Nondisclosure Agreements, or “Confidential Disclosure Agreements” as they are sometimes called (biotech companies seem to prefer the “CDA” designation), are some of the most common types of business contracts. Although they are often signed with only a cursory review, each one should involve as much review and reflection as any other contract. This is because
This is part two of two posts about how to make your website’s terms of service an enforceable contract. Part 1 was about getting user consent. This one is about making sure that your ToS isn’t an “illusory promise”. What is an “Illusory promise”? In order to form a contract, each side has to promise
Two important principles of contract law for terms of service are “meeting of the minds” and “illusory promise”. Those phrases may sound a bit meaningless, legal, and abstract. However, each one holds a common pitfall that can void an entire website’s terms of service – as if it didn’t exist at all.
Is a letter of intent contractually binding? Can that bullet point list of negotiating terms in a letter of intent or memorandum of understanding become a binding contract? If the parties have indicated that they agree on them and agree to negotiate them to a full agreement, yes. In California, the leading case is Copeland v.
If you don’t ask, the answer is always “no”. So ask. Some people are better at this than others, but everyone can learn. If someone gives you a form contract to sign, and parts of it are offensive, ask to have them removed. They may say no . . . but they may say yes.
In a negotiation, there are times to talk, and times to be quiet and listen — or to just enjoy the silence. When to talk. There is a certain value to rationalizing your demands. If you just leave it as a simple demand, the counterparty may think, “Forget this, we can find someone else who
This is the first in a series of blog posts that I am doing that will form a basis for a negotiations presentation I gave at HUB Soma. A BATNA is a common negotiating concept that was coined and popularized by the book Getting To Yes, which came out of the Harvard Business Negotiation Project. It
Anyone providing services on the internet should check their terms of service to ensure that the terms of service aren’t amendable at any time. This is especially true after last year’s court ruling that the Zappos’ user agreement was not valid because it could be changed at any time. This makes the terms of service an
Generally speaking, I don’t really like negotiating with lawyers, mostly because I feel it just isn’t that productive. Business people are much more focused on getting deals done, which is ultimately more rewarding. A good ending to a contract negotiation almost invariably has to include a compromise where both sides have to make tradeoffs between
A response I wrote to the above Quora question: As an initial matter, it is very subjective to ask what “all high school students” should know. For example, in response to “What understanding of automobiles should all high school students have?”, some people would say they should know the rules of the road, and others