Terms of Use for Website and Educational Content

Terms of Use

Welcome to the Hinman Dental Society (“Company,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). These Terms of Use (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of hinman.org and Hinman’s educational offerings, including our website, community, information resources, educational materials, member and attendee contributions, and related services. Hinman is a place where members and other contributors can share information, educational materials, resources, experiences, ideas, and knowledge with the broader community. By accessing or using Hinman resources, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree with these Terms, please do not use Hinman resources.

1. Hinman’s Role

Hinman provides an online platform for accessing, organizing, discovering, and sharing information and educational resources. A portion of the content available through Hinman may be created, submitted, or contributed by members, users, educators, experts, organizations, or other third parties. Our role is generally to provide the tools that allow information and educational content to be shared with the community. While all meeting education is peer reviewed and selected by professionals in the dental industry, we do not necessarily independently verify, endorse, or guarantee all information submitted by contributors.

2. Member and Contributor Content

Members and contributors may be permitted to submit, publish, or otherwise make available content through Hinman’s website and meetings. You are solely responsible for the content that you submit. By submitting content, you represent and warrant that you have the necessary rights, permissions, and authority to provide that content and permit Hinman to use it. This means:

1. You own the content or have sufficient rights and permissions to submit it;
2. Your submission does not knowingly infringe another person’s copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other rights;
3. Your submission does not violate applicable law;
4. You have obtained any permissions or releases reasonably necessary for material you submit;
5. Your submission does not contain malicious code or intentionally harmful material; and
6. You are not submitting content in violation of an obligation of confidentiality.

3. Educational and Informational Purpose

Hinman is intended to facilitate the sharing and discovery of educational and informational resources. Content available through Hinman is generally provided for informational and educational purposes only. Information provided by Contributors represents the views, knowledge, experiences, or opinions of those Contributors and does not necessarily represent the views of Hinman. Unless specifically stated otherwise, information available through Hinman should not be interpreted as professional advice, including legal, medical, financial, investment, tax, employment, or other professional advice. You are responsible for determining whether information is appropriate for your particular circumstances and, where appropriate, consulting a qualified professional. You should independently evaluate information before relying on it or using it to make decisions.

4. Company Review and Moderation

We may review, moderate, organize, edit, categorize, feature, restrict, or remove content at our discretion. We may use automated or human moderation processes to help maintain the quality, safety, and integrity of the content. We are not obligated to monitor every contribution or verify every statement made by contributors. We reserve the right to remove or restrict content that we believe: Violates these Terms; Violates applicable law; Infringes another person’s rights; Is misleading or fraudulent; Is abusive, threatening, or harassing; Contains malicious software; Is inappropriate for the Platform; Is excessively promotional or spam; Compromises the security or integrity of Hinman; or Otherwise conflicts with the purpose or standards of our community.

5. Rights in Your Content

You retain ownership of the intellectual property rights in original content that you submit, subject to the rights and licenses granted to us under these Terms. By submitting content, you grant Hinman a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable license to host, store, reproduce, format, display, distribute, publish, transmit, modify, adapt, translate, organize, promote, and otherwise use your content as reasonably necessary to operate, maintain, improve, and promote the Platform. This license allows us to make content available to other users and to use it in connection with Hinman features, including search, recommendations, categorization, newsletters, educational collections, promotional materials, and other Hinman-related activities. The license continues for as long as reasonably necessary for these purposes, subject to our applicable policies and legal obligations. You should not submit confidential information or content that you do not have the right to share.

6. Attribution

Where appropriate, we may identify you as the Contributor of content that you submit. You acknowledge that your name, username, profile information, or other attribution information associated with your contribution may appear alongside your content when it is displayed or shared through Hinman. Hinman reserves the right to publish content under anonymous authorship, pen names or other pseudonyms where applicable to respect an author’s privacy.

7. Copyright and Intellectual Property

Hinman itself, including its design, software, branding, logos, original Hinman-created content, graphics, functionality, and other materials created by or for Hinman, is owned by or licensed to Hinman and is protected by applicable intellectual property laws. Contributor content remains the property of the applicable Contributor, subject to the license granted to Hinman under these Terms. Except as expressly permitted by these Terms or applicable law, you may not reproduce, republish, distribute, sell, license, modify, or commercially exploit Hinman materials or another contributor’s content without appropriate authorization.

8. Permitted Educational and Personal Use

Subject to these Terms, you may access and use materials from Hinman for legitimate personal, educational, research, and informational purposes. You may reference or share links to publicly available content provided that doing so does not misrepresent the source, imply endorsement, or violate applicable law or the rights of others. If you wish to reproduce Hinman content or use it commercially, you should obtain permission from Hinman and the applicable rights holder.

9. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Hinman, its owners, affiliates, employees, contractors, contributors and service providers will not be liable for any direct or indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages arising out of or related to:

• Your use of or inability to use Hinman resources;
• Your reliance on content or other information;
• Errors or omissions in educational or informational content;
• Actions or statements of contributors or other users;
• Third-party websites or resources;
• Loss or corruption of data; or
• Any other matter relating to the Platform.

10. Indemnification

To the maximum extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Hinman, its owners, affiliates, employees, contractors, and service providers from claims, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, and expenses, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, arising from or relating to:

• Your use or misuse of Hinman resources;
• Your violation of these Terms;
• Your content;
• Your violation of another person’s rights; or
• Your violation of applicable law.