General Terms and Conditions

1. Scope

1.1. These General Terms and Conditions (GTC) apply to all our business relations with our Customers, insofar as the Customer is an entrepreneur, a legal entity under public law or a special legal entity under public law. They apply, in particular, for all services and works, e.g. testing drives, engineering, consulting and development services.
1.2. The GTC shall also apply to all future business transactions without the need to refer to the GTC again in each individual case.
1.3. Our GTC apply exclusively, even if we accept orders without reservation with knowledge of the Customer’s general terms and conditions, render performances or directly or indirectly refer to a letter or the like containing the Customer’s general terms and conditions.
1.4. Conflicting, deviating or supplementary general terms and conditions of the Customer shall only become valid if and to the extent that we have expressly agreed to their validity.

2. Contract Formation

2.1. Our offers are subject to confirmation and are non-binding, unless they are expressly marked as binding or contain a specific acceptance period.
2.2. The contract on the performance to be rendered by us shall be concluded

  • in the event of offers with an acceptance period, upon receipt of the Customer’s order within the acceptance period specified in the offer, unless we object within 7 calendar days from receipt of the order. If the order deviates from our offer, the con-tent of the offer shall be deemed to be agreed;
  • in the event of offers without an acceptance period with our order confirmation. If the Customer’s order deviates from our offer, the content of the offer shall be deemed to be agreed. If our order confirmation deviates from the Customer’s order, the content of the order confirmation shall be deemed to be agreed unless the Customer objects to it in writing within 10 calendar days from receipt of the order confirmation.

2.3. The order by the Customer shall be deemed a legally binding offer to conclude a contract.

3. Industrial Property Rights/Know-How/Utilization Rights

3.1. The Customer acknowledges our know-how and our industrial property rights. Upon proper fulfillment of its contractual obligations, the Customer shall be granted the right to use our performances in accordance with the contract concluded. All copyrights, patent rights or other industrial property rights shall remain with us unless expressly agreed otherwise in writing.
3.2. We reserve all property rights, copyrights, patent rights and other industrial property rights to all documents, materials and other items handed over by us to the Customer (e.g. offers, catalogs, price lists, cost estimates, plans, drawings, illustrations, calculations, product descriptions and specifications, samples, models and other physical and/or electronic documents, information, software). The mere provision of performances to the Customer does not constitute the granting of any rights of use or other authorizations to the components of the offer which are protected by industrial property rights.
3.3. The Customer may not make the above items accessible or communicate them to third parties, exploit them, duplicate them or change them without our prior consent, unless this is contrary to mandatory law. The Customer must use them exclusively for the contractual purposes and return them to us in full at our request and destroy or delete any existing (including electronic) copies un-less this conflicts with statutory storage obligations.
3.4. Insofar as inventions worthy of protection by industrial property rights are created by us within the framework of contract performance, we will grant the Customer a non-exclusive and non-transferable right of use to such inventions on reasonable terms.
3.5. Insofar as the Customer requires protected know-how from us in order to use the ordered performance, we will on reasonable terms and to the extent possible, grant the Customer a non-exclusive and non-transferable right of use to this know-how. As far as we recognize any necessity of such use before or during our performance, we will point out this necessity and the conditions of the right of use.
3.6. Development services
3.6.1. If the Customer has ordered development services and paid for them in full, we will grant the Customer an unlimited and simple,
i.e. non-exclusive, non-transferable and non-sublicensable, right of use to the results produced within the scope of the specific development order, irrespective of whether these results are protected, can be protected or cannot be protected (&