Terms of Use

1. These Terms of Use is a legal agreement between you (End-user or you) and Searchlight Technology Pty Ltd ABN 85 609 780 314 of Level 2, 49 Gawler Place, Adelaide SA 5000 (“Searchlight”)
2. You and Searchlight: When we say you or your, we mean both you and any entity or firm you’re authorised to represent. When we say Searchlight, we, our or us, we’re talking about the Searchlight entity you contract with and pay fees to based on the use of the Searchlight platform and associated software (collectively called the “Platform”) that enables you to request local council searches to be provided to you (collectively the “Services”).
3. Our Services consist of all the services we provide now or in the future, including but not limited to our online and mobile connectivity to the Services.
4. Requesting a Service: When you or you on behalf of someone else request to use our Platform and Services, you accept these terms of use, and you become the primary user (“Primary User”) and you’re the one responsible for paying for our Services.
5. User roles and access: As the Primary User, should you enable others into using the Platform and the Services, you should understand the permissions you’re granting to those users.
6. The right to use our Services: As the Primary User, we grant you the right to use our Services (based on your payment).
7. Primary User role: As the Primary User, you take responsibility for controlling how you or your other users who have been granted access are managed and who can access the Services.
8. Whatever your role, when you use Searchlight you agree to follow the rules outlined herein. Please read them and make sure you understand what you should and shouldn’t do.
9. Your responsibilities: You promise that you’ll keep your information (including a current email address) up to date. You’re responsible for providing true, accurate and complete information and for verifying the accuracy of any information that you use from our Services for your legal, tax and compliance obligations. You’re also responsible for protecting your username and password from getting stolen or misused. Our service has minimum password standards but you will ensure that passwords are very strong and not easily guessable. The stronger the password the better!
10. When we introduce new or revised Services: Since we’re always thinking about how to make Searchlight the best it can be, we regularly expand our Services. For new or updated Services, there might be additional terms. We’ll let you know what those terms are before you start using those Services.
11. What we own: We own everything we’ve put into our Services (and the Platform) unless otherwise stated and excluding content owned by others (such as the data provided via local councils). This includes rights in the design, compilation, and look and feel of our Services. It also includes rights in all copyrighted works, trademarks, designs, inventions, and other intellectual property. You agree not to copy, distribute, modify or make derivative works of any of our content or use any of our intellectual property rights in any way not expressly permitted by us.
12. Searchlight pricing: Your use of our Services requires you to pay the specified fee (the “Fee for Service”) as presented at the time of requesting and using the Services. The Fee for Service form part of these terms. The Fee for Service is required at the time of requesting the Service via the Platform.
13. Additional services: You may be able to take advantage of additional services that Searchlight offers (as we are always looking to improve) and these might incur an additional fee. In that case, we’ll let you know about when you sign up for those additional services.
14. Use of data: When you enter or upload your data into our Services, we don’t own that data but you grant us a licence to use, copy, transmit, store, analyse, and back up all data you submit to us through our Services, including personal data of yourself and others, to: enable you to use our Services; allow us to improve, develop and protect our Services; create new and additional Services; communicate with you about your use of our Services; and send you information we think may be of interest to you based on your use of the Services and Platform.
15. Use of your own personal data: Our privacy notice is an important part of and is incorporated into these terms and describes in more detail how we deal with personal data, like your name and email address. We respect your privacy and take data protection seriously. In addition to these terms, our privacy notice sets out in detail how we process your own personal data that you enter into Searchlight, like your name and email address.
16. Use of personal data you enter about others: Depending on how you use our Services and should you enter data about others, our data processing terms may also apply to the personal data of others (such as your customers, suppliers and employees) that you enter into Searchlight
17. Anonymised statistical data: When you use our Services, we may create anonymised statistical data from your data and usage of our Services, including through aggregation. Once anonymised, we may use it for our own purposes, such as to provide and improve our Services, to develop new and additional Services or product offerings, to identify business trends, and for other uses we communicate to you.
18. Data breach notifications: Where we think there has been unauthorised access to personal data resulting from the provision of our Services, we’ll let you know and give you information about what has happened. Depending on the nature of the unauthorised access, and the location of your affected contacts, you may be required to assess whether the unauthorised access must be reported to the contact and/or a relevant authority. We think you're best placed to make this decision, because you’ll have the most knowledge about the personal data stored in and from using our Services.
