Terms & Conditions

D-Law's objective is to provide the public a reliable, affordable, efficient, and easy to use legal due diligence review platform thereby, subject to the certain legal limitations, litigation records are made accessible which is not only useful for preliminary due diligence review but is also instrumental for making an informed decision for entering into a joint venture or any transaction.

Terms & Conditions

This page (together with the documents referred to on it (including, in the case of a Subscriber (as defined below), the subscription order form), "these terms of use") tells you ("User") the terms of use on which User, whether as a guest or a Registered User (as defined below) (and, in the case of a Registered User, "User" shall also include the relevant Subscriber), may make use of the website under the domain name www.d-law.com (the "D-Law website"), which is a website operated by D-Law International Holdings Limited, a company incorporated and subsisting under the laws of Hong Kong ("D-Law"). Please read these terms of use carefully before using the D-Law website. By using the D-Law website, User signifies his acceptance of these terms of use and User's agreement to abide by them. If User does not accept these terms of use, User should not use the D-Law website.You ("User") agree to accept these terms and conditions of service with D-Law. By using the D-law website, User signifies his acceptance of these terms of use.

1. Use for Lawful Purposes
  • (a) User shall use the D-Law website only for lawful purposes primarily for conducting background legal search for due diligence review. User shall not use or otherwise export or re-export the D-Law website or any portion thereof in any manner which violates any applicable local, national or international law or regulation.
  • (b) User shall not attempt to interfere in any way with the network security of the D-Law website, nor attempt to gain unauthorized access to the D-Law website, the server on which the D-Law website is stored or any other computer system, server or database. User shall not misuse the D-Law website by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful. User must not attack the D-Law website via a denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack.
    By breaching this provision, User would commit a criminal offence under the Telecommunications Ordinance (Cap 106 of the Laws of Hong Kong) and/or the Crimes Ordinance (Cap 200 of the Laws of Hong Kong). D-Law will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and D-Law will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing User's identity to them. In the event of such breach, User's right to use the D-Law website will cease immediately and D-Law may also bring legal proceedings against User, who may be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential loss or damage incurred by D-Law as a result of such breach.
  • (c) User shall not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, rent, lease, loan, sell, sublicense, or create derivative works from the D-Law website. Nor shall User use any network monitoring or discovery software to determine the site architecture, or extract information about usage, individual identities or users of the DL-aw website. User may not use any robot, spider, other automatic software or device, or manual process to monitor or copy the D-Law website without the prior written permission of D-Law. User shall not seek to gain access to any materials or information through any means not intentionally made available by D-Law. User shall not use any framing techniques to enclose any portion of the D-Law. website (including, but not limited to, images, text, page layout and form) without the prior written consent of D-Law.
  • (d) If User is a Registered User (or a Subscriber), User shall immediately notify D-Law immediately if User believes there has been any unauthorized use of User's account (or the account of a Registered User of that Subscriber). User shall not interfere in any way with another user's use of, or D-Law 's provision of, the D-Law website.
  • (e) (i) User shall not use the D-Law website and/or information retrieved from the D-Law website to transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising or promotional material or direct marketing or e-marketing or any other form of similar solicitation (spamming) or resale or any malicious purposes. User is reminded of the relevant provisions of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (cap. 486 of the laws of Hong Kong, the "Ordinance").
  • (e) (ii) User agrees to restrict the use of the records retrieved from D-Law for legal due diligence review purposes. In particular, for data revealed in a company's records via D-Law, it shall be used to authenticate the identities of the directors and officers of that company concerned. With respect to litigation record, it shall be used for the purposes related to the litigation in question, and bankruptcy record shall only be used relevant to that bankruptcy case only.
  • (f) If D-Law determines that User has failed to comply with any of the material provisions of these terms of use, User's right to use the D-Law website will cease immediately and D-Law may also bring legal proceedings against User, who shall be liable to D-Law for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential loss or damage incurred by D-Law as a result of such breach of contract or from the spamming or other prohibited activity.
