Effective Date: September 21, 2026
These Terms of Use (the "Terms") govern your use of ibfda.org (the "Site"), operated by the International Bok Fu Do Association ("IBFDA", "the Association", "we", "us", "our"). They include a notice-and-cure requirement, an agreement to arbitrate disputes individually, and a class action waiver.
By visiting the Site, submitting a form, creating an account, or making a purchase or registration through the Site, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Site. If you use the Site on behalf of a school, organization, or a minor, you confirm that you have authority to accept these Terms for them. You must be at least 18 to make a purchase, register a competitor, or create an account. A parent or guardian must complete any registration for a person under 18.
The Site provides information about the Association, Bok Fu Do, our leadership, member organizations, rules, rank requirements, and events. It lets you contact us, buy memberships and event registrations, and view our published ranking roster, certified instructor list, news, and photo galleries. Membership, rank and instructor certification, competition, and event participation are governed by the Association's separate documents and decisions: the membership and ranking applications, the Student Manual, the General Competition Rules, the Rules and Regulations, the participation agreement and waiver for each event, and the agreements you sign with your own member school. Those documents control for the activity they cover; these Terms control for use of the Site. Nothing on the Site guarantees that a person will be certified, admitted to an event, or accepted as a member.
Bok Fu Do is a martial art. Training, testing, rank intensives, and tournaments involve physical contact, strenuous exertion, and a real risk of injury, including serious injury. Nothing on the Site is medical advice. Consult a physician before beginning or continuing martial arts training or competition, and seek medical care if you are hurt.
Participation in any Association event is governed by the participation agreement and waiver signed for that event and by the event's rules. For a competitor under 18, a parent or guardian signs on the competitor's behalf. Techniques, forms, and drills described or shown on the Site are for reference by trained students under qualified instruction, not for self-teaching.
Accurate information. You agree to give accurate and complete information when you contact us, create an account, join, or register, and to keep it current. A registration submitted with false information, including a competitor's age, rank, or school, may be canceled without refund and may affect the competitor's standing.
Accounts. You are responsible for your account credentials and for activity under your account. Tell us promptly of any unauthorized use.
Pricing and payment. Prices are shown in U.S. dollars and may change without notice, except that a change does not affect an order already placed. Payment is processed through Shopify's checkout and its payment providers under their own terms. We may cancel an order for a pricing or listing error, suspected fraud, or ineligibility, and will refund any amount paid for a canceled order.
Event registrations. A registration is an application to participate. Placement is subject to the event's rules, capacity, age and rank eligibility, and the Association's discretion. Dates, venues, and schedules may change; we will post changes on the Site or email registrants.
Refunds. Refunds and cancellations follow the policy stated on the membership, event or product page at the time of purchase. Where no policy is stated, contact us before you pay and we will tell you what applies. Any refund goes to the original payment method.
Memberships. Memberships run for the term purchased and do not renew automatically unless the Site states otherwise. Membership may be suspended or revoked under the Association's rules.
You agree not to:
We may suspend or block access for conduct we reasonably believe violates these Terms.
The Site and its content, including the International Bok Fu Do Association name, the IBFDA name and logo, our rank and belt system descriptions, curriculum descriptions, rules documents, the Student Manual, text, photographs, video, graphics, and page design, are owned by the Association or used with permission and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws. All rights reserved.
You may view, download, and print pages for your personal, non-commercial use as a student, parent, instructor, or member, keeping all notices intact. You may not reproduce, distribute, modify, publicly display, or create derivative works from our content, or use our names or logos, without our prior written permission. Member schools may use Association names and materials only as the membership rules allow. Names of other organizations, federations, and schools on the Site belong to their owners.
If you send us content through the Site, by email, or on social media, including messages, testimonials, comments, photographs, or video ("Submissions"), you grant the Association a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license to use, reproduce, edit, publish, and display it in connection with the Association and its promotion, in any medium, with or without your name. You confirm that you have the right to share the content, that it does not violate anyone's rights, and that you have permission from any person shown in it, including the parent or guardian of any minor.
We may edit, decline, or remove any Submission and are not obligated to keep Submissions confidential unless we say so in writing. Do not send us anything you do not want published. Photographs and video taken at Association events, and the consent that applies to them, are described in our Privacy Policy and in each event's participation agreement.
The Site links to member school websites, bokfudo.com, co-sanctioning federations, social media platforms, and Shopify services, and relies on Shopify and the tools named in our Privacy Policy. We do not control those sites or services and are not responsible for their content, availability, or practices. A link is not an endorsement. Your dealings with any third party, including a member school, are between you and that party.
Our Privacy Policy describes what personal information we collect through the Site, how we use and share it, the cookies and analytics tools the Site runs, how we publish rank and certification records, and your rights. It is part of these Terms.
