Privacy Statement
Apellis Switzerland GmbH
Dated: March 11th, 2021
Apellis Switzerland GmbH, based at Zählerweg 10, 6300 Zug, Switzerland (“we”, “us” and “our”) recognizes the importance of and are committed to respecting and protecting your privacy. This Privacy Statement applies to our collection and use of personal information through our websites (the “Site”) and through our offline business-related interactions with you.
Please read this Privacy Statement carefully in order to understand how we process personal information. If you do not agree with our use of your personal information as described in this Privacy Statement, please do not use the Site or otherwise provide personal information to us.
Because of our commitment to the protection of your personal information, we evaluate our privacy policies and procedures to implement improvements and refinements from time to time. If we make material changes to this Privacy Statement, we will notify you by means of a prominent notice on this Site prior to the change becoming effective.
Personal Information We Collect
Whose Personal Information We Collect
We collect personal information about the following types of individuals: clinical trial participants, patients, patient family members, caregivers or advocates, physicians and other health care professionals, clinical trial investigators, researchers, website users, job applicants, and other individuals who interact with us, our service providers or business partners.
How We Collect Personal Information
We collect personal information:
- Directly from individuals
- Through our Sites
- From healthcare professionals
- From contract research organizations and clinical trial investigators
- From individuals enrolled in clinical trials
- From government agencies or public records
- From third party service providers or business partners
- From industry and patient groups and associations
- From social media or other public forums (including adverse event information or product quality complaints)
Types of Personal Information We Collect
We may collect the following types of personal information:
Health and medical information, such as medical insurance details, information about physical and mental health conditions and diagnoses, treatments for medical conditions, genetic information, family medical history, and medications an individual may take, including the dosage, timing, and frequency, that we collect in connection with managing clinical trials, conducting research, providing patient support programs, managing compassionate use and expanded access programs, and tracking adverse event reports;
Contact information (personal and business), such as name, job title and employer name, email address, mailing address, phone number, and emergency contact information;
Biographical and demographic information, such as age, date of birth, gender, marital status, ethnicity, and information regarding any parents or legal guardians;
Professional credentials, such as educational and professional history, institutional affiliations, and other information you include on a CV or resume;
Payment-related information, such as when we need to pay for professional services that individuals may provide to us, such as tax identification number and financial account information;
Engagement data, such as information about the programs and activities in which you have participated, your prescribing of our products, your use of our products and the agreements you have executed with us;
Digital information, such as your photograph, social media handle or digital or electronic signature;
Publicly available information, such as comments describing support for and experience with our products, and other information you publish on social media;
Correspondence and other information you provide to us, including in emails, on phone calls, and in market research surveys;
Data collected automatically by us, our service providers, and third-party partners, who may automatically log information about you, your computer or mobile devices, and your activity over time on the Site and other online services, such as:
- Device data that is collected automatically (such as your IP address, your device’s operating system, your Internet service provider and location, domain name, browser type and version, your unique device ID (persistent/non-persistent), hardware type, medial access control address and the website you visited before browsing to our Sites); and
- Online activity data that is collected automatically (such as information about the Site content you access, the pages visited within the Apellis site and the URL to which the user goes upon leaving Apellis site) and information about the date, time and duration of your visit to our Sites.
Profession and employment data of Job Applicants. When visit the careers portion of our Site, we collect the information that you provide to us in connection with your job application. This includes business and personal contact information, professional credentials and skills, educational and work history, and other information of the type that may be included in a resume. This may also include diversity information that you voluntarily provide.
How We Use Personal Information
We use personal information for the following purposes and as otherwise described in this Privacy Statement or at the time of collection:
To communicate with you, including to:
- Provide you with investor, media or other materials;
- Send you copies of our press releases or other information;
- Send you surveys or other marketing communications; and
- Respond to your comments, questions, and service-related requests.
To perform and administer clinical trials, research and product-improvement activities, including to:
- Staff and manage clinical trials, including by recruiting investigators and participants;
- Track and respond to safety and product quality concerns (including product recalls);
- Support public health initiatives, symposia, conferences, and scientific, educational and volunteer events;
- Define and manage appropriate patient engagement activities, and patient support programs (including to provide co-pay and other financial assistance where available);
- Identify and engage thought leaders and external experts; and
- Attribute authorship to academic and other materials.
To provide payments, including to:
- Pay for services that physicians, researchers and other individuals may provide to us.
For compliance, fraud prevention, and safety. We may also use personal information as we believe necessary or appropriate to:
- Comply with applicable laws, lawful requests, and legal process, such as to respond to subpoenas or requests from government authorities;
- Comply with regulatory monitoring and reporting obligations, such as those related to adverse events, safety, and financial disclosures;
- Protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of you or others; and
- Protect, investigate and deter against fraudulent, harmful, unauthorized, unethical or illegal activity.
