Privacy Policy

Valence Labs Privacy Policy

Last Update: May 21st, 2024

Valence Discovery Inc. (“Valence Labs”, “we”, or “us”) values and respects your privacy. We have prepared this privacy policy to explain the manner in which we collect, use and disclose information related to identified or identifiable individuals (“Personal Information”). We collect this Personal Information through our website located at https://www.valencelabs.com/ (the “Website”), the Valence Portal (the “Portal”) and the Polaris Hub (located at https://polarishub.io/) (the “Hub”, collectively with the Website and the Hub, the “Platforms”) and through other interactions with you. The Platforms provide the research community in AI and drug discovery with a place to share, upload, exchange, and use research and data, organize conferences, events, meet-ups, and engage in discussion with fellow community members.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

·       Categories of Personal Information and How We Collect It

·       Purpose for Collecting and Basis for Processing Personal Information

·       Sharing of Personal Information

·       Information About Our Website

·       Safeguards and Retention

·       Your Choices

·       Updates to the Privacy Policy

·       Contact Us

CATEGORIES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION AND HOW WE COLLECT IT

Means of Collection

We process Personal Information that you provide directly to us (online through our Platforms, or through other communication channels) as well as information that we collect automatically.

Personal Information you provide to us:

Your Account Information:  Although simple access does not require the creation of an account, if you wish to use all functionality of the Portal or the Hub, you will need to create an account, which will require certain Personal Information. The Personal Information we collect includes your first and last name (optional), email address and a password that you create. In some cases during the account creation process, we also collect information related to third-party authentication services.

Waitlist Information: We may offer you the opportunity to join waitlists for features or services that will be made available as part of the Platforms. To join a waitlist, you will need to provide certain Personal Information, including your first and last name and email address.

Your Platform Usage Information: During your use of the Platforms, you have the option to provide certain additional Personal Information to build your profile and connect with other members, such as work affiliation/title, interests, and city/province. You can also share research papers, pictures, post comments and respond to other posts within the Platforms. Please note that any information that you share on a Platform will be publicly viewable to anyone who visits the Platform. On the Hub, you can also share datasets, benchmarks, results, data, information, content, records, and files. As set out in the Polaris Terms of Service, this data should not include Personal Information, and we ask that you not share any personal information (e.g., in a dataset or picture) through the Platforms, in accordance with the Polaris Terms of Service.

Employment and Candidate Information: In connection with a job application or related inquiry, you may provide us with certain personal information about yourself (such as that contained in a resume, cover letter, or similar employment-related materials). We use this information for the purpose of processing and responding to your application for current and future career opportunities.

Events Information: If you attend one of our events or webinars, we may collect certain Personal Information that you provide to us in connection with the event or webinar. We collect this information so that we can communicate with you about the event and contact you about future events.

Support Information And Other Communications: When you contact us with a comment, question or complaint or otherwise communicate with us (for example through optional surveys), you may provide us with information that identifies you, such as your name, address and a telephone number, along with additional information we need to help us promptly answer your question or respond to your comment or complaint. 

Personal Information we collect automatically through the Platforms and in our other interactions with you

Website Usage: You do not have to create an account to visit or use our Website. However, we do collect some Personal Information when you visit our Website. Please see "Information about our Website" below for detailed information regarding the Personal Information we collect when you visit and use our Website. 

Hub Usage: You have to create an account to access the Hub. To facilitate automatic log in, after you manually authenticate your account a user credential is created and processed to facilitate login.

Social Media Information: We may offer you the opportunity to engage with our content on or through third-party social networking websites, plug-ins and applications. When you engage with our content on or through third-party social networking websites, plug-ins and applications, you may allow us to have access to certain Personal Information associated with your social media account (e.g., name, username, email address, profile picture, gender) to deliver the content or as part of the operation of the website, plug-in or application. 

Anonymous Information: We may modify or aggregate your Personal Information such that it cannot reasonably be associated with you, for the following purposes:

(i)to protect your privacy and the security of your Personal Information; and

(ii)to conduct research and/or analytics with the goal of improving our services and the client experience and developing new offerings.

