Terms of use

1. Who these terms are between, and when you accepted them

These terms of use are an agreement between you and Playway Books Pvt Ltd. They take effect the moment you access any part of the Website, and your continued use of it is your acceptance of them. Section 10A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 makes an agreement formed in this way enforceable, and these terms are that agreement.

If you do not accept them, the remedy is simple and complete: stop using the Website. You may still ring +91 99471 23678 or write to learn@playwaybooks.com, and we will help you exactly as we would help anyone else.

If you are using the Website on behalf of a school, a trust, a firm or a company, you confirm that you are authorised to bind it, and “you” means both you and that organisation. If you are under eighteen, use the Website with a parent or guardian; do not send us an enquiry yourself. Section 9 of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 governs a child’s data and we would rather not hold any.

These terms are to be read with the privacy policy, the cookies notice, the copyright and permissions page, the trade marks page, the disclaimer and, where you place an order with us, the payments, shipping and refunds pages. Together they are one agreement. Where a specific page and this one differ on a specific subject, the specific page governs that subject.

2. Definitions

These words carry the meanings below wherever they appear capitalised on any page in this legal set.

Company, we, us, our

Playway Books Pvt Ltd, a company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013 with its registered office at 43/2153, Jewel Homes, Flat E1, Whitefield, A-Block, SRM Road, Kaloor, Ernakulam, Kerala 682018, India.

Website

Every page, file and endpoint served from https://playwaybooks.com and from any subdomain of it, including the Markdown twin of each page, the generated share images, the sitemap and the JSON-LD embedded in each page.

Content

Everything the Website is made of and everything it carries: the text, the headings and the copy; the photographs and illustrations; the token artwork and the colour system; the tables of formulas, equations, valencies and radicals; the syllabus mappings; the HTML, CSS, JavaScript and TypeScript; the page layouts and the arrangement of them; the fonts as configured and subset; the structured data; and the selection, ordering and arrangement of all of it, which is protected as a compilation in its own right.

Works

The printed books published by the Company, including The Language of Chemistry, Playbook®, in every edition, format, translation and adaptation, together with their text, exercises, answer keys, charts, evaluation charts, token sheets, the design of the tokens, and the cover.

Marks

PLAYWAY®, Playbook®, Chemistry — The Mystery! Made Easy™, the name Playway Books, the Playway Books wordmark and logo, and any other name, mark, logo or get-up used by the Company in trade.

You, your

Any person who accesses, reads, downloads, requests, links to, fetches or otherwise uses the Website, whether as a visitor, a customer, a school, an agent, or an automated program acting for any of them.

Automated Means

Any robot, spider, crawler, scraper, harvester, headless browser, script, extension, proxy, mirror, model, agent or other program that requests, reads, copies, stores, indexes, parses or extracts the Content without a person reading it at the moment of the request.

3. What this Website is, and what it is not

It is an informational and marketing website for a publisher. It describes a method of teaching chemistry and the books that carry it, tells you where to buy them, and lets a school ask for a sample copy.

It is not a shop. It holds no cart, no account, no password, no order history and no payment instrument, and it processes no transaction of any kind. Every Buy control on this site opens a retailer’s own page, where that retailer sells to you under its own terms, at its own price, with its own returns policy. We are not a party to that sale. Payments explains the one route by which you can buy from us directly, which runs through the office in Ernakulam and never through this Website.

It is not a teaching service, an assessment service, a tutoring service or an examination authority, and nothing on it is professional advice of any kind — educational, medical, safety or legal. The disclaimer sets out what we do and do not claim.

4. The licence you are given

Subject to your compliance with these terms, Playway Books Pvt Ltd grants you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sub-licensable and revocable licence to access the Website and to view, and print a single copy of, any page of it for your own personal, non-commercial reference.

That is the whole licence. It is not a sale and it transfers nothing. Every right not expressly granted here is reserved to Playway Books Pvt Ltd and its licensors, and no right is granted by implication, estoppel, course of dealing, or because a technical control did not stop you. The licence ends automatically if you breach these terms, and on it ending you must destroy any copy you made under it.

These are the things the licence expressly covers, so that nobody has to guess:

• · Read every page, as many times as you like, and print one copy of a page for your own reference.
• · Link to any page on this Website, from anywhere, without asking and without a fee. A plain link needs no permission and never will.
• · Quote a short passage in a review, an article, a lesson plan or a message, with the title and Playway Books named.
• · Show a page of this Website, or a page of a copy of the book you own, to a class you are teaching.
• · Fetch a page with an assistant, read it, summarise it for the person who asked, and cite it back to them with a link.
• · Cache a page in your own browser in the ordinary way a browser does, and read it offline.
• · Send us anything you like: a correction, a complaint, a question, or a request for permission to do something this page does not allow.