19. Keeping it confidential: While using our Services, you may share confidential information with us, and you may become aware of confidential information about us. You and we both agree to take reasonable steps to protect the other party’s confidential information from being accessed by unauthorised individuals. You or we may share each other’s confidential information with legal or regulatory authorities if required to do so.
20. Security safeguards: We’ve invested in technical, physical and administrative safeguards to do our part to help keep your data safe and secure whilst you use our Services and Platform. While we’ve taken steps to help protect your data, no method of electronic storage is completely secure and we cannot guarantee absolute security. We will notify you if there appears to be unauthorised access to your data and we may also restrict access to certain parts of our Services until you verify that access was by an authorised user.
21. Account security features: We may introduce security features to make your account more secure, such as two-step authentication. Depending on where you are in the world or what Services you’re using, we may require you to adopt some of these features. Where we make the use of security features optional, you're responsible (meaning we’re not liable) for any consequences of not using those features. We strongly encourage you to use all optional security features.
22. Playing your part to secure your data: You have an important part to play by keeping your login details secure as the Primary User, not letting any other person use them (unless authorised by you of course), and by making sure you have strong security on your own systems. If you realise there’s been any unauthorised use of your password or any breach of security to your account or email address linked to your account, you need to let us know immediately. You also agree not to use free-form fields in any of Searchlight’s systems or services to store personal data, (unless it’s a field explicitly asking for personal data - like a first name or last name) credit card details, tax identifiers or bank account details.
23. Local Council data feed and supply: Any relevant data provided to you from any third party, and especially so with regard to the relevant local council, is regarded by us as a third-party product and service, and any such provider is independent of us.
24. Third-party terms and descriptions: Third-party products are subject to terms and conditions and privacy notices set by those providers, and in particular, the relevant local council. These include how they will use your data that you make available to them. Be sure to read and make sure you agree to their terms and conditions and understand their approach on personal and non-personal data before you request their service. The descriptions of third-party products and services that we publish, and any associated links, have been provided to us by those providers. While we make reasonable efforts to check the accuracy of the descriptions, the providers are solely responsible for any representations contained in those descriptions. We don’t endorse or assume any responsibility for third-party products or services.
25. Availability: We strive to maintain the availability of our Services and Platform, and provide email support, 24 hours a day. On occasion, we need to perform maintenance on our Services and Platform, and this may require a period of downtime. We try to minimise any such downtime. Where planned maintenance is being undertaken, we’ll attempt to notify you in advance but can’t always guarantee it.
26. Access issues: You know how the internet works – occasionally you might not be able to access our services and your data. This might happen for any number of reasons, at any time.
27. Data loss: Data loss is an unavoidable risk when using any technology. You’re responsible for maintaining copies of your data entered into our Services.
28. No compensation: Whatever the cause of any downtime, access issues or data loss, your only recourse is to discontinue using our Services.
29. Problems and support: If you have a problem, we have excellent support available through Searchlight help functionality. If you’ve tried and still need help, you can find more information about online support on our website.
30. Modifications: We frequently release new updates, modifications and enhancements to our Services, and in some cases discontinue features. Where this occurs, we’ll endeavour to notify you.
31. Feedback: We love your feedback and may use it without restriction.
32. Help using our Services: We provide a lot of guidance and support to help you use our Services. You agree to use our Services only for lawful business purposes and in line with the instructions and guidance we provide.
33. While we can’t cover everything here, we do want to highlight a few more examples of things you mustn’t ever do:
    • Undermine the security or integrity of our computing systems or networks.
    • Use our Services in any way that might impair functionality or interfere with other people’s use.
    • Access our Platform without permission.
    • Introduce or upload anything to our services that includes viruses or other malicious code.
    • Share anything that may be offensive, violates any law, or infringes on the rights of others.
    • Modify, copy, adapt, reproduce, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer or extract the source code of any part of our Services.
    • Resell, lease or provide our Services in any way not expressly permitted through our Services.
    • Repackage, resell, or sublicense any leads or data accessed through our Services.
    • Commit fraud or other illegal acts through our Services.
    • Act in a manner that is abusive or disrespectful to a Searchlight employee, partner, third party provider or other Searchlight customer. We will not tolerate any abuse or bullying of our Searchlight employees in any situation and that includes interaction with our support teams.
34. Termination by Searchlight: Searchlight may choose to terminate our Services to you at any time by providing you with one month's written notice in advance. Searchlight may also terminate or suspend your access to all or any data immediately if:
    • you breach any of these terms and do not remedy the breach within 14 days after receiving notice of the breach,
    • you breach any of these terms and the breach cannot be remedied,
    • you fail to pay the Fee for Service, or
    • you or your business become insolvent, your business goes into liquidation or has a receiver or manager appointed over any of its assets, you become insolvent or make any arrangement with your creditors, or become subject to any similar insolvency event in any jurisdiction.