To facilitate our recruitment activities, including to:
- process employment applications, such as by evaluating a job candidate for an employment activity, and monitoring recruitment statistics.
How We Share Personal Information
Affiliates. We may share personal information with our corporate parent, subsidiaries, and affiliates, for purposes consistent with this Privacy Statement.
Service providers. We may engage other companies and individuals to perform services on our behalf, including:
- Companies that analyze data and provide business support (such as data storage and technology services);
- Companies that support the quality and safety of our products;
- Event planning and travel organizations that help facilitate our programs and services;
- Companies that assist us in clinical research and development activities; and
- Companies that support us in marketing and commercializing our products.
These service providers may have access to personal information in connection with performing services on our behalf. These service providers may use your information only as directed by Apellis and in a manner consistent with this Privacy Statement and are prohibited from using or disclosing your information for any other purpose.
Professional advisors. We may disclose personal information to professional advisors, such as lawyers, bankers, auditors, and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they render to us and as legally permissible.
Research and business partners. We may also share personal information with healthcare professionals, researchers, institutions, academics, public health organizations, and publishers for purposes consistent with this Privacy Statement. We may disclose personal information to partners or collaborators in connection with the research and development of our products.
Compliance, fraud prevention and safety. We may share personal information for the compliance, fraud prevention and safety purposes described above.
Business transfers. We may sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of our business or assets, including personal information, in connection with a business transaction (or potential business transaction) such as a corporate divestiture, merger, consolidation, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, or in the event of bankruptcy or dissolution. In such a case, we will make reasonable efforts to require the recipient to honor this Privacy Statement.
Your Rights
Upon request, we will provide you with information about whether we hold any of your personal information, along with any details required to be provided to you under applicable law. In certain cases, you may have the following data protection rights:
- If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided below.
- In addition, you can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. Again, you can exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details provided below.
- Similarly, if we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting your primary contact at the company or as set forth in the Contact Us section below. Please include information adequate to identify you, identify your personal information, and identify the consent you wish to withdraw. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
Apellis will endeavor to respond to all reasonable requests in a timely manner, and in any case, within thirty (30) days, unless your request is rather complicated and then we will inform you within the first month for an extension period of two (2) more months, as required by GDPR.
If you have any complaints regarding our privacy practices, you may also lodge a complaint with the corresponding data protection supervisory authority in your country of residence or employment. The competent Supervisory authority in Switzerland is the Office of the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) - Feldeggweg 1, 3003 Berne, Switzerland. Otherwise, you can find other relevant supervisory authority name and contact details under https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en.
Why we process Personal Information
In this section, we identify the lawful ground we rely on for processing personal information.
Consent: If Apellis relies on consent for the processing of personal information, we will provide transparent notice of the purposes for which we seek such consent prior to the time we collect your personal information. Where Apellis relies on consent, you will be entitled to withdraw that consent at any time. If Apellis wishes to process any special categories of personal information, such as health data, Apellis will obtain your explicit consent for such processing.
Contractual Necessity: Apellis processes personal information to fulfill our contracts with our business partners and service providers, such as for rendering payment or communicating with health care professionals or consultants.
Legal Obligation: Apellis processes personal information as specifically required by applicable legal obligations, such as laws and regulations that require Apellis to process personal information for purposes of obtaining medical research approvals and spend transparency disclosures.
Public Interest: Apellis processes personal information for scientific or historical research purposes, or statistical purposes in the public interest, as authorized by applicable law. If Apellis wishes to process any special categories of personal information, it may do so when necessary for scientific research purposes, medical diagnosis, or the protection of vital interests.
Legitimate Interests: Apellis processes personal information subject to its own legitimate interests, such as to develop, administer and support Research; to operate, evaluate and improve our business; to facilitate and manage patient advocacy and engagement programs; to promote scholarly research; to support our recruitment activities; or to facilitate a sale of assets or merger or acquisition.
It may be also necessary for Apellis to process personal information to establish, exercise or defend against fraud, illegal activity, and claims and other liabilities, including by enforcing the Terms of Use that govern the services we provide.
Compatible purposes: Apellis may also process personal information for purposes that are compatible with those described above. Such purposes may include scientific research.
Data Retention
We retain personal information for as long as is necessary to accomplish the purposes for which it was collected, unless a longer period is required under applicable law or is needed to resolve disputes or protect our legal rights.
