Was this discussed before?

Could you, please, refer to the exact wording present either in the Service Agreement or in the Help Section describing what pertains to abandoned contests when it comes to a winner selection process evidenced by http://help.squadhelp.com/article/what-happens-if-a-contest-holder-does-not-select-a-winner/ in support of your statement that would be unequivocally and legally valid ?

Sure.

From the Terms and Conditions [bolding mine]:

4.11 Abandoned Contests

If a winner has not been selected by the Buyer for more than 30 days of contest end date (Abandoned Contest), Squadhelp reserves the right to award the Contest Prize to one or more Creatives of Squadhelp’s sole choosing without any further liability or obligation to the Buyer. This award selection will be at the sole discretion of Squadhelp and can not be challenged by the Creatives or the Buyer. In case of a split award, each selected Creative would receive a minimum award of $50.

If a Buyer decides to use an Entry from an Abandoned Contest, they must contact Squadhelp within 60 days of contest End Date. Squadhelp would notify the Creative about Buyer’s intention to use the Entry.

If the Creative has already received a partial or full Contest Prize, the Creative consents to entering into a binding agreement with that Buyer for that Entry [meaning the entry chosen by the Buyer in the preceding paragraph], pursuant to the terms of a Intellectual Property Transfer Agreement, which can be found here: http://www.squadhelp.com/IPTransferAgreement.

If the Creative has not yet received any compensation from the Project, the Buyer must pay a Bonus of $50 to the Creative in order to use their Entry. Upon receiving the Bonus, the Creative consents to entering into a binding agreement with that Buyer for that Entry, pursuant to the terms of a Intellectual Property Transfer Agreement, which can be found here: http://www.squadhelp.com/IPTransferAgreement.

And from the IP Transfer Agreement:

3 . Assignment of Intellectual Property Rights

Upon receipt of payment for the Entry in the form of Squadhelp Credits (pursuant to the terms of the Services Agreement), the Creative hereby assigns to the Customer, all Intellectual Property Rights which the Creative has or may in the future have in the Entry.

On the difference between entries associated with creatives used for a winner selection vs.the notion of a creative being detached from entries serving as the ground for winner allocation, in addition to the examples already mentioned:

''Example 2: A contest (with $100 award) received total of 600 entries. 0 entries received “Love It” ratings, 5 received “Like It” ratings.
In this case, 2 winners will be selected randomly from the list of 5 entries that received “Like it” ratings and each winner will receive $50 award.

Example 3: A contest received total of 600 entries. None of the entries received Love it rating, one received Like It rating.
In this case the one “Like It” rated entry will automatically win the prize amount.

Example 4: A contest (with $200 awards) received total of 600 entries. None of the entries received Love it rating or Like It rating.
In this case 4 winners will be randomly selected from the contest and they will all receive $50 award’’.

And, when asked about this, Dan clarified:

So there you go.

From my earlier comment it stands clear there was an acknowledgement on my part (as per, ‘‘While the wording states that high rated entries are used merely to qualify a contestant to be among the pool of creatives out of which a winner is selected and not the entries on the basis of which the winner is chosen, the process can lead to some incongruencies responsible for why a final winning entry determination is done individually on a case by case basis.’’) on Dan’s clarification statement. However, the scope of what was requested was concentrated on those areas capable of providing the legal basis of your statement that could only be found in the judicially binding documents of the statue of a Service Agreement in conjunction with the detailed guidelines of a Help Section outlining the guidelines with an in-depth steps of winner resolution in abandoned contests…

@hollygirl, You had to ask this question on a Saturday! Now instead of enjoying a nice summer day (which are rare in Chicago, BTW), I have to carefully interpret the discussion between @Vision and @BeDaring and refer back to all the legalese in our Terms of Service :smile:

On a serious note, the spirit of this policy is simple. As @BeDaring pointed out, we pick creatives, not entries in Abandoned contests. Therefore, you are free to reuse those entries in other contests.The CH can come back to us within 60 days of contest end date, and let us know if they plan to use an entry from the contest. If the creative has already received compensation in that contest, we will not ask for additional compensation from the CH and the creative would need to withdraw that name from any other contests they might have submitted to. If the entry happens to be from a creative who has not yet received compensation, the CH would need to compensate the creative by sending the $50 bonus. I should also note, that the chances of a CH coming back to use an entry after a winner has been selected in an abandoned contest are fairly low. Moreover, they will no longer have access to any names, 7 days after the contest has been awarded.

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Whoospie :sweat_smile:

Go have fun in the sun, @Dan!

Thank you, @Dan, for response. I’d like to point out that while i was in agreement with understanding your policy, the presence of some disparities in attributing different weights to entries vs. creatives shown by how the emphasis slightly shifted, could lead to scenarios where a meta level criteria must be applied to resolve dilemmas as when a a creative having submitted an identical entry to two contests that eventually become abandoned is granted a status of a winner in both. In one of the contests the entry gets a higher rating, thus being used to qualify a contestant for the win indirectly, compared to the second one where its low rating does not facilitate the contestant’s winning chances (in this case, the existence of another entry acted as a prerequisite for winner selection). In both cases the entry is subject to liens and encumbrances of a 60 day waiting period, during which both CHs return simultaneously to pick up the same entry as the claimed winner expecting a quick reversal of ownership to take place. Which one of them would be entitled to become the rightful owner of the desired, but disputed, entry ?

@Vision, you are correct that some of these situations could theoretically happen. While we can not cover all possible scenarios in our services agreement, if any such situations arise, we will handle it as fairly as possible.

We do not believe it is fair to the creatives if we add a 60 day “waiting period” on all the names that received a high rating in an abandoned contest. We have to remember, that we are talking about a scenario where a CH has already abandoned the contest, and the likelihood of them coming back to pick a name is fairly small.

However, in the event two different CHs come back at the same time and are interested in the same name from two different abandoned contests, we will handle the situation in the best way possible to make it fair for everyone involved.

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Oops,Dan…sorry! But enquiring minds need to know…lol!

Thanks for the response though.

I just thought if you reused a name and it won somewhere else,and the CH came back and wanted it…what would happen.But you answered that. Thanks, and now go relax!

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