2. Proprietary Rights
  • (a) The Judiciary Hong Kong has granted D-Law a non-exclusive, revocable and non-transferable right to copy and publish in D-Law database, in online form, judgments on the Judiciary's website (collectively the "Judgement"). D-Law acknowledges, and D-Law User by using D-Law service also acknowledges, that the copyright in the Judgment is owned by the Government of the HKSAR ("Government"). The Judgment published in D-Law is reproduced from those posted on the Judiciary's website with the permission of the Government. The Government accepts no liability or responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any of the Judgment being published in D-Law.
  • (b) All trademarks logos, trade names, information, data and materials that form part of, are contained in, or are accessed through the D-Law website (collectively, the "Intellectual Property") shall be and remain the property of D-Law or its licensors (as the case may be). The Intellectual Property is protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved. Other than as described in the immediately following paragraph, nothing in these terms of use grants User any right to use or any other rights in the Intellectual Property.
  • (c) User may print off one copy of, and may download on any single computer, the information from any page(s) of the D-Law website for User's personal use only. User may not modify, copy, reproduce, republish, upload, or distribute such information in any other way, and User may not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics separately from any accompanying text.
  • (d) The status of D-Law (and that of any identified contributors) as the author(s) of the information on the D-Law website must always be acknowledged.
  • (e) User must not use any part of the information on the D-Law website for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from D-Law or its licensors.
  • (f) If User prints off, copies or downloads any part of the D-Law website in breach of these terms of use, User's right to use the D-Law website will cease immediately and User must, at D-Law's option, return or destroy any copies of the information User has made
3. Submissions from User
  • (a) Those litigants captured in the D-Law website may wish to publish statements prepared by their legal advisors on their behalf on the D-Law website. Upon fulfilment of certain requirements of D-Law and for a fee, D-Law may, but shall not be obliged to, publish those statements under the "Statements" category of the D-Law website (the "Statements"). User shall not post, publish, upload or distribute any Statements which are unlawful or abusive in any way, including, but not limited to, any Statements that are defamatory, libelous, pornographic, obscene, threatening, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, inclusive of hate speech, or would constitute or encourage a criminal offence, violate the rights of any party, or give rise to liability or violate any applicable local, national or international laws or regulations, either intentionally or unintentionally. D-Law has the right to remove any Statement from the D-Law website if, in its absolute opinion, such Statement does not comply with these terms of use.
  • (b) It is expressly declared that the Statements are the independent views and opinions expressed by the legal advisors of the litigant(s) involved, and do not reflect the views and opinions of D-Law, and D-Law will not be responsible, or liable to any third party, for the content or accuracy of any Statements.
  • (c) If User sends Statement(s) to D-Law, the Statements shall be deemed, and shall remain, the property of D-Law. None of the Statements shall be proprietary or subject to any obligation of confidence on the part of D-Law, and D-Law shall not be liable for any use, copying, distribution or disclosure of any Statements for any purpose. User agrees that D-Law shall exclusively own all now known or hereafter existing rights to the Statements and shall be entitled to unrestricted use of the Statements for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, without compensation to User or the drafter of the Statements. User also agrees that D-Law shall have the right to disclose User's identity to any third party who is claiming that any Statement made by User through its legal advisors constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.
4. Amendment

D-Law reserves the right, at its discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove any of the provisions of these terms of use (other than, in the case of a Subscriber, provisions contained in the subscription order form) at any time. D-Law will post these terms of use as amended on this page of the D-Law website and User should check this page of the D-Law website periodically and take notice of any changes, as they are binding on User. Some of the provisions of these terms of use (other than, in the case of a Subscriber, provisions contained in the subscription order form) may also be superseded by provisions or notices published elsewhere on the D-Law website. Continued use of the D-Law website after any change to these terms of use shall be deemed an acceptance by User to be bound by these terms of use as amended.