If what you want to do is not on that list, it needs permission — and asking is free, quick, and has never cost anyone anything. Write to learn@playwaybooks.com. Copyright and permissions says what to put in the request.

6. Security, and what counts as an attack

You must not interfere with the operation of the Website or with anyone else’s use of it. That includes attempting to gain access to any part of it, or to any server, database or account behind it, that is not publicly served; probing or scanning for vulnerabilities; introducing a virus, worm, trojan or other computer contaminant; and any attempt to overload, flood or deny service.

Sections 43, 65, 66 and 66F of the Information Technology Act, 2000 cover these acts, and the penalties run from compensation to imprisonment. Section 43 does not require dishonest intention: unauthorised access alone is enough for a claim in compensation.

Responsible disclosure is welcome and will never be met with a legal threat. If you have found a weakness, write to learn@playwaybooks.com with enough detail to reproduce it, give us a reasonable time to fix it, and do not access, alter or exfiltrate anyone’s data while you are demonstrating it. Testing conducted within those bounds is authorised for the purpose of s. 43.

7. What you send us

There are two forms on this Website — the schools enquiry and the message form on the contact page — and they are the only places you can send us anything through the site itself. Both are run for us by HubSpot, and both are part of the page they sit on rather than something you switch on. Everything you type into either is covered by the privacy policy, which sets out what is collected, why, who else sees it and how to have it erased.

When you send us anything, through the form or by email, you confirm that it:

• · is true so far as you know, and not misleading;
• · is yours to send, and does not infringe anyone’s copyright, trade mark, confidence or privacy;
• · is not obscene, defamatory, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful or unlawful;
• · does not impersonate anyone or misstate who you are or who you act for;
• · contains no virus or other contaminant, and no solicitation, chain letter or advertisement.

We do not publish what you send us. If you volunteer a testimonial, a photograph or a quotation and we would like to use it, we will ask you first, in writing, and you may say no or withdraw later. Where you do give permission, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use it for that purpose, and you keep the copyright.

If you send us an idea for a book, an exercise or a feature that we did not ask for, please understand what that does and does not create: we cannot treat unsolicited ideas as confidential, we may already be working on something similar, and sending one creates no obligation on us and no entitlement for you. If you want a confidential discussion, ring first and we will set one up properly.

8. Other people’s websites, and the retailers

This Website links out to Amazon, Flipkart, JioMart, local stockists and social platforms, and embeds other people’s services: the HubSpot forms, which are part of the two pages that carry them; Cloudflare Zaraz, which asks before it measures or advertises to you on any page; and PostHog, which is not part of that Zaraz configuration and does not ask — it measures on every page regardless of what you answer or whether you are ever asked. All are governed by their own terms and their own privacy policies, and we have no control over them.

A link is not an endorsement, a warranty or a representation about anything on the other side of it, and we accept no liability for what is there, for what it does with your data, or for anything you buy through it. The retailer’s own page is authoritative on price, availability and delivery, which is precisely why every Buy control here opens the retailer rather than pretending to be a checkout. Check the seller name before you buy: we do not control who lists our titles on a marketplace, and a copy sold by someone we have never supplied is a matter for that marketplace and, if it is counterfeit, for us — tell us.

9. Accuracy, availability and change

We try hard to be accurate and we say so where we are not sure: where a fact on this site has not been verified, it says so rather than being estimated. Even so, the Website may contain errors, and prices, availability, editions and syllabus mappings change. Nothing here is an offer capable of acceptance; a price becomes binding only in a written quotation from the office, and a retailer’s price is the retailer’s.

We may change, suspend, withdraw or discontinue any part of the Website at any time, without notice and without liability. We do not promise that it will be available uninterrupted or error-free — it is a small publisher’s website, not an emergency service. If you find something wrong, tell us and we will correct it rather than argue about it.

We may revise these terms. The version and date at the head of this page change when we do, and using the Website after that is acceptance of the revision. A change that materially reduces your rights will not be applied retrospectively to an order already placed.

10. Suspension of access

We may block, rate-limit or refuse access to the Website, in whole or in part, to any person or client, at our discretion and without notice — most often because of automated abuse. Where a block appears to have caught a real reader by mistake, write to learn@playwaybooks.com and it will be looked at by a person.

11. Disclaimer of warranties

The Website and the Content are provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Playway Books Pvt Ltd disclaims all warranties, conditions and representations of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, or uninterrupted or error-free operation.

Nothing in this clause limits anything we owe you under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 or the Sale of Goods Act, 1930 in respect of a book you actually bought from us. Those rights cannot be contracted away and we are not trying to. This clause is about the Website.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Playway Books Pvt Ltd, its directors, employees and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive loss, or for any loss of profit, revenue, goodwill, data, opportunity or anticipated saving, arising out of or in connection with the Website or these terms, on any theory of liability — contract, tort, statute or otherwise — and whether or not we were told such loss was possible.

