Blue Buffalo

Legal Terms

Effective: August 4, 2021

PLEASE SEE THIS IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE BUDDIES PROGRAM: https://bluebuffalo.com/buddies/migration/

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) and our Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Agreement”) apply to your (“Participant” or “you”) use of the Buddies by Blue Buffalo mobile application; bluebuffalo.com, nudgesdogtreats.com, truechews.com, and bluevet.com; and associated sites, services, and applications (“Platform”). The Platform is owned and provided by General Mills, Inc. (“General Mills”) and is provided for your personal entertainment, information, and education.

Please review these Terms carefully, as they affect your legal rights. Your use of the Platform constitutes your agreement and acceptance of the Agreement.

THESE TERMS CONTAIN PROVISIONS THAT LIMIT OUR LIABILITY TO YOU, ELIMINATE YOUR RIGHT TO A TRIAL BY JURY, REQUIRE YOU TO RESOLVE DISPUTES WITH US ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS AND NOT AS A PART OF ANY CLASS OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION, AND THROUGH FINAL AND BINDING ARBITRATION. SEE BELOW.

If you do not agree to this Agreement, please do not use the Platform or any services offered through the Platform. We reserve the right to change this Agreement at any time without notice.

Please check back often to ensure you are aware of any updates or changes to these Terms.

1. YOUR ACCOUNT

You may be required to register for an account to access certain Platform services or content (“Account”). Your username and password are for your personal use only, and you are responsible for maintaining their confidentiality. You also are responsible for keeping your account information, including your email address, up to date. You agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account. We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to terminate or suspend your account for any reason.

2. ELIGIBILITY

The Platform is not directed to children under 13 and we will not request any information from children under 13 on the Platform. In addition to all other requirements set forth in this Agreement, you must be 13 years or older to register for the Buddies by Blue Buffalo mobile application, and you must be 18 years or older to use certain features of the Buddies by Blue Buffalo mobile application (including but not limited to the Connect Forum). Please review our Privacy Policy for more information on our privacy practices.

3. PET MEDICAL, HEALTH, FITNESS AND NUTRITION INFORMATION ON THE PLATFORM

The Platform may include information relating to pet nutrition and various pet medical, health and fitness conditions. This is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your veterinarian. You should not use this information for diagnosing or treating a pet’s health, fitness problem, or disease. You should always consult with your own veterinarian for advice and guidance regarding a pet’s nutrition, health, fitness and medical needs.

4. COPYRIGHT AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY POLICY

All names, logos, service marks, and trademarks appearing on the Platform, including the trademarks, service marks, brand identities, characters, trade names, graphics, designs, copyrights, trade dress, and all other intellectual property ("Platform Content"), except as otherwise noted, are protected intellectual property of, or used with permission or under license by, General Mills and its affiliates. This includes the entire Platform Content on the Platform, copyrighted and protected as a collective work.

The use or misuse of these trademarks or any other content on the Platform, except as provided in these Terms or on the Platform Content, is strictly prohibited. You may not, without our permission, copy and distribute this information on any other server, or modify or re-use text or graphics on this system or another system. We reserve all other rights.

Your use of the Platform is limited to personal and non-commercial use only, unless other uses are granted expressly to you. You may not copy, distribute, modify, transmit, reuse, re-post, or otherwise display the Platform Content for public or commercial purposes without our written permission for such use. You may not harvest or otherwise collect information about others, take any action that imposes an unreasonably large load on the Platform’s servers, violate the security of the Platform, or engage in any other conduct that exposes us or any of our Participants to any liability or potential harm.

General Mills respects the intellectual property of others, and we ask our Participants to do the same. General Mills has no responsibility for content on other websites that you may find or access when using General Mills’ products or services. Material available on or through other websites may be protected by copyright and the intellectual property laws of the United States and/or other countries. The terms of use of those websites, and not this Platform’s Terms, govern your use of that material.

It is General Mills’ policy, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, to disable and/or terminate the accounts of Participants who may infringe or repeatedly infringe the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of General Mills and/or others.

5. PARTICIPANT SUBMITTED CONTENT

This Platform may allow you to post text, images, audio, video, links to other sites, or other content to the Platform (“Participant Content”). As a consequence, you may see materials that have been submitted through the Platform by individuals not affiliated with General Mills. Neither General Mills nor any of its affiliates endorses these individuals nor are we in any way associated with any of the materials that they may post on the Platform or link to from the Platform. Neither General Mills nor its affiliates (nor their respective officers, employees, or agents) shall have any responsibility or liability of any nature whatsoever arising in connection with any materials provided by these individuals or in connection with any conduct of these individuals.

