General Terms of Use

General Terms of Use of Cadastral Sheets Available From the Website cadastre.gouv.fr

  1. Preamble

    The Public Finances General Directorate has created a digital database of cadastral sheets known as the Plan Minute de Conservation (hereinafter referred to as PMC), which it updates on a regular basis.

    The Internet site cadastre.gouv.fr was authorised by an order of the Ministry for the Budget, Public Accounts and the Civil Service dated 21 January 2008 (published in the Journal Officiel on 29 January 2008), following an opinion by the National Data Protection and Privacy Commission (CNIL) dated 25 October 2007 (deliberation no. 2007-301).

    The site allows users to consult cadastral sheets for free online, but also provides documents in digital or hard-copy form for a fee. The fee structure is set by Article 1 of the order dated december 23th, 2016 concerning "conditions of payment for cadastral services provided by the Public Finances General Directorate".

    The present document sets out the rights and obligations of the users of cadastral sheets within the framework of the services offered on the web site "cadastre.gouv.fr".

  2. Article 1: Definitions

    The terms used in the present document (General Terms of Use of Cadastral Sheets Available From the Website cadastre.gouv.fr) are defined as follows:

    By « General Terms of Use" » is meant the present document.

    By « Administration » is meant the State, whose obligations, as defined in the present document, are executed by the Public Finances General Directorate.

    By « User » is meant a user of the Internet site cadastre.gouv.fr who orders cadastral sheets or part or all of the Database.

    By « Information » is meant the public information contained in the « Cadastral Sheets » organised within the « Database ».

    By « Reuse » is meant the possibility for any or all persons who wish to do so to use the public information for other purposes than those of the public service mission for which the Information was produced or received.

    By « Reuser » is meant a natural or legal person that has accepted the present General Terms of Use for a use that corresponds to the definition of Reuse.

  3. Article 2: Purpose

    1. 2.1 The present General Terms of Use defines the conditions of use of the Information, provided in exchange for the fees set forth in Article 13 of the present document.
    2. 2.2 Only those Users that have accepted the present General Terms of Use may benefit from the services offered to them on the site.

  4. Article 3: Creating an account

    1. 3.1 The Administration provides Users of the services of the web site cadastre.gouv.fr with a private user area that they may access as soon as they have set up an account.
    2. 3.2 The User may only access the private user area by entering access codes, consisting of a login and a password.
    3. 3.3 The Administration reserves the right to close, temporarily or definitively, the private user area or access to one or more of the site's services, without prior notice or compensation, for the purposes of updating, modifying or changing operational methods, servers or access times (list not exhaustive).
    4. 3.4.Access codes are personal and confidential. The User is solely responsible for keeping his or her password confidential and, as a result, for any and all consequences if the password is involuntarily given to a third party. Any and all use of the private user area based on the password attributed to the User shall be presumed to have come exclusively from the User.
    5. 3.5.The procedure for creating a user account is as follows:
      • Step 1: the User fills out an online form at http://www.cadastre.gouv.fr/ in order to create a user account. The User must provide valid personal details.
      • Step 2: the User receives an e-mail recapitulating his or her details and providing the access codes.

  5. Article 4: Protection of personal data

    1. 4.1 The Internet site cadastre.gouv.fr was authorised by an order of the Ministry for the Budget, Public Accounts and the Civil Service dated 21 January 2008 (published in the Journal Officiel on 29 January 2008), following an opinion by the CNIL dated 25 October 2007 (deliberation no. 2007-301).
    2. 4.2 Signing up for an account requires the User to provide private data. To this end, the User agrees to communicate only true and lawful information. He or she will inform the Administration of any and all changes to this information by modifying his or her personal data (e-mail address, change of name, etc.) under the heading "My account".
    3. In accordance with Articles 39 et seq. of Act 78-17 of 6 January 1978, as modified in 2004, on data processing, data files and individual liberties, any person may request to see data relating to him or her and, if need be, correct or delete such information, by carrying out the following procedure: the User must send a signed, written request, enclosing a photocopy of his or her ID to the following department of the Public Finances General Directorate:

    4. Service de la Documentation Nationale du Cadastre (SDNC)

      Service après-vente cadastre.gouv.fr

      82, rue du Maréchal Lyautey

      78103 Saint-Germain-en-Laye Cedex

  6. Article 5: Searching for Information

    1. 5.1 There are several ways to search for Information: by département, municipality, address or by cadastral reference.
    2. 5.2 A search will result in a list of one or more cadastral sheets, or in part or all of the Database, which may be consulted online or delivered so that it can be made available in either printed or digital form.
    3. 5.3 Searching for Information is free.

