Member terms | Medical Device Manufacturing

The agreement

These terms are between the publisher of Medical Device Manufacturing, Life Science Outsourcing, Inc., 830 Challenger St, Brea, CA 92821, and the company that claims a page. The person who sends the claim link is stating that they are authorised to bind that company, and sending the link accepts these terms for it; there is no separate signature. The terms of use and the privacy policy apply to a member as to anyone else, and where they and this page differ for a member, this page governs. Each rule below describes what the software does.

Who a member is

A member is a company that has claimed its own page on this site. Claiming needs two things, both checked by the software: a mailbox on the company’s own domain, which the claim link proves control of, and an FDA identifier already on the company’s public record. Free mailboxes are not accepted, and a person here reviews the claim before the page changes hands. A company with no FDA identifier on its record asks a person here, who mints the same link after looking at the record. A member signs in with a link sent to the account address, which starts as the address that claimed the page and which the member can change from its own account; there is no password. Sessions last fourteen days.

The listing is free, permanent and unlimited. Nothing about a claim changes the FDA records on the page, editorial coverage, or a verification outcome. A claim is not verification and grants no badge.

What a member may publish

A description, a real website link, a founded year, an employee band and a minimum order, shown on the company page and in directory listings as the company’s own statement, under a heading that says so, and never with a verified mark.
The categories it works in, chosen by the member from the site’s own taxonomy. A category is listed at once; requests in it reach the member only after a person here has confirmed the company can do that work.
No delivery, quality, on-time or turnaround figure, and no certificate or photograph: there is no field for any of them, and none will be added without a way to check it.
Open positions, posted from the member area onto the jobs board. A posting is the member’s own words, like its statement: it carries no verified mark, it is never featured, ranked or paid for, and it renders under the line that the employer posted it and MDM has not checked it. Posting is free. What a posting warrants is on terms, and releasing the page closes every open posting at once.
The website link goes out, unwrapped, to a real site. Contact information is never gated behind this site.

Everything a member publishes is its own statement, and the member is stating that it is true, that it is not misleading, that the member has the right to publish it, and that it infringes nobody’s rights and breaks no law. The member keeps what it writes and gives the publisher a licence to publish it on the company page, in the directory and in the site’s feeds, and to keep it for the period on privacy. The publisher may hide a statement, a category or a posting that breaks these terms; it does not rewrite a member’s words, and it does not publish why.

Fees

There are none. Claiming a page, listing in categories, asking for verification, holding the badge, receiving requests and posting positions are free, and no fee will be introduced for any of them. The one thing money buys on this site is a labelled sponsorship placement, which is a separate written agreement with the publisher and is not part of these terms.

What is never for sale

Verification and the badge. They are earned by passing the published checks and kept by annual re-verification, at no price.
The featured slot on a category page, which is awarded monthly by contribution.
Routing. Nobody pays to receive a request, and no request is withheld for want of payment.

Money buys visibility only: a labelled sponsorship placement, never access, never rank and never the badge. Every paid placement carries a visible label.

The badge

A member asks to be verified from its own account, once it has chosen the categories it works in. Nothing is checked until it asks, and the wing it is checked under comes from those categories.

A member whose checks all pass is issued a badge: an image served from this domain with a link to the member’s verification record here. What is checked is published on vetting and nothing else is checked. The badge may be mounted on the member’s own website and in email signatures using the code this site provides, and nowhere else.

It has four statuses and no fifth: active, lapsed, revoked and suspended. It shows the status and the month of verification and nothing else.
It is checked again every year, and a renewal notice to the member’s quality contact falls due at least two weeks before the renewal date.
This site does not lapse, suspend or revoke a verification without first writing to the member’s quality contact and showing the record it is relying on. The change cannot take effect until fourteen days after that notice is sent, a notice that was not sent cannot be acted on, and a response inside the fourteen days is recorded against the notice. That is a rule the software enforces, not a courtesy. The one exception is the member’s own decision: a member that releases its own page ends its verification with it, at once and without notice, as set out under ending membership below.
A lapsed or suspended badge greys wherever it is mounted; a revoked one stops being served. The verify address printed on it keeps resolving in every status, so a badge that stops resolving on this domain was never ours.
The licence to display the badge ends with the verification. A member may not mount, copy or alter the image outside the code provided, and may not present a lapsed, suspended or revoked badge as current.

