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Online contracts or licences |
Does your business have a web-site and do online contracts or licences form part of your transactions? If so, you should know when your online agreements are binding and when they are not. |
For example, in a recent case (Specht & Ors v Netscape Communications and America Online, the US Court of Appeal for the 2nd Circuit) a US Court held that because users were required to scroll down the screen to be aware of the licence terms for the software they were downloading, they were not bound by the terms. |
The Court said that "the bare act of downloading the software did not unanimously manifest assent to the arbitration provision contained in the licence terms." |
It is necessary to spell out very clearly and obviously to all users of a site when they are being requested to agree to terms that are legally binding. |
As a practical matter, users should be required to at least "click" a box to agree to terms before proceeding to your site. |