  7. Article 6: Delivering Information

    1. 6.1 The Information shall be delivered in either printed or digital form after the user has ordered and paid for the Information in question, with the exception of "administrative accounts" (local authorities, government offices, etc.) for which payment may be made subsequent to "certification of services rendered" (constatation du service fait).
    2. 6.2. Orders are placed online. The User will see a summary of the Information that he or she would like to order, along with the corresponding price. The User verifies the details of the order and its total price, and has the possibility to correct any errors prior to ordering.
    3. 6.3. The User then chooses a method of payment: credit cards may be used up to an amount of eight hundred euros (€800), or checks sent by mail to the SDNC and may be made out to the order of “Régie de recettes du SDNC” in black ink. In the latter case, the Information will be delivered after the check is cashed, except in the case of administrative accounts.
    4. 6.4 When the delivery process is completed, the User receives an e-mail containing an invoice on which are listed the cadastral sheets, the extracts or the entirety of the Database that have been ordered.
    5. 6.5 The complete list of a User's transactions for the previous two years can be consulted by clicking on "My orders" under the heading "My account".

  8. Article 7: Nature and details of the Information

    1. 7.1 Information is delivered as is, in the state that it is retained by the Administration in fulfilment of its mission.
    2. 7.2 The Cadastral Sheets are supplied in one of the following digital formats:
      • For vector plans: DXF-PCI, EDIGéO, GIF and JPEG
      • For image plans: TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF+TFW and BMP.
    3. It is up to the User to take the necessary steps to ensure that his or her information systems are capable of accommodating these Information formats.
    4. 7.3 The Cadastral Sheets are supplied in A0 format, and may be printed on either paper or plastic.

  9. Article 8: Means for transmitting the Information

    1. 8.1 Technical means for transmitting the Information: Information that has been ordered and paid for shall be made available for download (datafiles) or shall be sent by mail for documents printed on paper or plastic.
    2. 8.2 If they are sent by mail, the postal address shall be that provided by the User during the creation of his or her account, in compliance with Article 3 of the present document.
    3. 8.3 The Information shall be made available within the space of three days (excluding postal delivery delays) as of the effective date of payment of the order either by credit card on the Internet site cadastre.gouv.fr, or as of the date of the cashing of the check, subject to the availability of the Information and without prejudice to cases of force majeure, strikes or social movements, external events that temporarily hinder continuation of the service or any and all circumstances or events that are beyond the control of the Administration, and which cannot be prevented despite reasonable efforts, such as technical malfunctions. In these cases, the Administration may not be held liable. For large orders (plan sheets in digital format whose total size exceeds 1.5 GB, or orders of several dozens of copies of plan sheets printed on paper or plastic), the Information may be available within a longer time frame.

  10. Article 9 Conceded rights

    1. 9.1 The General Terms of Use grant the User a personal and nonexclusive right to use the Information delivered in accordance with Articles 11 and 12.
    2. 9.2 The User is authorised to use the Information provided with no time limit.
    3. 9.3 It is forbidden to redistribute the information delivered as is. The present document is intended to authorise and encourage the creation of composite products that include the Information (Cadastral Sheets and/or all or part of the Database), providing they respect the intellectual property rights conceded in Article 11.
    4. 9.4 The User may not grant third parties the right to use the Information delivered as is.

  11. Article 10: Intellectual property

    1. 10.1 The Administration holds the copyright on the Cadastral Sheets, which are geographic maps that constitute intellectual works within the meaning of the Intellectual Property Code.
    2. 10.2 The Administration holds the copyright on the Database containing the public Information. The constitution, selection and organisation of this Information constitute an intellectual work within the meaning of the Intellectual Property Code.
    3. 10.3 The Administration holds the sui generis right for database producers in light of the significant quantitative and qualitative investments that it has made with respect to the constitution, verification and presentation of the Information, within the meaning of the Intellectual Property Code.
    4. 10.4 Conditions of use of the Cadastral Sheets
    5. The Administration grants to the User a non-exclusive right to reproduce, represent and adapt the Cadastral Sheets, on a worldwide basis and for the length of the copyright as determined under French law.
    6. 10.5 Conditions for use of part or all of the Database
    7. The Administration grants to the User a non-exclusive right to reproduce, represent and modify part or all of Database provided, protected by copyright, on a worldwide basis and for the length of the copyright as determined under French law.
    8. The Administration grants to the User a non-exclusive right to substantially extract, in part or in whole, the Information contained in the Database, on a worldwide basis and for the length of the sui generis right as determined under French law.

