Legal Actions Every App Developer Should Take

Legal Actions Every App Developer Should Take(blog.upcounsel.com)

27 points by mfaustman 13 years ago | 8 comments

With all of the legal events happening lately that can impact app developers, we wanted to summarize two major action items for anyone trying to launch new apps in 2013. Good luck!

joonix 13 years ago |

The article doesn't talk enough about level of assent to Terms by users. Don't show the Agree button until they scroll all the way down. Require them to type their initials to agree. It is really easy to throw out your terms in civil litigation by showing the user never actually assented -- there wasn't a "meeting of the minds" in order to form a contract between you and your users.

sentenza 13 years ago | |

Even this will not help you in the EU. The basic rule for EULAs in the EU is that they are only valid if you show them pre-purchase.

Oh, and they become automatically invalid if you make a user sign away rights that he has under the law (of his resident member state).

mfaustman 13 years ago | |

Great point and requiring your users to scroll through the TOU and then agree (only after scrolling) is the best practice. Courts, however, have not conclusively said this is the silver bullet. Many TOUs have held up in court via a mere click through (with no scroll).

joonix 13 years ago | | |

Right, it's presently very murky in the US and varies from court to court. You can only try your best to mitigate risk.

eitland 13 years ago |

One thing we are missing is a ruling that states that these EULAs are unenforceable if they are too long and complicated for a given percent of the audience.

I used to love the information that google desktop displayed in addition to the normal EULA. It read somewhat like: "Read Carefully, this is not the normal YADDA YADDA." But that was 5 or 6 years ago and I am afraid google has grown up since then.

Of course we should have a ruling that everyone who started obviously stupid lawsuits (possibly including class action) should lose their drivers license, lose the right to vote etc as their lack of judgment has been documented clearly ;-)

ronyeh 13 years ago |

But as a user, I hate having to agree to EULAs and TOUs. When I install a new iPad, I have to click through several pages of this stuff.

dsr_ 13 years ago |

How long ago was it that all software was redefined as either being Enterprise or an app?

mfaustman 13 years ago | |

A little confused as to your question. Not making a distinction between "Enterprise" and an "app." These suggestions most certainly apply to Enterprise products and generally these are practices for all web and mobile products.