Terms & Conditions
What Are Terms and Conditions?
- A terms and conditions agreement outlines the website administrator’s rules regarding user behavior and provides information about the actions the website administrator can and will perform. Essentially, your terms and conditions text is a contract between your website and its users. In the event of a legal dispute, arbitrators will look at it to determine whether each party acted within their rights.
Reasons to Have a Terms and Conditions
- Besides giving your business more legal protection, you should also have a terms and conditions agreement on your website for the following reasons.
- To Set Liabilities Limits
- Almost every terms and conditions agreement has a warranty or limitations of liability disclaimer. We’ll cover it in more detail in our section about what clauses to include in your terms and conditions, but this clause essentially limits what customers can hold you liable for.
- To Outline Policies and Avoid Abusive Behavior
- Many companies use their website’s terms and conditions to lay down the rules that users must agree to and follow before accessing your website or service. Most of these rules revolve around how users should interact with others and what they can and can’t post or do.
- To Terminate Abusive Users’ Accounts
- Your terms and conditions agreement is also a great place to list when and why you can terminate the accounts of abusive users. Most companies, for instance, will ban users if they’re using the platform or site for illegal activities, bullying other users, and unauthorized web scraping.
- Keep Others From Copying Your Content
- Another reason for having a terms and conditions agreement is to disclose and protect your intellectual property rights.
- Adding an intellectual property disclosure clause to your terms and conditions text informs users of your intellectual property rights, such as your logos, content, and other protected ideas and marks.
- If you catch your users copying your content, you can take legal action against them since your terms and conditions agreement is legally binding.
- To Outline Governing and Applicable Laws
- Finally, you should have a terms and conditions agreement to inform users which federal or state laws — or both — govern your agreement.
- If a dispute arises between you and your user, the court will use the governing law to interpret the terms and conditions agreement and its effects.
Clauses To Include in Your Terms and Conditions Agreement
- Terms and Conditions agreements contain a broad range of guidelines for how you and your users can use your service or site.
- Even short terms and conditions agreements should include several vital clauses to safeguard your business. Otherwise, your website’s terms and conditions agreement will be incomplete, exposing you to many legal risks.