You acknowledge that you are solely responsible for your Participant Content, your Participant Content is not confidential or proprietary to you, and others may access or use your Participant Content. You will only submit Participant Content if: you are the sole author and owner of all rights to the Participant Content or have all necessary permissions; your submission is in accordance with these Terms and any other guidance we provide on the Platform; and your submission complies with all applicable laws and regulations. We retain sole discretion to remove any Participant Content from our Platform for any reason. By submitting any Participant Content to the Platform, you understand and agree that you are giving us and our affiliates a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, transferable, non-exclusive and sublicenseable license to use, reproduce, publish, distribute, perform, display and creative derivative works from any such Participant Content (including any username or account name you used to submit the Participant Content), in whole or in part, in any form (including for promotional or marketing purposes). This includes the right to use, copy, modify, adapt, publish, translate, transform, create derivative works from, sell, and/or distribute your Participant Content. You acknowledge that all your Participant Content may be used and shared by us with third parties.

You agree not to disparage, defame or otherwise seek to damage anyone or invade anyone’s rights through any Participant Content. You will not submit Participant Content that may cause injury to any person or entity; is false or misleading; infringes any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other proprietary rights; violates anyone’s rights to privacy or publicity; violates any law or regulation; includes content or links to content that could be considered defamatory, libelous, knowingly false, fraudulent, indecent, violent, obscene, profane, hateful, racially or religiously biased, threatening, or harassing; is inconsistent with the safe and proper use of any General Mills product or service; or promotes commercial activities and/or sales without our prior written consent.

You agree that you will not post any Participant Content that:

1. Includes advertisements or charitable solicitations

2. Includes materials that belong to someone else (including photos, videos, music trademarks or other copyrighted material), unless you have permission from the owner

3. Includes professional photos or videos, unless you have permission from the owner

4. Includes images or recordings of anyone other than yourself, unless you have that person’s permission

5. Includes information about anyone other than yourself, unless you have that person’s permission

You further agree that you will not:

6. Post personal contact information, including last names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers or any other information that would individually identify you or anyone else

7. Impersonate someone else

8. Post false or misleading information

9. Post messages containing hidden or disguised meanings, or which are off topic or out of context

10. Transmit or post anything that contains viruses or any other harmful.

6. NOTICE FOR CLAIMS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY VIOLATIONS AND AGENT FOR NOTICE

If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please provide General Mills’ Copyright Agent with the following information:

1. an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other intellectual property interest;

2. a description of the copyrighted work or other intellectual property that you claim has been infringed;

3. a description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the Platform, with enough detail that we may find it;

4. your address, telephone number, and email address;

5. a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright or intellectual property owner, its agent, or the law;

6. a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your Notice is accurate and that you are the copyright or intellectual property owner or authorized to act on the copyright or intellectual property owner's behalf.

General Mills’ Agent for Notice of claims of copyright or other intellectual property infringement can be reached as follows:

By mail
Copyright Agent
c/o General Mills, Inc.
Number One General Mills Blvd
Minneapolis, MN 55426

By phone
(800) 248-7310

By fax
(763) 764-2268

7. SUBMITTED IDEAS

All comments, suggestions, ideas, notes, drawings, concepts, recipes or other information disclosed or submitted to us by you through the Platform or in response to solicitations on this Platform (“Submitted Ideas”) shall be and shall remain our property. You understand and acknowledge that we have both internal and external resources which may have developed or may in the future develop ideas or other items identical to or similar to the Submitted Ideas and that we are only willing to consider the Submitted Ideas on these terms. In any event, no Submitted Idea is submitted in confidence and we assume no obligation, express or implied by considering the Submitted Idea. Without limitation, we shall exclusively own all now known or hereafter existing rights to the Submitted Ideas of every kind and nature throughout the Universe and shall be entitled to unrestricted use of the Submitted Ideas for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise without compensation to the provider of the Submitted Ideas.

8. COMMUNITY GUIDELINES

You may use the Platform or your Account only in compliance with these Terms and all applicable laws. You may not use the Platform in any manner that could harm General Mills, its affiliates, its brands, or any person or property.

You agree that you will not:

1. violate or attempt to violate the security of the Platform;

2. access Platform data that is not intended for the public;

3. log on to a server or account which you are not authorized to access;

4. probe or test the vulnerability of the Platform, our servers, or our network;

5. attempt to interfere with network service, including through viruses, overloading, or crashing of network equipment;

6. take any action that imposes, or may impose, an unreasonably large load on our servers;

7. forge any data or communications;

8. impersonate any third party, General Mills, or a General Mills employee, or send unauthorized communications on our behalf;

9. reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble any software or portion of the Platform or use automated systems to scrape, harvest, copy or monitor any Platform content; or

10. attempt to bypass or circumvent any technology or measures we use (or that is used on our behalf) to protect, prevent or restrict access to the Platform.