PURPOSE FOR COLLECTING AND BASIS FOR PROCESSING PERSONAL INFORMATION

‍We process the following categories of Personal Information for the purposes listed on the basis that it is necessary for us to perform our contract with you:

Why and how we process your Personal Information
Category of Personal Information processed
To create and administer your account.
Your Account Information
Providing the functionality of the Platforms and  fulfilling  your requests.
Providing the functionality of the Platforms and  fulfilling  your requests.
  • Your Account Information
  • Waitlist Information(optional)
  • Your Platform Usage Information
  • Events Information
  • Support Information and Other Communications
  • Website Usage
  • Hub Usage

‍We process the following categories of Personal Information for the purposes listed on the basis of our legitimate interest:

Why and how we process your Personal Information
Category of Personal Information processed
Legitimate interests relied on
Maintaining our Platforms: 
  • For allowing access to our Platforms 
  • For account creation and maintenance
  • Your Account Information
  • Your Platform Usage Information
  • Website Usage
  • Hub Usage
It is in our interest and the interest of users of our Platforms to seek to ensure that individuals can  access our Platforms and that our Platforms are operating as optimally as  possible.
  • To help us     understand our Website activity.
  • To monitor and improve theWebsite
Website Usage
It is in our interest and those of our users for the Website to be maintained so that users can access our services and the Website to work as optimally as possible.
To evaluate and improve the user experience and the  Platforms.
Your  platform usage information
It is in our interest and those of our users that the Website be improved regularly to accord with Users’ expected standards of  service.
To assist users and to improve our customer service and  service offerings.
  • Your Account Information
  • Support Information and Other Communications
It is in our interest and those of our users that we retain information that allows us to address their queries efficiently and offer improved customer service.
Aggregating and/or anonymizing Personal Information:
  • We may aggregate and/or anonymize Personal Information so that it will no longer be considered Personal Information. We do so to generate other data for our use, which we may use and disclose for any purpose.
  • Support Information And Other Communications
  • Your Platform Usage Information
  • Your Account     Information
  • Anonymous Information
It is in our interest to aggregate /anonymize Personal Information in order to conduct research and/or analytics with the goal of improving our services and the client experience and developing new offerings.

‍We process the following categories of Personal Information for the purposes listed on the basis that you consent:

Why and how we process your Personal Information
Category of Personal Information processed
To  send regular email updates about the initiative.
Your  account information (name and email address)

We may also collect Personal Information where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation, for example to pursuant to applicable law or regulations, court orders, legal process or government requests.

SHARING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We do not sell or disclose your Personal Information to third parties without your consent, except as set forth below or as required or permitted by law.

Service Providers: Your Personal Information will be transferred (or otherwise made available) to certain third parties including affiliates that provide services on our behalf. We use service providers to provide services such as hosting the Website, hosting the Portal and providing email marketing services. Our service providers are only provided with the information they need to perform their designated functions and are not authorized to use or disclose Personal Information for their own marketing or other purposes. 

Legal and Compliance: We and our Canadian, U.S. and other foreign service providers may disclose your Personal Information in response to a search warrant or other legally valid inquiry or order, or to another organization for the purposes of investigating a breach of an agreement or contravention of law or detecting, suppressing or preventing fraud, or as otherwise may be required or permitted by applicable Canadian, U.S. or other law or legal process, which may include lawful access by U.S. or foreign courts, law enforcement or other government authorities. Your Personal Information may also be disclosed where necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims and to investigate or prevent actual or suspected loss or harm to persons or property.

Sale of Business: We may transfer any information we have about you as an asset in connection with a proposed or completed merger, acquisition or sale (including transfers made as part of insolvency or bankruptcy proceedings) involving all or part of Valence Labs or as part of a corporate reorganization or other change in corporate control.

CROSS-BORDER TRANSFERS

We are a company based in Canada. Your Personal Information may be stored and processed in the United States and Canada. By using the Platforms you understand that your information will be transferred to countries outside of your country of residence which may have data protection rules that are different from those of your country. In certain circumstances, courts, law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies or security authorities in those other countries may be entitled to access your Personal Information.

If you are located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”):

Adequacy Decisions: Some non-EEA countries are recognized by the European Commission as providing an adequate level of data protection under Article 45 GDPR (or equivalent decisions under other laws). We transfer your Personal Information as described under the heading ‘Categories of Personal Information and How We Collect It’ to certain jurisdictions that benefit from adequacy decisions, such as Canada. A list of jurisdictions for which the European Commission has issued an adequacy decision is available here.  

Standard contractual clauses: For transfers from to countries not considered adequate by the European Commission, we have put in place adequate measures such as Standard Contractual Clauses to protect your Personal Information. The European Commission has approved contractual clauses under Article 46 GDPR that allows companies in the EEA to transfer data outside the EEA. These (and their approved equivalent for the UK and Switzerland) are called standard contractual clauses. We rely on standard contractual clauses to transfer Personal Information to certain affiliates and business partners in countries without an adequacy decision. 

In certain situations, we rely on derogations provided for under the applicable law to transfer Personal Information to a third country.

INFORMATION ABOUT OUR WEBSITE

Visiting our Website: In general, you can visit our Website without telling us who you are or submitting any personal information. However, we collect the IP (Internet protocol) addresses of all visitors to our Website and other related information such as page requests, browser type, operating system and average time spent on our Website. We use this information to help us understand our Website activity and to monitor and improve our Website.

