This document addresses all universities and research institutes which are interested in establishing a sub-license agreement with CERN for the usage of Siemens Simatic WinCC Open Architecture at the Institute premises for the development of the control systems for the Experiments/Detectors and Accelerators which are physically located at CERN.

The sub-license agreement is a legal document defining the rights and responsibilities of the sub-licensee (the Signatory of the sub-license agreement on behalf of an Institute or University, as well as all authorised developers affiliated to this Institute/University). For this reason, the sub-license agreement shall be signed by a person with authoritative power and legal responsibility to act on behalf of the signing institute.
This person should ideally be the Team or Deputy Team Leader of an official collaboration between the Institute and CERN.

Having signed the sub-license, the Institute becomes legally responsible for the usage of WinCC OA by its affiliated users, and bares all consequences of possible misuses or violations of the agreement. As required by the main license agreement between CERN and Siemens/ETM, as well as the WinCC OA End User License Agreement the sub-licensee and all the users under its responsibility must comply to the Export Control Regulations in the EU, USA, Switzerland and Austria concerning the international embargoes.

The sub-license agreement is based on the following template which is provided as a preview.  Institutes are encouraged to check this template and make sure that they agree to all terms and conditions prior to requesting a new sub-license agreement as no changes to the text of the document will be accepted. It is not supposed to be filled and send to us.

Contact

For all inquiries and requests, please contact us at the email address  . In what follows, this email should also be used whenever CERN WinCC OA Service is referred to.

Roles

Within an institute/university, the following roles are differentiated:

• Signatory of the sub-license agreement: This person acts as the legal representative of the Institute for the WinCC OA sub-licensing process. This person should ideally be the CERN Team Leader or his/her Deputy of the collaboration between CERN and the external Institute (e.g. ATLAS, LHCb, ...). In exceptional cases, the signatory of the sub-license agreement can be a person at the Institute who has the authority to sign the sub-license agreement on behalf of the institute/university. The signatory of the agreement delegates the day-to-day management of WinCC OA users affiliated to the institute for a particular CERN collaboration (e.g. CMS, ALICE, ...) to the so-called Technical Contacts (see below).
• Technical Contacts: These persons are nominated by the Signatory of the agreement and manage the registration and authorisation of individual users affiliated to the institute with CERN. The Technical Contact persons will be requested to confirm by email the affiliation of users requesting access to WinCC OA and that the user will be using WinCC OA in the scope of the collaboration between CERN and the Institute. Technical Contact persons will also be contacted by the CERN WinCC OA Service on the yearly basis to keep the list of institute users up-to-date
• WinCC OA users affiliated to the Institute: These are the Institute users who will be granted access to WinCC OA and to the corresponding development licenses. Their affiliation to the institute as well as his/her participation in the collaboration between CERN and the Institute must be confirmed by the Technical Contact of the corresponding CERN collaboration.

Scope

The license agreement signed by CERN and Siemens/ETM allows the usage of WinCC Open Architecture in collaborating institutes for the purposes of development of control systems for the CERN experiments and accelerators, provided that a formal sub-license agreement is signed between CERN and the institute. The sub-licensing has been in place since year 2000 already yet it has recently been reviewed, notably, to assure the compliance with the terms and conditions included in the contract signed with Siemens/ETM in 2020, such as compliance with Export Control Regulation, as well as with the CERN General Data Protection Regulation. For this reason, institutes that established a sub-license agreement with CERN for WinCC OA prior to August 2021, must also sign a new agreement to reflect the new terms and conditions included in the new contract with Siemens/ETM.

The sub-license agreement, while valid, allows to download, install and use WinCC OA on the institute premisses (or at CERN) and to obtain time-limited (12 month) renewable "developer" runtime licenses. The costs of licenses are covered by CERN's main contract with Siemens/ETM.

The permission to use WinCC OA are granted to individuals ("users") affiliated with the institute. The users have to get registered by the CERN WinCC OA Service as Authorised WinCC OA Users. The requests for registration need to be submitted by the Technical Contact person nominated by the institute when signing the sub-license agreement. The complete procedure for user registration is described in a separate document.