9. COMMUNICATIONS

We may communicate with you electronically, including by posting notices on the Platform or by responding to your e-mails. You agree that all agreements, notices, disclosures or other communications that we provide to you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing. If you provide a mobile phone number, you consent to receive automated text messages about the Platform. Message and data rates may apply and message frequency may vary. Consent not a condition of purchase. 

10. THIRD PARTY SERVICES AND LINKS

The Platform may have links to or integrate with third-party websites or services (“Third-Party Services”). Use of a Third-Party Service is subject to the third party’s terms, conditions, and privacy policies, which may differ from ours, and the integration may enable the collection of data or information by the third party subject to its privacy policy. We do not make any representations about, and are not responsible for, products, services, or material of Third-Party Services, even if a particular third party is affiliated with us.

The Platform may also contain links allowing taking you to websites for other entities that are not under our control. We are not endorsing any such linked sites. We are not responsible for the contents or transmission of any linked site or any link contained in a linked site or for ensuring that the linked sites are error and virus free. Nor are we responsible for the terms of use or privacy practices of such sites. We encourage you to carefully read the policies of each site you visit.

11. LOYALTY PROGRAM AND ADDITIONAL TERMS

Additional Terms may also apply for promotions, sweepstakes, contests, giveaways, or similar programs (“Loyalty Program Terms”). Depending on which of our products or services you use, additional terms may apply (“Additional Terms”). If these Terms are inconsistent with any Additional Terms, the Additional Terms will control.

12. DISCLAIMER

Without limiting the foregoing, everything on the Platform is provided to you "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. ADDITIONALLY, WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE PLATFORM OR THE SERVERS MAKING THE SITE(S) AVAILABLE ARE VIRUS FREE. We do not warrant that the functions contained in these materials will be uninterrupted or error free, that defects will be corrected, or that this Platform or the server that makes it available are free of viruses or other harmful components. We do not warrant or make any representations regarding the use or the result of the use of the materials in this Platform in terms of their correctness, accuracy, reliability, or otherwise.

13. LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY

No responsibility or liability is assumed by General Mills, and its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, franchisees, advertising and promotion agencies, suppliers, and all of their respective officers, directors, employees, consultants and agents, (collectively, the "General Mills Companies") for any technical problems or technical malfunction of any kind arising in connection with any of the following occurrences which may affect or interrupt the operation of the Platform or any feature thereof: hardware or software errors; faulty computer, telephone, cable, satellite, network, electronic, wireless or Internet connectively or other online communication problems; errors or limitations of any Internet service providers, servers, hosts or telephone providers; garbled, jumbled or faulty data transmissions; failure of any email or telephone transmissions to be sent to or received; lost, late, delayed, garbled, damaged, misdirected, undelivered or intercepted email; inaccessibility of the Platform or phone system in whole or in part for any reason; traffic congestion on the Internet or Platform or phone lines; unauthorized human or non-human intervention of the operation of the Program, including without limitation, human error, unauthorized tampering, hacking, fraud, theft, virus, bugs, worms; or destruction of any aspect of the Platform or data thereof, including, without limitation, tampering of or hacking into the telephone lines, or loss, miscount, misdirection, inaccessibility or unavailability of any account or profile used in connection with the Program. The General Mills Companies are not responsible for any personal injury or property damage or losses of any kind which may be sustained to a Participant’s or any other person's computer equipment resulting from participation in the Platform, or use of or download of any information from the Platform.

Your use of the Platform is at your own risk. The General Mills Companies will not be liable for any damages including direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, arising out of your access to or use of the Platform and however caused, whether in contract or tort. If you become dissatisfied in any way with this Platform or its Terms of Use or Privacy Policy, your sole and exclusive remedy is to stop using this Platform and its services. (Some states do not allow the disclaimer of implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages, so these provisions may not apply to you. If any portion of these limitations on liability is found to be invalid or unenforceable for any reason, then the aggregate liability of the General Mills Companies shall not exceed one hundred dollars ($100).)

