH-1211 Geneva 1, Switzerland
This privacy notice describes the methods that we use to collect, store, process and use your personal data when visiting the Patent Opposition website (https://www.patentoppositions.org/).
This privacy notice is written in accordance with relevant data protection legislation including the Swiss regulation on data protection and the General Data Protection Regulation.
By providing us with such personal data and/or by using our website, you are consenting that we collect, store, process and use your personal data according to the applicable law and to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Notice.
If you do not agree with this Notice, please do not provide us with any personal data. If you refuse or withdraw your consent, or if you choose not to provide us with the required personal data, we may be totally or partially unable to provide or perform the functions of our website.
Should you have questions or comments regarding this Privacy Notice or suggestions regarding its improvement, please contact us by email at info@patentoppositions.org or contact ipco.io@geneva.msf.org
Personal Data that You Voluntarily Provide
Collected Data
We collect, use and share diligently and in strict compliance with the applicable laws the personal data that you freely choose to share with us when you decide to use our website (such as your name, email address etc.).
You are solely responsible for the accuracy of your personal data and shall inform us of any change thereto. We shall bear no liability for the consequences of inaccurate or untrue data.
Use, Sharing and Opting Out
As a general rule, your personal data will not be used for any other purposes than those for which they were voluntarily provided to us. Your personal data are shared or transferred to third parties if such sharing or transfer is authorized by you or required to achieve the purposes for which you have provided them to us. For instance, by registering to our newsletter, you consent that your personal data (in particular name and email) be processed for the purpose of sending you emails. Further, upon answering a call for help on the website, your contact information will be shared with the person making such call for help, so that he/she may contact you.
We use your data to:
*keep a record of your engagement with us
*send you updates
*understand how we can improve our services and information
*to follow up on the information you contribute
How we use your data depends on why you’re providing it:
ONLINE FORMS
Automatic alerts
We’ll use your email address to deliver you automatic updates to the topics you select.
Data contributions
Submitting your personal information is optional. If you choose to share with us your personal details, and opt to be contacted, we will use them to contact you for additional details regarding the information you submit (if needed).
Calls for help
If you have posted a call for help
Your email address will be used to deliver responses to your calls
If you are responding to a call for help
Your personal information will be visible to the person who posted a call for help so that they are able to communicate with you.
Document annotations
Your email address will only visible to us. We will send a confirmation email to this address. You will also need this in case you want to edit your annotation in the future.
Further to the processing of your personal data according to the purposes for which you intentionally provided them to us, we further reserve our right to use all or part of your personal data for other purposes, such as to communicate with you, conduct surveys or recommend those of our initiatives that could be of interest to you. You further consent that some of your personal data be shared for the same purposes with affiliated members of the MSF movement worldwide, whether in Europe or in other countries such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Arab Emirates or the United States of America (for a current list, please visit www.msf.org).
We may share your personal data with service providers, who help assist us in fulfilling our purposes. By using those services, you accept that your personal data is shared with such service providers under their privacy Notice, which we invite you to read carefully.
Personal data may also be shared with third parties when required by law or by a court order. Also, in case of fraudulent use of our website and, in particular, upon suspicion of punishable acts, the data may be analysed for purposes of clarification and, upon duly justified request, transmitted to the competent official authorities or to the third person affected by the fraud.
Security
Your personal data is transferred to, processed and stored by us in Switzerland and in Europe (in particular, the United Kingdom). When shared with third parties, they may be transferred in other countries and thus be subject to foreign legislation. All personal data are protected against unauthorised processing with the help of appropriate technical and organisational measures. You understand that – despite the previous – no data transmission or storage is 100% secure. Consequently, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you share with us and shall assume no liability should your personal information be accessed, disclosed, modified or destroyed by a breach of our safeguards.
We use an SSL certificate. We do not share information provided via newsletter sign up.
Cookies and Tracking Technologies
In order to optimize our website, we use cookies and other related tracking technologies, which collect and use data regarding your use of and your behaviour on our website (such as your browsing preferences, statistics regarding the pages that are most visited on our website, etc.). Cookies are little files that are stored on your data storage medium and that memorize, through your Internet browser, some configurations and data in order to exchange them with our system. By using cookies and tracking technologies, we can provide better, consistent, updated information, and a more personalized website experience. We may in particular use the following cookies and tracking technologies:
Strictly Necessary Cookies: these are cookies that are required for the operation of our website and for you to be able to use the functions you may request. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website.
Functional Cookies: these cookies record information about choices you make on our website, such as your user name, language or the region you are in. In this way, we are able to personalize your visit on our website.
Analytical Cookies: these cookies allow us to collect information about how visitors use our website, for example to count visitors and to see how visitors move around our website, in order to improve the way our website works. They record your visit on our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. Unless otherwise mentioned, they do not collect information that identify you.