Use cases

The sub-licensing process enables the usage of WinCC OA by Institutes developers in the following cases:

• collaboration on building and commissioning control systems for detectors or related subsystem of the physics experiment at CERN, whereby the development and maintenance of such control system is the institute's contribution to the collaboration and requires the installation of WinCC OA in the computers located at institute's premises or at CERN.
• WinCC OA is "embedded" into the instruments/machinery used by the institute for the projects related to collaborations with CERN. For instance, the CO₂ cooling plants ("LUCASZ") used to develop detector technologies for the future upgrades of the LHC detectors. 

Purpose

The sub-license agreement restricts the usage of WinCC OA by developers affiliated to the signing institute to the scope of an official collaboration between CERN and the Institute. For institutes involved in more than one collaboration with CERN, a sub-license agreement must be established for each of the collaboration where the usage of WinCC OA is required.

Sub-licensee Obligations

It is obligation of the sub-licensee to keep the CERN WinCC OA Service updated about any change in either the contractual situation or in the list of users affiliated to the institute (e.g. institute data, names of the technical contacts, etc.) who still need access to WinCC OA. The Institute must:

• Update CERN WinCC OA Service about any change in the status of collaborations
• Inform the CERN WinCC OA Service in case of changes to the Institute information, e.g. the change of the formal name or address of the institute. In this case, the establishment of a new sub-license agreement that supersedes the previous one may be required.
• Ensure the proper use of WinCC OA by the affiliated users, strictly limited to the purposes declared in the sub-license agreement, as well as the  WinCC OA End User License Agreement.
• Ensure that any access to WinCC OA is NOT possible to persons not being declared as authorised users.
• Ensure that the Technical Contact is reachable, and if necessary, notify CERN WinCC OA Service about the need to reassign this role to another person. Should there be a need to reassign the role of the Technical Contact to another person, the notification must be sent to CERN WinCC OA Service by the Technical Contact who steps down, specifying the name and email address of the new Technical Contact. Should this be unachievable, ongoing agreements shall be terminated and replaced with new ones containing the name of the new Technical Contact person.
• Inform the CERN WinCC OA Service in case a user is no longer affiliated to the Institute or it does not require access to WinCC OA anymore. 
• Keep an up-to-date list of the users and communicate it to the CERN WinCC OA Service in the event of being asked. Actually, the  by the CERN WinCC OA Service will perform these checks on the regular basis (each year) to ensure the validity of the data for all sub-license agreements managed by the service;

Moreover, to ensure the consistency of the data managed by the CERN WinCC OA Service, the technical contacts will be requested to confirm by email the following data on the yearly basis:

• The name and address of the Institute (ie. state clearly if these have changed)
• The name of the CERN collaboration the sub-license agreement applies to.
• The name(s) and email address(es) of Technical Contact(s)
• The exhaustive list of users that are authorised through the sub-license agreement to use WinCC OA.

Such declaration shall be submitted for every sub-license agreement separately. Notably, if the institute has a number of sub-license agreements signed for various purposes (e.g. for ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, ALICE,...) each of them needs a declaration.

The omission in these obligations will result in suspension of the sub-license agreement and hence blocking access to WinCC OA for all users covered by a sub-license agreement.

The CERN WinCC OA Service will take the appropriate action of either block the user's account or to terminate the sub-license agreement.

Suspension/Termination

The existing sub-license agreement may be temporary suspended or terminated by CERN in the following cases:

• the sub-licensees,  i.e. the legal body of the institute, and hence its affiliated institutes, do not fulfil its obligations (listed above)
• Institute or affiliated employees do comply with Export Control Regulations.

The sub-licensee may also request termination of the sub-license agreement, for instance, if its collaboration on a specific project with CERN ceases (in this case, the sub-licensee is obliged to inform the CERN WinCC OA Service).