Cookies: Our Website uses a technology called "cookies". A cookie is a tiny element of data that our Website sends to a user’s browser, which may then be stored on the user’s hard drive so that we can recognize the user’s computer or device when they return. You may set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie or to not accept certain cookies. However, if you decide not to accept cookies from our Website, you may not be able to take advantage of all of the Website features. 

Analytics: We may use a third party such as Google Analytics to help us gather and analyze information about the areas visited on the Website (such as the pages most read, time spent, search terms and other engagement data). These third parties may use cookies and other tracking technologies. For more information about Google Analytics or to prevent the storage and processing of this data (including your IP address) by Google, you can download and install the browser plug-in available at the following link. You can also obtain additional information on Google Analytics' data privacy and security at the following links:
policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
and
support.google.com/analytics/topic/2919631

Third-Party Links: Our Website may contain links to other websites that Valence Labs does not own or operate. We provide links to third party websites as a convenience to you. These links are not intended as an endorsement of or referral to the linked websites. The linked websites have separate and independent privacy policies, notices and terms of use. We do not have any control over such websites, and therefore we have no responsibility or liability for the manner in which the organizations that operate such linked websites may collect, use or disclose, secure and otherwise treat personal information. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

YOUR RIGHTS & CHOICES

Marketing and updates communications

You can sign up to receive our email communications, for example newsletters or communications about new features or other updates related to the Platform or Hub. You can unsubscribe anytime by clicking the “unsubscribe” link included at the bottom of the email. Alternatively, you can opt out of receiving our marketing communications by contacting us using the contact information under “Contact Us” below. 

We may also send you notifications about the Portal by email and you can change your settings in your Portal account at any time to stop receiving notifications.

Please note that you may continue to receive transactional or account-related communications from us.

Exercising Your Privacy Rights

Depending on where you are based (for example, the EEA), you may have privacy rights under local law.

Subject to applicable law, you have the right to access personal data concerning you for which we are the controller. You also have the right to have inaccuracies corrected in your Personal Information that we process, to have Personal Information erased, to restrict  or object to our processing of your Personal Information and to have us transfer your Personal Information to another data controller. 

Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time. The lawfulness of this processing before you withdraw your consent will not be affected by such withdrawal. 

You may make such a request or withdraw consent by emailing or writing to us or our EU Representative using the contact information set out below. We may request certain Personal Information for the purpose of verifying your identity when you seek access to your Personal Information.

If you are based in the EEA, you also have the right to lodge a complaint concerning our processing of your Personal Information with the relevant supervisory authority of the European country where you reside. You can also find details of relevant supervisory authorities at https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/about-edpb/members_en. You also have the right to seek a judicial remedy in respect of any complaints you may have.

PRIVACY GOVERNANCE POLICIES AND PRACTICES

We are committed to protecting your Personal Information and have implemented policies and practices that govern our treatment of Personal Information, including:

·       a privacy framework that defines the roles and responsibilities of our employees with respect to the treatment of Personal Information in our custody and control;

·       policies and procedures regarding the protection of Personal Information, including safeguards designed to protect Personal Information in our custody and control against loss or theft and unauthorized access, use or disclosure;

·       the designation of a Privacy Officer who is responsible for overseeing Valence Lab’s compliance with applicable privacy legislation;

·       practices pertaining to privacy training and awareness for our personnel with access to Personal Information;

·       processes for responding to data subject requests and complaints concerning the handling of Personal Information in a timely and effective manner;  and

·       a framework governing the retention and destruction of Personal Information that is designed to ensure compliance with our legal obligations.

SAFEGUARDS AND RETENTION

We have implemented reasonable administrative, technical and physical measures in an effort to safeguard the Personal Information in our custody and control against theft, loss and unauthorized access, use, modification and disclosure. We have controls in place to restrict access to Personal Information on a need-to-know basis to employees and authorized service providers who require access to fulfil their job requirements.

We have record retention processes designed to retain Personal Information for no longer than necessary for the purposes set out herein, such as to provide your Portal account, or as otherwise required to meet legal or business requirements.

UPDATES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY

We may update this privacy policy periodically to reflect changes to our privacy practices. We encourage you to periodically review this page to ensure you are familiar with those changes. We will indicate at the top of this privacy policy when it was most recently updated.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions or comments about this privacy policy or the manner in which we or our service providers (including our service providers outside Canada) treat your Personal Information, or to exercise any rights in respect of your Personal Information, please contact us at:

Véronique Bérubé
514-715-4998
privacy@valencelabs.com

If you are based in Europe, you can still get in touch with us at the contact details above. You can in addition or instead get in touch with our GDPR representative in the EU at ValenceLabsEUrep@mhc.ie or

MHC GDPR Representative
Mason Hayes and Curran Professional Services Limited South Bank House
Barrow Street
Dublin 4
Ireland
Tel: +353 (1) 614 5000

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