5. Accessing the D-Law Website
  • (a) D-Law reserves the right to withdraw or amend the service on the D-Law website without notice (see below). D-Law shall not be liable to User or any third party for the unavailability for any reason at any time or for any period of the D-Law website.
  • (b) From time to time, D-Law may restrict access to some or all parts of the D-Law website to users registered with D-Law ("Registered Users") who have been nominated by an entity (the "Subscriber") in a subscription order form. The Subscriber and the Registered Users must comply with the provisions of these terms of use. If there is any inconsistency between any of the provisions of these terms of use, the provisions of these terms shall prevail.
  • (c) If User chooses, or User is provided with, a user identification code, password or any other piece of information as part of D-Law's security procedures, User must treat such information as confidential, and User must not disclose it to any third party. D-Law has the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by User or allocated by D-Law, at any time, if in D-Law's opinion User has failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms of use.
6. Limitations of Services

User understands and accepts that D-Law is not able to provide the following information in the Database i.e.

  • (a) The Judiciary may not release all judgments to the public and the Department of Justice and/or Police do not usually announce publicly that a charge against a person was dropped or a claim against him was dismissed. Thus, such information not available in the public domain is likewise unavailable in our Database, and
  • (b) The Rehabilitation of Offenders Ordinance (Cap 297 of the Laws of Hong Kong) requires that certain spent convictions should not be disclosed further after 3 years. D-Law will not therefore make available for searches criminal records of the Magistrate Courts older than 3 years (with case No. prefix App ESCC,KCCC,STCC,KTCC,FLCC,TMCC,TWCC,NKCC,WKCC) which are mostly summary offences; Therefore, the records of D-Law cannot be perfected in these respects. Checking of the court file will be advisable if User desires to ascertain information set out in (a) above. User should bear in mind when reviewing a D-Law search report of the lack of certain public information. Therefore, records retrieved from D-Law should not be regarded as the conclusive evidence of the character of the data subject concerned.
7. D-Law's Liability
  • (a) User acknowledges that information obtained from the D-Law website is not intended to amount to advice (legal or otherwise) on which no reliance should be placed. No lawyer-client relationship is formed. User uses the D-Law website at User's own risk. D-Law therefore disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such information by User, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents https://www.d-law.com/DLawPortal/disclaimer
  • (b) Third party content (including, without limitation, Statements) may appear on the D-Law website or may be accessible via links from D-Law website. D-Law shall not be responsible for and assumes no liability for any infringement, mistakes, misstatements of law, defamation, slander, libel, omissions, falsehood, obscenity, pornography or profanity in the statements, opinions, representations or any other form of content contained in any third party content appearing on D-Law website. User understands that the information and opinions in the third party content is neither endorsed by nor does it reflect the belief or opinion of D-Law.
  • (c) Although the information on the D-Law website was captured from sources D-Law believes to be reliable, D-Law cannot and does not provide any guarantees, conditions or warranties as to the accuracy, validity, timeliness or completeness of any such information. To the extent permitted by law, D-Law expressly excludes any condition, warranty, representation or other term which might be implied by legislation, common law or the law of equity.
  • (d) All information that D-Law collects is information in the public domain provided by the Government, and D-Law has no authority to make amendment of such public information. Therefore, all information on the D-Law website is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, and can be subject to change without prior notice. D-Law aims to update the D-Law website regularly, and may change the content at any time. If the need arises, D-Law may suspend access to the D-Law website, or close it indefinitely. Any of the information on the D-Law website may be out of date at any given time, and D-Law is under no obligation to update such information.
  • (e) D-Law will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack, viruses or other technologically harmful material that may infect User's computer equipment, computer programs, data or other proprietary material due to User's use of the D-Law website or to User's downloading of any material posted on it, or on any website linked to it.
  • (f) D-Law database supports multilingual text display, yet content of each record will remain in its original language type (i.e. in English or Chinese) in D-Law database. To use D-Law services successfully, in particular the Watch List functions, User is required to input search data in the corresponding language type of the court record concerned. For the Watch List services to function properly, User should take care to input of the name of the data subject or company you wish to follow accurately. In an event of default of Watch List services, D-Law expressly excludes all liabilities (contractual or tortious) for damages or losses suffered by the User or Subscriber concerned to the extent provided in sub-clauses (g) and (h) below regardless whether such default is caused by defects of hardware, software of D-Law or unintentional mismatch of information in the processes.
  • (g) D-Law and its directors, officers, employees, agents and shareholders ("D-Law's Officers") shall not be liable for damages or losses of any nature suffered by any party in connection with the D-Law website or resulting or arising from access to or use of, or inability to access or use, or results of access to or use of the D-Law website, any websites linked to the D-Law website or any information on the D-Law website, including (without limitation): loss of income, revenue, business, profits, contracts, anticipated savings, data or goodwill; wasted management or office time; or damages resulting or arising from an intentional or unintentional act or omission of any third party, whether caused by tort (including negligence), breach of contract or otherwise, even if foreseeable, except where it is proved that such damages or losses were a direct result of D-Law's or any of D-Law's Officers' gross negligence or wilful misconduct.
  • (h) In any event, D-Law's (and D-Law's Officers') liabilities for tortious and/or contractual claims in relation to the service hereto shall not exceed HK$40,000. D-Law (and D-Law's Officers) shall in any event be discharged from all liabilities whatsoever in relation to the service related hereto unless suit is commenced within one year of the date of provision of the service concerned.
  • (i) For the avoidance of doubt, nothing herein shall affect D-Law's liability for death or personal injury arising from the negligence of D-Law or any of D-Law's Officers, nor any other liability which cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.
  • (j) User agrees to indemnify, defend and hold D-Law and any of D-Law's Officers harmless from and against all claims, losses, expenses, damages and costs, including reasonable attorneys' fees, resulting from any violation of these terms of use by User or arising from or related to any Statements submitted by User through its legal advisors.
8. Information about User