14. INDEMNITY

You agree that you will be personally responsible for your use of the Platform, and you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless the General Mills Companies from and against any and all claims, liabilities, damages, losses and expenses, including reasonable attorneys' and accounting fees and costs, arising out of or in any way connected with (i) your access to, use of or alleged use of the Platform; (ii) your violation of the Terms or any representation, warranty, or agreements referenced herein, or any applicable law or regulation; (iii) your violation of any third party right, including without limitation any intellectual property right, publicity, confidentiality, property or privacy right; or (iv) any disputes or issues between you and any third party. We reserve the right, at our own expense, to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you, and in such case, you agree to cooperate with our defense of such claim

15. ARBITRATION

Any dispute between you and the General Mills Companies arising from or relating to these Terms and their interpretation or the breach, termination or validity thereof, the relationships which result from these Terms, including disputes about the validity, scope or enforceability of this arbitration provision (collectively, "Covered Disputes") will be settled by binding arbitration. Prior to initiating any arbitration, the initiating party will give the other party at least 60-days' advanced written notice of its intent to file for arbitration. The General Mills Companies will provide such notice by email to your e-mail address on file with us and you must provide such notice by email to https://bluebuffalo.com/about/contact/.

During such 60-day notice period, the parties will endeavor to settle amicably by mutual discussions any Covered Disputes. Failing such amicable settlement and expiration of the notice period, either party may initiate arbitration. The arbitrator will conduct any arbitration proceedings by telephone or videoconference unless in-person appearances are requested by you or the General Mills Companies and approved by the arbitrator. Any in-person appearances will be held at a location mutually agreed upon by you and the General Mills Companies, or, in the absence of such agreement, at a location determined by the arbitrator. The arbitrator will have the power to grant whatever relief would be available in court under law or in equity and any award of the arbitrator(s) will be final and binding on each of the parties and may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction. Arbitrator will apply applicable law and the provisions of these Terms and the failure to do so will be deemed an excess of arbitral authority and grounds for judicial review. The General Mills Companies and you agree that any Covered Dispute hereunder will be submitted to arbitration on an individual basis only. Neither you nor the General Mills Companies are entitled to arbitrate any Covered Dispute as a class, representative or private attorney action and the arbitrator(s) will have no authority to proceed on a class, representative or private attorney general basis. If any provision of the agreement to arbitrate in this section is found illegal or unenforceable, the remaining arbitration terms shall continue to be fully valid, binding, and enforceable (but in no case will there be a class, representative or private attorney general arbitration). These Terms and related transactions will be subject to and governed by the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. sec. 1-16 (FAA) and, where otherwise applicable, as set forth in New York hereof.

16. UNITED STATES ONLY

Unless otherwise specified, the materials on the Platform are presented solely for the purpose of promoting products or programs available in the United States, its territories, possessions, and protectorates. We make no representation that materials on the Platform are appropriate or available for use in other locations. If you access the Platform from locations other than the United States, you are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws.

17. CHOICE OF LAW AND ENFORCEMENT

All issues and questions concerning the construction, validity, interpretation, and enforceability of these Terms (including our Privacy Policy) shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the substantive laws of the State of New York without regard to conflicts of laws principles. The state or federal courts located in New York County, New York will have exclusive jurisdiction over all actions relating to the Platform or these Terms.”

18. SEVERABILITY

If any provision of this Agreement is held unenforceable, that provision shall be considered amended in a manner that eliminates the unenforceability, and all other provisions shall remain effective as originally written.

19. MISCELLANEOUS

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Buddies by Blue Buffalo Loyalty Program Terms, the Platform’s Help Desk and any other agreements expressly incorporated by reference herein, constitute the entire and exclusive understanding and agreement between you and General Mills regarding your use of and access to the Platform, and except as expressly permitted herein may only be amended by a written agreement signed by authorized representatives of the parties. You may not assign or transfer these Terms of Use or your rights hereunder, in whole or in part, by operation of law or otherwise, without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms of Use at any time without notice. The failure to require performance of any provision shall not affect our right to require performance at any time thereafter, nor shall a waiver of any breach or default of the Terms of Use constitute a waiver of any subsequent breach or default or a waiver of the provision itself. Use of paragraph headers in these Terms of Use is for convenience only and shall not have any impact on the interpretation of particular provisions. In the event that any part of these Terms of Use is held to be invalid or unenforceable, the unenforceable part shall be given effect to the greatest extent possible and the remaining parts will remain in full force and effect. Upon termination of these Terms of Use, any provision which, by its nature or express terms should survive, will survive such termination or expiration.

20. CHANGES

We have the right to modify or terminate the Platform or feature of the Platform or these Terms at any time, without any notice or obligation to you. Your continued participation in the Program, including your use of your Account or the Platform indicates your acceptance of these Terms. It is your responsibility to check these Terms to see if they have changed (and when we have done so, we will adjust the effective date).

In the event of any conflict between any details contained in these Terms and any Loyalty Program Terms or Additional Terms, the details of those terms shall prevail.

21. CONTACT INFORMATION

You may contact us with any comments or questions about these Terms or the Platform.