Signing a sub-license agreement

The process of signing a new sub-license agreement has recently been simplified and de-materialised: all documents are handled and signed electronically. For this purpose, CERN chose to use the DocuSign online platform, which allows for quick and easy processing and exchange of documents. For this purpose, there is no need to register on the DocuSign web platform, purchase any membership or install any software. Standard features of the widely used PDF electronic document format (such as electronic signatures) are used for the purposes of authentication of signatures in the documents, emails are used for notifications, and standard web browsers could be used to complete all the steps.

Prerequisites

The following information should be gathered by the applying institute or university prior to contacting the CERN WinCC OA Service:

• make sure that there is no yet a valid sub-license agreement for WinCC OA for the collaboration between the Institute and CERN.
• review the agreement template of the sub-license agreement. Note that CERN will not accept any changes to the text of this agreement.
• identify the Signatory of the sub-license agreement, who will be responsible person for the usage of WinCC OA at the institute premises according to the terms and conditions defined in the sub-license agreement. Ideally, the Signatory of the agreement shall be the Team Leader of the collaboration between the institute and CERN or his/her deputy. Only in exceptional cases and after informing the CERN WinCC OA Service, the sub-license agreement can be signed by a person with the adequate authority to sign legal documents on behalf of the institute (usually the director or deputy of the institute, or a person delegated to handle software licensing)
• define the purpose of usage of the WinCC OA in the frame of a CERN official collaboration with the Institute, e.g.  development of the detector control system for the ATLAS Inner Tracker, where there is an official collaboration between the Institute and ATLAS. The purpose must not be too specific as this can restrict the validity of the agreement  in the future, e.g. upgrade of the CMS ECAL HV controls for Phase II upgrade. In any case, the purpose must refer to a valid collaboration between CERN and the Institute.
• identify the Technical Contact persons, who will follow up on the sub-license once it is signed. Besides the management of the WinCC OA developers affiliated to the Institute for a particular collaboration, the Technical Contact would also coordinate the local usage of WinCC OA in the institute. Note that if there is more than one distinctive groups of users (e.g. ATLAS, CMS and LHCb) in the same institute, then a separate sub-license agreements need to be signed  and a dedicated Technical Contact needs to be named for each.  However, for practical reason the same physical person could act as the Technical Contact for more than one sub-license agreement signed by the institute. It is also possible to declare more than one Technical Contact for a sub-license agreement.

Sub-licensing Process

Figure 1 shows the overall workflow of the sub-licensing process. In this process, four main players can be identified:

• The external Institute/University that wants to establish a new sub-license agreement with CERN for the usage of WinCC Open Architecture (OA) at the institute premises. 
• The CERN WinCC OA Service, which can be contacted via email:
• The CERN Legal Service who advises BE-ICS on the eligibility of the external institute/university for sub-license
• An external legal consultant who is specialized on Export Control Regulations

Step-by-Step instructions

1. The establishment of a new sub-licensing agreement for WInCC OA is triggered by the external institute by contacting the CERN WinCC OA Service at the address indicated here, expressing the need to access WinCC OA at their premises. The request needs to contain the following information
   1. The name and the address of the Institute of University
   2. The name, the email address and the position (e.g. "dean of the department")) of the Signatory of the agreement. As mentioned, ideally, this must be either the Team or the Deputy Team Leader of the collaboration between CERN and the Institute.
   3. The name of the CERN collaboration, e.g. CMS, ALICE
   4. The purpose of the sub-license agreement, e.g. Participation in the Run Control development for NA62.
   5. The name(s) and the email address(es) of the Technical Contact(s)
   6. Any further information relevant to the request
2. This will trigger the following verifications by the CERN WinCC OA Service:
   1. Internal verification that there is an official collaboration between the Institute and CERN.
   2. Institute compliance with Export Control Regulations in power in the EU, USA, Austria and Switzerland. This step comprises sharing the Institute data with an specialised lawyer outside the Organisation to perform this check. Additional information from the institute may be required during this process. The communication will happen over an email. The process of verification usually takes around 1 day. Once successfully completed, the next step will be initiated.
3. After the successfully completion of the verifications described in step 3, the CERN WinCC OA service will prepare the sub-license agreement based on the template aforementioned, filling the information about the institute, the signatory, the technical contacts, the CERN collaboration and the purpose for using WinCC OA. The Institute must duly review  and sign it using the DocuSign web platform.
   