  12. Article 11: Obligations of the Reuser the Information provided

    1. 11.1 The Reuser is responsible for execution of the obligations entrusted to third parties just as if he or she were executing said obligations themselves.
    2. 11.2 Within the framework of the Reuse of Information, the Reuser agrees to indicate the source by placing the following phrase in visible letters on all documents that integrate the Information, regardless of their form: "Source: Direction générale des Finances Publiques – Cadastre; Updated: YYYY", in which YYYY represents the year in which the Information thus communicated was updated. This phrase shall in no way be interpreted as any sort of guarantee provided by the Administration.
    3. 11.3 The Reuser agrees that the Information shall not be altered nor deprived of its sense. In particular, the Reuser shall ensure that neither the content nor the scope of the Information is altered by reprocessing (modifications of data, insertion of comments that cannot be clearly distinguished from the Administration's content, cuts that change the meaning of either the text or the data).
    4. 11.4 The above-mentioned obligations shall remain applicable throughout the entire length of the Reuse of the Information.

  13. Article 12: Private data in the case of Reuse

    1. 12.1 Unless it is permitted by legislative or regulatory provision, the Reuse of private data that may be contained in the Information is prohibited without either the consent of the persons concerned or the anonymisation of the data. Pursuant to Article 18 of Act 78-753 of 17 July 1978, any person who reuses public information in violation of this ban is liable for a fine handed down by the Committee of Access to Administrative Documents.
    2. 12.2 It is the responsibility of the Reuser to comply with the provisions of Act 78-17 of 6 January 1978, modified, on data processing, data files and individual liberties. The Reuser agrees to take all necessary steps with respect to the National Data Protection and Privacy Commission (www.cnil.fr) if private data is involved in the planned reuse, and in particular must complete all necessary procedures applicable to any processing that includes private data.
    3. 12.3 Any and all processing of private data in ignorance of Act 78-17 of 6 January 1978, modified, on data processing, data files and individual liberties is liable to criminal sanctions under Articles 226-16 et seq. of the Criminal Code.

  14. Article 13: Fees

    1. The fee due in exchange for the provision of the Information ordered , shall be set in accordance with the rates defined in Article 1 of the Order dated december 23th, 2016 "relative to the payment for cadastral services rendered by the Public Finances General Directorate". The fee is inclusive of all taxes, charges and services charges. The rate applied shall be that in force at the time the order is received.

  15. Article 14: Security of payment

    1. Payments made by credit card on the web site are processed by a secure payment system (SSL secure protocol). To protect Users against any intrusion, their credit card information is not stored on the servers and at no time are they printed out.

  16. Article 15: Use of the prepaid reserve

    1. Having a prepaid reserve allows a User to bypass the payment step when ordering cadastral sheets (within the limit of the amount prepaid). Access to the prepaid reserve is secure. A list of the various transactions carried out by a user can be found under the heading "My account". If the User wishes to close his or her account while it still has a positive reserve, he or she may be reimbursed this amount by mail, by sending in the form provided. Please note: once an account is closed, a User cannot prove the size of the prepaid reserve and therefore claim a refund.

  17. Article 16: Guarantees and responsibilities

    1. 16.1 The User understands and accepts that the Information is supplied by the Administration as is, in the state that it is maintained by the Administration within the context of its mission, and without any other guarantee, either expressed or implied. Users shall use the Information in accordance with the General Terms of Use and the regulations in force, on their sole responsibility and at their own risk.
    2. 16.2 Any prejudice suffered by the User or third parties resulting from the internal use or Reuse of the Information shall remain the sole responsibility of the User. Should a third party appeal to the Administration on account of the products or services created by the User that contain the Information, the User shall bear sole financial liability.

  18. Article 17: Non-compliance with obligations

    1. 17.1 The User agrees, with no restriction or reserve, to comply with the General Terms of Use and the regulations in force. He or she will refrain from any use that is contrary to laws and regulations or that breaches public order.
    2. 17.2 Should the User fail to comply with one of these obligations, the Administration may, by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, make a formal demand for him or her to remedy the said failure to comply within a period of fifteen (15) days from the date of reception of the formal demand. If, on the expiration of this period, the User has not remedied the failure to comply, the Administration may refer the matter to the competent bodies or jurisdictions.

  19. Article 18: Governing Law / Disputes

    1. The General Terms of Use shall be governed by and construed and enforced in accordance with French law. Translated versions of this General Terms of Use are available, for purposes of convenience, only the French version has legal value. In the case of discrepancy, the French version shall prevail.
    2. Subject to the provisions of Act 78-753 of 17 July 1978 concerning the powers of the Committee of Access to Administrative Documents (CADA), disagreements and disputes in connection with the present document shall be submitted to the jurisdiction of French administrative courts and authorities.

La Direction générale des finances publiques atteste formellement auprès des utilisateurs que les applications accessibles via ce portail sont homologuées conformément aux  prescriptions définies par le RGS (Référentiel Général de Sécurité).

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