A recent federal appeals court decision rejecting a business’s attempts at enforcing its online arbitration agreement offers lessons for businesses across the country on how to craft a valid agreement for your website. The...more
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
Professor Jeff Sovern, who recently joined the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law faculty, has recently blogged about a forthcoming Study by academicians at other institutions that will be published in...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
Many online services feature comprehensive terms of use intended to protect their business from various types of risks. While it is often the case that a great deal of thought goes into the creation of those terms, frequently...more
Online service providers typically seek to mitigate risk by including arbitration clauses in their user agreements. In order for such agreements to be effective, however, they must be implemented properly. Babcock vs. Neutron...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
On July 19, 2018, in May, et al. v. Expedia Inc., U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Lane issued a Report and Recommendation recommending that U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman for the Western District of Texas grant a motion to...more
In a decision that has generated considerable controversy, a federal court in New York has held that the popular practice of embedding tweets into websites and blogs can result in copyright infringement. Plaintiff Justin...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
Three Steps To Help Ensure The Enforceability Of Your Website’s Terms Of Use - Operators of social media platforms and other websites typically manage their risks by imposing terms of use or terms of service for the...more
Operators of social media platforms and other websites typically manage their risks by imposing terms of use or terms of service for the sites. As we previously wrote, websites must implement such terms properly to ensure...more
In April 2015, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York defined a new category of online agreement, the "sign-in-wrap" agreement, which it distinguished from clickwrap agreements. The court then...more
Legal documents of all kinds – everything from wills and trusts to commercial sales agreements – often reference other documents. This “incorporation by reference” comes with certain risks. Historically, courts looked beyond...more
In an important decision regarding the viability of so-called "browsewrap" agreements, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit—which covers California, among other states—recently affirmed a district court's...more