Our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the Website and these terms is limited to the greater of the amount you paid Playway Books Pvt Ltd directly in the twelve months before the claim arose, or one thousand rupees.

These limits do not apply, and are not intended to apply, to death or personal injury caused by our negligence; fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; a liability under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 that cannot lawfully be limited; or anything else that Indian law does not permit us to exclude. Where a court finds a limit in this clause unenforceable, it is to be read down to the minimum extent necessary and the rest of the clause stands.

13. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Playway Books Pvt Ltd, its directors, employees and agents from and against any claim, demand, proceeding, loss, liability, damage, cost and expense — including reasonable legal fees and the costs of suit — arising out of or connected with your breach of these terms, your infringement of the Content, the Works or the Marks, your unlawful use of the Website, or any content you send us. This clause is given under ss. 124 and 126 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 and survives the end of this agreement.

14. Enforcement, and what we will actually do

We would far rather have a conversation than a case. In practice, an infringement we discover is met with a letter asking for it to stop, and most of them end there. What follows is what remains available if it does not, and it is set out so that nobody is surprised by it:

• · An injunction, including an interim injunction under Order XXXIX of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, and where appropriate the appointment of a Local Commissioner under Order XXVI rule 9 to enter premises and seize infringing stock.
• · Damages or an account of profits, and delivery up of infringing copies, under s. 55 of the Copyright Act, 1957 and s. 135 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999.
• · A criminal complaint under s. 63 of the Copyright Act, 1957, ss. 103 and 104 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, or the relevant provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.
• · A takedown notice to the host, the platform, the app store, the search engine or the payment provider carrying the infringing copy.
• · Recordal with Customs under the IPR (Imported Goods) Enforcement Rules, 2007 to stop infringing copies at the border.

Costs of enforcement, including legal fees, are recoverable from the infringer where the court so orders, and we will ask. Evidence of an online infringement is admissible under s. 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, which is why a report that includes a URL, a date and a screenshot is worth so much more than one that does not.

Waiting is not waiving. A delay in enforcing a term, or a decision not to enforce it once, is not a waiver of it and does not prevent us enforcing it later or enforcing anything else.

15. Governing law, jurisdiction and disputes

These terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or with the Website — including a non-contractual one — are governed by the laws of India, without regard to conflict of laws principles.

Subject to the two paragraphs below, the courts at Ernakulam, Kerala have exclusive jurisdiction. Where the dispute is a commercial dispute above the specified value, it goes to the Commercial Court under the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, and s. 12A of that Act requires pre-institution mediation unless urgent interim relief is sought.

Arbitration, for a commercial dispute only. A dispute arising out of a direct or bulk order may, by written agreement between us at the time, be referred to a sole arbitrator appointed by agreement under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The seat and venue is Ernakulam, Kerala, the language is English, and the award is final and binding. This does not prevent either of us seeking urgent interim relief from a court.

If you are a consumer, none of this takes anything away from you. You keep every right you have under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, including the right to complain to the District, State or National Consumer Commission, and to file it where you live or work rather than where we are, through the e-Daakhil portal or in person. An arbitration clause does not oust that jurisdiction and we do not claim it does. The grievance page sets out how to reach us first, which is usually faster.

A claim arising out of these terms must be brought within the period allowed by the Limitation Act, 1963, which for a contractual claim is three years from the date the right to sue accrues.

16. General

Force majeure. Neither of us is liable for a failure or delay caused by something outside our reasonable control — an act of God, flood, fire, epidemic, war, civil disturbance, strike, a failure of power or telecommunications, a hosting or network outage, a change in law, or an act of government. This does not excuse a payment already due.

Severability. If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, it is severed or read down to the minimum extent necessary and the rest of these terms remain in full force.

Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these terms or any right under them. We may assign them to a successor in business, on notice published here.

Entire agreement. These terms, with the pages named in clause 1, are the entire agreement between us about the Website, and they replace every earlier version, including the terms published on the previous Playway Books website. Nothing in this clause excludes liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.

No partnership. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, agency or employment relationship between us.

Survival. Clauses 2, 4 (as to reservation), 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 survive the end of this agreement for any reason.

Notices. A notice to us is validly given if sent to learn@playwaybooks.com or delivered to the registered office on the grievance page. A notice to you is validly given at the email address you gave us. This page is written in English, and the English text governs.

Company disclosure. The registered name, address and Corporate Identity Number required by s. 12(3)(c) of the Companies Act, 2013 appear in the footer of every page and on payments.