We are in the digital era, the information age, the content revolution! Perhaps your primary products are apps, games, or cloud services. Even if not, no matter what line of business you’re in, it’s very likely that your company’s website, apps, and other digital tools serve at least one of the following major roles for your business:
- Your most important marketing tool
- A virtual retail space for your tangible products
- A channel for offering services to your customers
- A space for users to generate or contribute content
Protect your investment
Whatever roles your website, apps, or digital products play in your business, you’ve no doubt invested a lot to create them —-time, money, and sweat. As with any investments, you want to protect them as best as you can.
An important part of that protection is putting in place terms of use, user agreements, and/or user policies appropriate to your business. (You will also want to protect the copyrights, trademarks and branding, or other intellectual property contained in what you’ve created.)
With a committed, collaborative, client-focused advocate on your side
Schedule a free phone consultation with us to:
- Explore your situation
- Discuss the type of terms, agreements, and/or policies you should consider
- Understand the various approaches you might take
- Discuss the pros and cons of each, so that you can make the right business decisions for your company
Our team’s interest in how the law deals with the rapidly evolving digital and online world was the inspiration for this firm. Over the years, we have helped clients protect both their businesses and their customers by preparing policies, terms of use, and user agreements appropriate to their needs.
Our clients have provided various online and digital products and services, including:
- A downloadable app providing live, human translation services in the sensitive areas of law and medicine
- Online support services for those who’ve suffered traumatic loss, including a virtual meeting space where users can safely interact with each other.
- A cloud-based Integrated Library System available to small public libraries across the country
- An interactive website providing information about local businesses and events
- A social platform for parents to share stories, photos, and information about parenting
We can help you:
- Understand and minimize any risks associated with your website or digital products
- Establish appropriate policies and procedures for your users or customers
- Protect the company from liability for your customers’ use of your website and digital products
- Comply with any applicable privacy laws or regulations
- Avoid infringing others’ copyrights, rights of publicity, and other rights through your website or products
Schedule a free phone consultation with us to:
- Explore your situation
- Discuss the type of terms, agreements, and/or policies you should consider
- Understand the various approaches you might take
- Discuss the pros and cons of each, so that you can make the decisions that are best for your business
Terms of use, user agreements, or policies are more important in some cases than others, because some situations create greater legal risk than others.
Engaging in any of the following activities through your company’s website or apps (whether cloud-based or downloadable ), can potentially and significantly increase your legal risk. You can greatly reduce that risk with the right terms of use or other agreements and policies.
- Collecting, using, or disclosing personal information about children under the age of 13 (in this case, you are required by law to include specific privacy terms and practices on your website)
- Collecting personal, financial, or other sensitive information, even if anonymously
- Interacting with users or providing users with the means to interact with each other
- Allowing users to post or share information, or otherwise collecting user-generated content
- Providing direct services, subscriptions, or memberships
- Engaging in e-commerce
- Providing content for users to download (whether or not you created it)
- Providing access to sensitive information or information for which you don’t want to be held liable, such as health, medical, or legal information (even if your product is simply a conduit)
- For most websites and apps, terms of use and policies don’t have to be complicated.
- In fact, they’re usually more effective when they’re not; if you and your users can’t easily understand them, they’re probably not very useful.
- Terms and policies define your rights and responsibilities and those of your users, which means they also help protect you from liability.
- Depending on what you do with your website, having appropriate terms and policies may be crucial.
- How you’re using your website or app determines what should be included in your terms and policies.
I absolutely love working with Gretchen. My company offers on-demand, Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) services via mobile and/or web app, delivered by live human interpreters in specialized fields such as medicine. Gretchen has created a user agreement, privacy policy, and terms of use for our product, as well as successfully registered our trademarks. She’s taken the time to understand our business, our goals and direction. She listens and asks questions to then clearly lay out all options, pros and cons, as well as recommended path. She’s conscientious about costs – a major concern for a start-up – and is diligent about delivering on time and on budget. It is so good to have someone on “our team” that I can confidently rely on to help carry the load. Without reservation or hesitation, I highly recommend Gretchen to anyone!
Note:
Terms of Use are a type of contracts, as are licenses. You might find additional helpful information on our pages about General Contract Law and Licensing.