The criteria used to determine the period for which personal information about you will be stored varies depending on the legal basis under which we process such personal information:
Consent: For the period of time necessary to fulfill the underlying agreement with you, subject to your right, under certain circumstances, to have certain personal information about you erased (see Your Rights above).
Contractual Necessity: For the duration of the contract plus some additional limited period of time that is necessary to comply with law or that represents the limitation period for legal claims that could arise from the contractual relationship.
Legal Obligation: For the duration of time, we are legally obligated to keep the information.
Public Interest: For the period of time necessary to fulfill the purposes of the business process in the public interest and for any period of time that may be required to document the public interest.
Legitimate Interests: For a reasonable period of time based on the particular interest, taking into account the fundamental interests and the rights and freedoms of the data subjects.
We may face any threat of legal claim and in that case, we may need to apply a “legal hold” that retains information beyond our typical retention period. In that case, we will retain the information until the hold is removed, which typically means the claim or threat of claim has been resolved.
International data transfers
Apellis uses servers and other storage facilities in the United States and EU. Apellis may transfer personal information outside of its country of origin for the purposes, and in the manner, set out in this privacy statement, including for processing and storage by service providers and affiliates in connection with such purposes. In all situations, Apellis takes reasonable steps to ensure that your privacy is protected. Such steps include, but are not limited to, implementing privacy, security, and contractual controls, as well as steps noted in this privacy statement, as required by applicable law.
Apellis endeavors to obtain assurances from its service providers and affiliates that they will safeguard personal information consistent with this privacy statement. An example of appropriate assurances that may be provided by service providers and affiliates includes a contractual obligation that they provide at least the same level of protection as is required by Apellis’s privacy principles set out in this privacy statement. Where Apellis has knowledge that a service provider or affiliate is using or disclosing personal information in a manner contrary to this privacy statement, Apellis will take appropriate steps to prevent or stop the use or disclosure.
Security of your personal information
The security of your personal information is important to us. We take reasonable steps, including technical, administrative and physical safeguards, designed to protect the personal information submitted to us from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. Such measures may include but are not limited to: the encryption of communications via SSL, encryption of information while it is in storage, firewalls, access controls, separation of duties, and similar security protocols. However, no method of security or method of transmission over the Internet is entirely secure. You should always use caution when transmitting personal information over the Internet.
Cookies and other similar technologies
The Site may collect information that could be potentially personally identifiable about your visits without you actively submitting such information. Unidentified information may be collected using various technologies, such as cookies. Cookies are small text files that are stored on computer hard drives by websites that you visit.
Please note that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control or access. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies. Apellis may also allow social media companies (e.g., Twitter) to put “widgets” on the Site. These third-party tools may also be used to track you across websites. For example, so long as you are logged in to Twitter, every time you land on a webpage that has a Twitter widget, Twitter will know you are on that webpage. Apellis does not control the privacy practices of these third parties.
To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, please visit our cookies statement.
Children’s Privacy
Our Site is not directed to, and we do not intend to or knowingly collect personal information online from, children under the age of 18 and used without appropriate consent. If you are under the age of majority in your country, do not provide us with any personal information either directly or by other means. If you learn that a child has accessed or used the Site without parental permission, please contact us as set forth in the Contact Us section below.
Links to Third-Party Services
We may provide links to other websites, services, and applications that are not operated or controlled by us (“Third-Party Services”). This privacy statement does not apply to the Third-Party Services. We encourage you to review and understand the privacy practices of any Third-Party Services before providing any information to or through them. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the Third-Party Service that provides the feature.
Updates to our Privacy Statement
Apellis is continually improving and adding new functionality and features to the Site. Because of these ongoing improvements, changes in the law and the changing nature of technology, Apellis’ data practices will change from time to time. Accordingly, this Privacy Statement is subject to occasional revisions. We will notify you of changes by posting the new Privacy Statement on the Sites and updating the effective date of the Privacy Statement. Such changes to the Privacy Statement will become effective when posted. You acknowledge and agree that it is your responsibility to review this Privacy Statement periodically and become aware of modifications.
The updated Privacy Statement will be effective as of the “Effective Date” date listed at the top of the Privacy Statement.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement or concerns about the way Apellis processes your personal information, or require assistance in managing your privacy choices, please get in touch with us at:
Apellis Switzerland GmbH
Zählerweg 10, 6300 Zug
Switzerland CH-6302
Tel.: +41 58 261 50 00
Email: info@apellis.com
Our data protection officer can be contacted as follows:
E-mail: privacy@apellis.com
Our EU Data Privacy Representative can be contacted as follows:
ALG Manousakis Law Firm,
16, Laodikias Str., Athens,
P.O. 11528, Greece
Email: dataprivacy@alg.gr