The Site and its content are provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Association disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, and uninterrupted or error-free operation. We work to keep the roster, instructor list, event details, and rules current, but we do not warrant that any content is complete or error-free, or that the Site will be available at any particular time. Content on the Site does not create any contract, certification, or right that the Association's own rules and documents do not grant. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Association and its officers, directors, instructors, volunteers, member organizations, agents, and service providers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, goodwill, or opportunity, arising out of or related to the Site or these Terms, under any theory of liability. Our total liability for all claims arising out of or related to the Site or these Terms will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you paid us through the Site in the twelve months before the claim arose, or (b) one hundred dollars ($100).
This section applies to use of the Site. Liability for injuries at training or events is governed by the participation agreement, waiver, and enrollment documents for that activity, not by these Terms. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you.
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Association and its officers, directors, instructors, volunteers, member organizations, and agents from any claim, loss, liability, and expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of your use of the Site, your Submissions, your violation of these Terms or of any law or third-party right, or any registration you submit for another person. We may assume the defense of any such matter, and you agree to cooperate.
Before initiating any formal proceeding relating to the Site, you must notify us of your dispute in writing with a description of the claim and your requested resolution.
A person who asserts that the Site, any of its content, an image, its accessibility, its technical implementation, its cookies or tracking technologies, or its privacy practices is non-compliant with any law, regulation, or standard must first provide written notice to us identifying the affected URL, the specific issue, the requested resolution, and, when relevant, the device, browser, or assistive technology used. You must allow us 30 days after complete notice to investigate and remediate the issue before initiating any private formal proceeding.
For an accessibility accommodation request, or a claim that the Site is not accessible, you must allow us 90 days after complete notice to provide an accommodation or remediate, because accessibility remediation may require design and development changes. During that period we will offer another way to get the information or complete the transaction you were seeking, such as by phone or email.
A notice is complete when it contains the items above and enough detail for us to reproduce the issue. If we ask for clarification in good faith, the cure period runs from the date we receive it. All parties must act in good faith during this process. Send notices to the address in section 19, marked "Legal Notice". This section does not apply to a claim for injunctive relief against ongoing infringement of intellectual property rights, or where the law requires a shorter period.This section does not apply where a law prohibits pre-suit notice or cure requirements, and it does not shorten any limitations period, which is tolled during the cure period.
Any claim or demand relating to the Site must rest on factual information and a good-faith belief that a violation has occurred and has harmed the claimant. If a court or arbitrator determines that a claim was frivolous, unfounded, or brought in bad faith, or was brought without first completing the notice and cure process in section 13 where that process applies, the party that brought it shall pay the other party's reasonable attorneys' fees and costs. This applies equally to both parties. This section applies to the fullest extent the law allows.
Informal resolution first. If a dispute is not resolved through the notice and cure process in section 13, you and the Association agree to try to resolve it informally for at least 30 days after the cure period ends, including by a phone or video conference if either party requests one.
Binding individual arbitration. Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to the Site, these Terms, our Privacy Policy, or any purchase or registration made through the Site that is not resolved informally will be resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules then in effect, before a single arbitrator. The arbitrator will apply California law, may award the same individual relief a court could, and decides questions of arbitrability. The arbitration will be seated in Contra Costa County, California, and may be conducted by video or written submissions where the rules allow. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this agreement. Filing and arbitrator fees are allocated under the AAA rules; section 14 governs attorneys' fees and costs.
Class action and jury trial waiver. You and the Association may bring claims against each other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims of more than one person. You and the Association each waive any right to a jury trial. If this waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim will proceed in court under section 16, and the rest of this section still applies to all other claims.
Exceptions. Nothing in this section waives any right to seek public injunctive relief, which may be sought in court. Either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court in Contra Costa County if it qualifies, and either party may seek injunctive or other equitable relief in court to protect its intellectual property rights or to stop unauthorized access to or use of the Site.
Your right to opt out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by sending written notice to the address in section 19, marked "Arbitration Opt-Out", within 30 days after you first accept these Terms, with your name, address, email, and a statement that you opt out. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms, including section 13.
These Terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Site, are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Subject to section 15, any court proceeding will be brought exclusively in the state courts of Contra Costa County, California, or the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.
We may revise these Terms from time to time. The effective date at the top shows when they were last changed. For a material change, we will post a notice on the Site or email account holders before it takes effect. Continued use of the Site after the effective date means you accept the revised Terms. Changes do not apply to a dispute that arose before the change, and a change to section 15 does not apply to a dispute for which you had already given written notice under section 13.
If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, that part will be enforced to the maximum extent permitted and the rest will remain in full effect, except as stated in section 15 for the class action waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. These Terms, with the Privacy Policy and the Association documents referenced in section 2, are the entire agreement between you and the Association regarding the Site and supersede any earlier terms posted on it. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to a successor organization. Sections 6, 7, and 10 through 18 survive any end of your use of the Site.
Send questions about these Terms, legal notices under section 13, and arbitration opt-out notices under section 15 to:
International Bok Fu Do Association
Attn: Legal Notice
140C Alamo Plaza, Alamo, CA 94507
Phone: (925) 831-0292
Email: info@ibfda.org
Contact form: ibfda.org/pages/contact