IN THREE COURT DECISIONS IN THE PAST SEVERAL MONTHS, two themes emerged: reading the contract before you sign and understanding the law that applies. In the first case, a court needed to decide which of two contracts...more
Takeaway: We have written many articles about how businesses seek to enter enforceable arbitration agreements containing class action waivers with their customers, whether through “browsewrap” or “clickwrap” agreements or by...more
Takeaway: Technology advances. Business processes evolve. Internet transactions become increasingly ubiquitous. Contract formation, however, remains an old-fashioned concept. An Internet consumer must, at a minimum, be...more
On April 3, 2023, the New Jersey Appellate Division in Jeffrey Santana v. SmileDirectClub, LLC, Docket A-2433-21, __ N.J. Super. __ ( App. Div. April 3, 2023), issued an opinion enforcing an arbitration provision found within...more
Want to learn more about drafting, negotiating, and understanding intellectual property and technology contracts and have 10 minutes to spare? Grab your morning coffee or afternoon tea and dig into our Tech Contract Quick...more
A number of U.S. state and federal courts have recently considered whether the manner in which companies presented to their users a variety of electronic contracts (e.g., terms of service) was sufficient to form an...more
Takeaway: Technology advances. Business processes evolve. Internet transactions become increasingly ubiquitous. Contract formation, however, remains an old-fashioned concept. An internet consumer must, at a minimum, be...more
Booming internet usage means that virtually every company has a website and many companies use their website to enhance the user experience and collect information about their users. As a result, company websites have terms...more
The Ninth Circuit recently concluded that a consumer was not bound by updated terms merely because she accessed a website that contained new terms in a “browse-wrap” agreement on the website. The court also concluded that an...more
As we have noted many times in prior articles, courts often refuse to enforce “browsewrap” agreements where terms are presented to users merely by including a link on a page or screen without requiring affirmative acceptance....more
Courts continue to grapple with the enforceability of online agreements. While courts generally enforce clickwrap agreements—online agreements where users affirmatively show their acceptance after being presented with the...more
Two recent web scraping disputes highlight some important issues regarding whether a website owner may successfully allege a breach of contract action against a commercial party that has scraped website content contrary to...more
Courts throughout the country continue to express skepticism over, and go to lengths to deny the enforceability of, arbitration provisions in consumer online agreements. A recent example from the New York Supreme Court for...more
On August 7, Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California denied in part a motion to dismiss (the “Order”) sought by the defendants in In Re Tezos Securities Litigation (the “Tezos...more
The recent Parity wallet “freeze” provides yet another example of a coding vulnerability in a smart contract (rather than a flaw in the underlying blockchain or cryptography) resulting in an exploit that compromises...more
Often times, in seeking to enforce a term or condition of an online transaction, such as an arbitration clause, an online vendor will discover that (in the eyes of the law) the consumer never agreed to the transaction’s terms...more
In a big win for the tech industry and app developers, and for other companies seeking to enforce arbitration agreements through web-based interactions, last week the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that the plaintiff in...more
On August 17, 2017, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a district court’s denial of Uber’s and Mr. Travis Kalanick’s motions to compel arbitration in a case involving price-fixing accusations. In Meyer v. Kalanick,...more
Folks involved with selling health insurance, or anything else for that matter, and who rely upon browsewrap website terms might want to give Sullivan v. All Web Leads, Inc., No. 17-cv-1307, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 84232 (N.D....more
With online retailers challenging brick and mortar stores, the importance of online transactions and the terms of the contracts they create has never been greater. In the context of arbitration, courts are increasingly being...more
BakerHostetler invites you to join us for a one hour complimentary seminar (followed by Q&A) offering practical considerations for managing risk and liability in online and other contracts. Our session will cover trending...more
This past summer, we wrote about two instances in which courts refused to enforce website terms presented in browsewrap agreements. As we noted, clickthrough agreements are generally more likely to be found to be enforced. ...more
In an important decision underscoring the challenges faced by retailers and others in enforcing online arbitration agreements with their customers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has reversed a district...more
On July 29, 2016, Judge Jed Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an opinion and order in Meyer v. Kalanick, denying Uber Technologies' motion to compel arbitration of a consumer's...more