D-Law processes information about User in accordance with the D-Law website's privacy policy . By using the D-Law website, User consents to such processing and User warrants that all data provided by User is accurate.

9. Links from other Websites
  • (a) User may link to the home page of the D-Law website, provided that User does so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage D-Law's reputation or take advantage of it, but User must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on the part of D-Law where none exists.
  • (b) User must not establish a link from any website that is not owned by User.
  • (c) The D-Law website must not be framed on any other website, nor may User create a link to any part of the D-Law website other than the home page. D-Law reserves the right to withdraw linking permission without notice. The website from which User is linking must comply in all respects with these terms of use.
  • (d) If User wishes to make any use of material on the D-Law website other than set out above, please address the request to [email protected].
10. D-Law's Successors and Assigns

These terms of use shall be binding upon and inure to the benefit of any of D-Law's successor companies or assigns.

11. Entire Agreement
  • (a) These terms of use (including, in the case of a Subscriber, the subscription order form) contain the entire understanding of the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof and supersedes any other agreements and understandings, whether oral or written, relating to the subject matter hereof, subject to the provisions in Clause 4 above.
  • (b) User acknowledges that, in accepting these terms of use, User has not relied on, and shall have no right or remedy in respect of, any statement, representation, assurance or warranty (whether made negligently or innocently) other than as expressly set out in these terms of use.
  • (c) Nothing in this provision shall limit or exclude any liability for fraud.
12. Severability
  • (a) If any provision of these terms of use (or part of any provision) shall at any time be held by any court or competent authority to be void, invalid, illegal or unenforceable, such provision (or part-provision) shall, to the extent required, be deemed to be deleted and shall not in any way affect or render void, invalid, illegal or unenforceable any other provision of these terms of use.
  • (b) If any void, invalid, illegal or unenforceable provision of these terms of use would be valid, legal and enforceable if some part of it were deleted, the provision shall apply with the minimum modification necessary to make it valid, legal and enforceable.
13. English Version shall Prevail

If there is any inconsistency between the English and Chinese versions of these Terms of Use, English version shall prevail.

14. Governing Law and Jurisdiction
  • (a) These terms of use and all disputes and claims arising out of or in connection with them or their subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ("Hong Kong").
  • (b) All disputes and claims arising in any way out of or in connection with these terms of use or their subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Hong Kong, to which the parties irrevocably agree to submit, although D-Law retains the right to bring proceedings against User for breach of these terms of use in User's country of residence or any other relevant country.