35. No refunds: No refund is due to you if Searchlight terminates the provision of Services in accordance with these terms.
36. Retention of your data: Once our Services are terminated by you or us, it is archived, and the data submitted or created by you is no longer available to you. We retain it for a period of time consistent with our data retention policy. We retain data in case you need it as part of your record retention obligations, but you can get in touch with us to have your data removed completely if you wish.
37. You indemnify us: You indemnify us against all losses, costs (including legal costs), expenses, demands or liability that we incur arising out of, or in connection with, a third-party claim against us relating to your use of our Services or any third-party product (except as far as we’re at fault).
38. Disclaimer of warranties: Our Services and all third-party products are made available to you on an “as is” basis. Subject to any required statutory consumer law term, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
39. Limitation of liability: Other than liability that we can’t exclude or limit by law, our liability to you in connection with our Services or these terms, in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise, is limited as follows:
    • We have no liability arising from your use of our Services for any loss of revenue or profit, loss of goodwill, loss of customers, loss of capital, loss of anticipated savings, legal, tax or accounting compliance issues, damage to reputation, loss in connection with any other contract, or indirect, consequential, incidental, punitive, exemplary or special loss, damage or expense.
    • For loss or corruption of your data, our liability will be limited to taking reasonable steps to try and recover that data from our available backups.
    • Our total aggregate liability to you in any circumstances is limited to the total amount you paid us to use our Services on the particular occasion in question and on which the claim giving rise to the liability arose.
40. Dispute resolution: Most of your concerns can be resolved quickly and to everyone’s satisfaction by contacting us through our website. If we’re unable to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction (or if we haven’t been able to resolve a dispute we have with you after attempting to do so informally), you and we agree to resolve those disputes through binding arbitration or small claims court instead of in courts of general jurisdiction. You and we agree that any dispute must be brought in the parties’ individual capacity and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class or representative proceeding.
41. No professional advice: Just to be clear, Searchlight isn’t a professional services supplier of any sort, and isn’t in the business of giving any kind of professional advice. We may provide you with information we think might be useful in assisting you to use Searchlight, but this should not be seen as a substitute for professional advice and we aren’t liable for your use of the information in that way.
42. Events outside our control: We do our best to control the controllables. We aren’t liable to you for any failure or delay in performance of any of our obligations under these terms arising out of any event or circumstance beyond our reasonable control.
43. Notices: Any notice you send to Searchlight must be sent to info@searchlightechnology.com.au. Any notices we send to you will be sent to the email address you’ve provided us when requesting and using our Services.
44. Consumer laws: In some places, there may be non-excludable warranties, guarantees or other rights provided by law (non-excludable consumer guarantees). They still apply – these terms do not exclude, restrict or modify them. Except for non-excludable consumer guarantees and other rights you have that we cannot exclude, we’re bound only by the express promises made in these terms. Our liability for breach of a non-excludable consumer guarantee is limited, at our option, to either replacing or paying the cost of replacing the relevant Service (unless the non-excludable consumer guarantee says otherwise).
45. Nothing in these terms is to be construed as constituting a partnership, joint venture, employment or agency relationship between you and us, or between you and any other invited user Invited by you). You’re solely responsible for resolving disputes between you and any other invited user. Searchlight may assign these terms - or any of our rights or obligations in these terms - to another Searchlight entity as it deems appropriate. Searchlight entities are the companies controlled by or under common control with Searchlight Technology Pty Ltd.
46. We sometimes will decide to change these terms of use. But don’t worry, changes won’t apply retrospectively and, if we make changes, we’ll make every effort to let you know. You can keep track of changes to our terms by referring to the version and the date last updated at the top of the terms. Generally, we endeavour to provide you with 30 days’ notice of material changes before they become effective, unless we need to make immediate changes for reasons, we don’t have control over. When we notify you, we’ll do it by email or by posting a visible notice through our Services. If a change isn’t material, we may not notify you. If you find a modified term unacceptable, you may simply cease using our Services.
47. If there’s any part of these terms that either one of us is unable to enforce, we’ll ignore that part but everything else will remain enforceable.
48. Interpretation: Words like ‘include’ and ‘including’ are not words of limitation and where anything is within our discretion, we mean our sole discretion.