The referral desk

A verified member listed in a category may receive requests routed in it. A request is a buyer’s private message: it goes to at most five matched members and to nobody else, it is never published, and the buyer consented to exactly that.

Answer each card, Interested or Pass, within two business days of it being sent, excluding weekends and US federal holidays, closing at 5:00 PM Eastern; the deadline is printed on the card. An unanswered card expires. Passing costs nothing.
Do not forward, publish or share a card or anything in it with anyone outside the member. A buyer who asked to stay anonymous stays anonymous until they accept an introduction to the member.
Use a card only to answer that request. A member that passes may not keep a copy of the card or of anything in it; the card still shows in the member’s own account here, which is this site’s record of it and not a copy the member holds. Never use a card, or anything in it, for prospecting. Breaking this rule is grounds for removal from the network, as set out under ending membership below.
Contact details reach the member only after the buyer says yes to the introduction. Specifications and drawings change hands after that, under the parties’ own agreements; this site never holds them.
Two weeks after an introduction the member is asked one question about it, with three answers. The answers are used internally to route requests and are never published or shown to any member.
In the service categories the publisher, Life Science Outsourcing, Inc., serves itself, requests go to the publisher alone. Those categories are named on network rules. In every other category the publisher is an ordinary member under these same terms.

Responding inside the window, and passing on requests that are not a fit, are what keep requests coming to a member. A member sees its own cards, its own answers and its own referrals, and nothing that compares it with anyone else.

Who can see what

Every administrative read of a request by a person here is logged with who made it. The people who work the verification queue and the people who work the request queue hold different roles. The full statement of what this site holds about a member, and for how long, is on privacy.

Ending membership

A member may release its page at any time from its profile screen. The page goes back to the generated one at once; the company’s own statements and categories come off it; any verification is marked revoked and the badge stops being served, at once and without notice, because the decision is the member’s own and a company that is not a member cannot hold a badge.
What the company entered is kept for 90 days, so a page claimed again in that time comes back with its own words, and is then deleted. The verification record is kept, marked revoked, and the badge address keeps resolving to it.
This site ends a membership itself in two cases: where the claim turns out not to have been the company’s own, and where a member has used a routed card for anything but answering that request, as set out under the referral desk above. Where such a company holds a badge, this site first revokes its verification with the notice set out under the badge above, because that decision is this site’s and not the member’s.

What the publisher does not stand behind

A verification records that the published checks were run on a date and passed; it is not an endorsement, a certification or a guarantee of anything about the member, and the publisher may be wrong. The publisher does not stand behind a buyer, a buyer’s request, a buyer’s conduct after an introduction, or the outcome of any introduction; what the parties agree after one is between them. Routing promises no volume of requests and no request at all, and the publisher is free to change how routing works provided the network rules say how. The limit on the publisher’s liability, and its exclusions, are those on terms, and they apply to a member in full.

Your indemnity

If a claim is brought against the publisher because of a member’s statement, a member’s posting, a member’s use of a routed card or a member’s breach of these terms, the member will defend the publisher against it and pay the resulting losses, costs and reasonable legal fees. The publisher will tell the member promptly of any such claim and will not settle it on the member’s behalf without asking.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law, and disputes under them are heard in the courts, that the terms of use name, on the same conditions, including the thirty days to put a matter right before a claim is brought.

Changes

The date at the top of this page is the date of the version you are reading, and it moves whenever the text does. A change that gives a member more, or asks less of it, takes effect when it is published. A change that asks more of a member is published here at least fourteen days before it takes effect, and a member that keeps its page after that day accepts it; a member that does not may release its page at any time, as set out above. Earlier versions are kept and can be had on request.

Questions go through the contact page, or by post to the publisher at 830 Challenger St, Brea, CA 92821, marked for Medical Device Manufacturing.