   1. The Signatory will get invited via email to sign the document using the DocuSign platform:
      
      The email is sent from "CERN WinCC OA Service via DocuSign <des@eumail.docusign.net>"
   2. Clicking on the "Review Document" button in the email, will lead to the DocuSign site hosted on the eu.docusign.net web domain
   3. In order to continue, one needs to approve the agreement to use electronic records and signatures by ticking it on the top of the screen and clicking the "Continue" button:
      
   4. Having approved the above, the Signatory is presented with the sub-license agreement for a review. The Signatory should carefully review the sub-license agreement and verify that information is precise.
      
   5. The Signatory signs the sub-license agreement by clicking on the highlighted "Sign" field situated at the bottom of the document.
   6. Prior to signing the document one may choose to adjust the content of the Title fieldf (ramed in red), to specify the relation of the Signatory with the Institute.
      At this moment it is possible to adjust the "title" and the "name" fields as well as modify the graphical sign for the signature (not having any legal meaning here), e.g. to upload the picture of own's signature, or to proceed with stylised picture of initials or name.
      
   7. The signatory initiates the signature process by clicking the "Sign" icon highlighted in yellow. In the pop-up one may review or correct the Signatory's name, and adopt the picture of the signature (which has purely decorative way - the legally-binding digital signature is not visible). It is possible to choose a stylized signature of name/surname or initials, or draw or upload the picture of hand-written signature):
      
      Clicking the "Adopt and Sign" picks the signature picture and places it on the document, together with digital fingerprint of the document.
      
      
      
   8. The document needs to be finalised by clicking on the highlighted "FINISH" button available  at the bottom (and also at the top) of the page.
      Note that you may ignore the proposal of setting up a "FREE DocuSign account" that pops up - it is not required to complete the process and get the signed sub-license document.
   9. At that point, the document will be forwarded for signature to CERN WinCC OA Service and signed electronically in a similar manner.
      
   10. Once the signature on the CERN side is completed, the Signatory and the Technical Contacts will get notified via email about the document being complete, and the link at which the signed PDF document can be downloaded will be circulated (it is sufficient to click on the "View Completed Document" button in the email:
       
   11. It is strongly advised that a digitally-signed PDF copy is downloaded immediately (using the Download button on the top of the page) and kept in the electronic form by the Sub-licensee:
       
   12. The authenticity of the document can confirmed by the electronic signatures of both parties which are embedded into the PDF document - these signatures can be verified by numerous available tools for displaying and handling PDF documents. The certificate of the document as well as the Electronic Record and Signature Disclosure may also be browsed to from the "Other Actions" menu on the top-right corner.
4. Once the sub-license document is signed the WinCC OA Service will register it in its databases, and the Technical Contact will become authorised WinCC OA users. Following this, the Technical Contacts may request the registration of other users affiliated with the Institute, following this procedure. Users, once registered, can request time-limited developer's WinCC OA licenses and have access to the Downloads area of CERN WinCC OA Service.

Data Privacy

Personal Data are processed by the CERN WinCC OA Service according to the following Records of Processing Operations (RoPO), which describes, among others:

• the type(s) of Personal Data being processed;

• the purpose of its collection;

• the period for which it will be retained;

• where applicable, details regarding the use of profiling and automated decision-making tools; and

• where applicable, details regarding transfers of Personal Data

Links and references

• WinCC OA Service Register User
• The sub-license agreement is based on the following template (NOTE! The procedure has changed! You should not sign it on paper (as before), but follow the electronic signature procedure documented in this page). The template is here so that the future Signatory of the sublicense may proof-read the sublicensing terms and conditions before initiating the sub-licensing process.

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