Google Analytics (Google Inc.) is a web analysis service provided by Google Inc. Google uses the collected data to track and examine the use of our website, to prepare reports on its activities, allowing us to better understand visitor behaviour on our website. Google may share the collected data with other Google products and use them to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network. For more information on what data is collected and how your privacy is protected, please consult their privacy policy. The collected data may be sent to, processed and stored on servers in foreign jurisdictions, including in the United States, and thus be subject to foreign legislation. To opt-out, please consult this link.
Displaying Contents From Third Party Sources: these services allow you to view content hosted on third party platforms directly on our website and to interact with them, in order to provide you with an enhanced website experience. They may record your visit on our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed.
Typekit is a typeface visualization service provided by Adobe Systems, Inc. that allows our website to incorporate content of this kind on its pages. For more information on what data is collected and how your privacy is protected, please consult their privacy policy. The collected data may be sent to, processed and stored on servers in foreign jurisdictions, including in the United States, and thus be subject to foreign legislation.
By using our website, you accept that data be collected and processed via cookies in accordance with this Policy and with the privacy policies of the third party providers (including the above) that we invite you to read carefully.
Most browsers accept cookies automatically but allow you to disable them. The help menu on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie and how to disable cookies all together. You can also disable or delete cookies you have previously accepted if you wish to. Further information is available on the following websites:
Microsoft Internet Explorer™ : https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17442/windows-internet-explorer-delete-manage-cookies
Microsoft Edge™ : https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-microsoft-edge-and-privacy
Mozilla Firefox™ : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cookies-website-preferences
Safari™ : https://support.apple.com/kb/PH17191?locale=fr_FR&viewlocale=en_US
Google Chrome™ : https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/61416?hl=en
Most cookies and tracking technologies can also be deactivated or blocked through third party tools, such as the ones proposed by Youronlinechoice, by the Network Advertising Initiative, by the Digital Advertising Alliance or by Ghostery.
Further, most third party providers offer modules or proceedings allowing you to opt out from data collection: you may find specific information on how to opt out from each service above.
Who has access to your data?
Trained staff
Your information is only accessible by trained staff. We regularly review who has access to your information. As a general rule, your personal data will only be accessible insofar as it is necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected. We do comprehensive checks on any contractors before we work with them. We always put a contract in place that sets out how they manage the personal data they collect or have access to.
Data Processor
We use other companies to help us manage and store personal data and to carry out certain activities on our behalf. Our main data processors are listed below, but we may enlist the services of others from time to time:
Hosting: AWS -
Development: NETGURU (Poland)- https://www.netguru.com/
We operate globally and may have a need to transfer certain data to countries outside the EEA. In the event the country where the data is transferred does not provide an adequate level of protection, we make sure to implement technical and organizational measures to protect your data. Should you have any questions in this respect we please contact us at ipco.io@geneva.msf.org
How long do we keep your information?
We keep your information for as long as it’s necessary in connection with the purposes defined above in “How do we use your information? For instance and as a general rule, we keep your email for the purpose of sending you a newsletter until you unsubscribe.
If you request to receive no further contact from us, we'll keep only the basic information about you on our suppression list in order to avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future, for the duration allowed by the application legislation.
Our legal basis for processing personal data
Organisations need a lawful basis to collect and use personal data under data protection law. The law allows for six ways to process personal data (and additional ways for sensitive personal data). Three of these are relevant to the types of processing that MSF carries out:
• A person’s consent (eg to send you Newsletter by e-mail)
• Our legitimate interests:
Our legitimate interests may include:
• Administration and operational management; including responding to solicited enquires, providing information and services, research, events management
Rights of Access and Correction
In line with the current laws on protection of data, you have the right to be informed, without charge, of the data that are collected about you and, if such data are inaccurate or incomplete, to correct them, to block access to them or to delete them. In order to achieve that, you simply write to info@patentoppositions.org or ipco.io@geneva.msf.org with a request to implement whatever modifications are necessary. We will delete your personal data but keep certain connection data, specific demographical and statistical data referring to you and an anonymous copy.
Please send any request by mail or email, with sufficient information for us to identify you, to the address mentioned at the top.
You are also entitled to file a complaint about how MSF treats your data. To do so, you may directly contact: Préposé Fédéral à la Protection des Données et à la Transparence (PFPDT), Feldeggweg 1, CH-3003 Berne (tel.: +41 (0)58 462 43 95).
When do we update this Privacy Notice?
We change this Privacy Notice when we need to. If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal information we’ll make this clear on our websites or by contacting you directly.
Privacy Notice updated on 13 July 2022