16. Concluding Provisions
(1) This Agreement shall be governed by the law of the Federal Republic of Germany, except that its choice-of-law provisions and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods of 11 April 1980 shall not apply.
(2) Actions relating to disputes arising out of or in connection with this B2B User Agreement may be brought only in the court of proper jurisdiction for Wolfsburg, Germany. The Platform Operator is also entitled to bring an action in any other court of proper jurisdiction. To the extent the agreements amongst the User Entities regarding a particular business contact and the separate contract arising therefrom contain a different terms on venue or arbitration, disputes relating to the B2B User Agreement that also affect the rights and obligations under such a contract shall be decided in accordance with the terms on venue and arbitration as agreed between the User Entities.
(3) The contracts and other agreements entered into between the User Entities in the course of using VW Group Supply.com shall be governed by the provisions on controlling national law and venue that are contained in the terms and conditions of the respective Group Company as agreed in each instance. Sec. 16 (1) and (2) are thus inapplicable to disputes that arise solely out of or in connection with separate contracts.
(4) Publications and public statements by a party relating to the terms of this Agreement or to the Agreement itself are permitted only with the prior written consent of the other party. The Platform Operator and the Group Companies may publish comments of a general nature regarding this Agreement without the Platform Participant's consent, provided it is not referred to by name.
(5) Neither party may advertise the fact of the business relationship without the other party's prior written consent. Any written consent by the Platform Operator to the Platform Participant's advertising use of the business relationship must be obtained from the Platform Operator's authorized department.
(6) Should one or more clauses of this Agreement be or become invalid or unenforceable, this shall not affect the validity of the remainder of the Agreement. The parties shall mutually strive to replace the invalid or unenforceable clause with a valid and enforceable provision that approximates as closely as possible the economic purpose of the invalid or unenforceable clause. The above shall apply analogously in the event of gaps in the terms of this
Agreement.
(7) Where this Agreement requires a declaration to be made "in writing" or "in written form," the declaration must be such as to permit identification of its issuer and must be transmitted to the other contracting party either in the original, per facsimile copier, or per email with simple electronic signature.
(8) The construction and interpretation of this Agreement shall be determined solely on the basis of its German language version. Any other language versions, especially this English version, are purely for the sake of convenience and not authoritative.
(9) This Agreement is legally binding even if the signatures on behalf of Volkswagen AG are merely in facsimile form.