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Online regulation and terms & conditions

If you are doing business online, you will need to consider:

• if there are any specific Regulations which may impact on your business model;
• compliance with Regulations relating to doing online business such as Ecommerce Regulations, Distance Selling Regulations and Unfair Contract Terms Regulations;
• the terms and conditions (T&Cs) on which you sell goods or provide services online;
• how to make sure your T&Cs are enforceable when doing business online.

The internet facilitates highly innovative business models for which in some cases there may be no “bricks and mortar” equivalent.  We have considerable expertise and experience in advising on novel business models, compliance with any applicable regulation and developing novel online contracts or T&Cs as needed.

The importance of T&Cs is often underestimated.   Often they are seen as simply “standard form” documents. But every business model is different; and ill-suited T&Cs may prove a false economy in the long run.

T&Cs serve a multitude of functions. Their primary purpose is to establish the boundaries of your liability - to protect you and your business. They may also be necessary to comply with various online and consumer protection laws.  Professionally drawn T&Cs which manage your legal risk may be required by your investors or insurers.  But they should not be so one-sided as to put off customers or risk being unenforceable because they contain unfair terms.

All this means that preparing T&Cs is not always straightforward.   We take time to understand your business before helping you formulate your T&Cs to ensure that they are tailored to your needs.

As well as standard trading T&Cs we have expertise in drafting contracts and T&Cs for all online activities including:

• Software as Service / Platform as Service
• Advertising, sponsorship and marketing agreements
• Content supply agreements
• Hosting and support agreements
• Linking agreements
• Acceptable use policies for user generated content
• Privacy policies

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