Terms and Conditions & Subscription Agreement

LEGAL INFORMATION NORMALLY USED IN A WEBSITE AND APP

A. Terms and Conditions

The information below relates to online terms and conditions for websites and mobile applications. For standard terms and conditions relating to the sale and purchase of physical goods or the provision of service, please refer to the information under the section "Commercial / Marketing".

A terms and conditions agreement is a legal contract between the company that owns and operates the website or mobile application and users who visit your website and mobile application. An agreement with terms and conditions is entirely optional and not required by law. However, most websites and mobile applications have them to protect the owner and operator from liabilities. Terms and conditions are also known as Terms of Service or Terms of Use.

Terms and conditions are usually worded to reduce the risks of the website owner/operator and exclude them from all liabilities from use. The terms are very one-sided which users must agree to before they can use the website/mobile application. These usually include terms governing:

User interaction with the website - rules relating to sign up, subscription, payment, and any restrictions of use.;

Intellectual property rights - reserve the copyright, trademark, and all other intellectual property rights of the service provider, providing a license to/from the user in relation to the content of the website / mobile application if necessary;

Third-party content - not responsible for any users created content and any third-party links, including any infringement of intellectual property right of any third parties;

Right to terminate - the service provider has the right to terminate and disallow the user from using the service at any time;

Risk Disclosures - disclose to the users the risk of using the site, including risks relating to privacy and payment.

Applicable Law - normally the applicable law is the location of the service provider of the website and mobile application. One will also need to comply with local law requirements.

B. Validity of "Click to Agree"

The usual complaint of online Terms and Conditions is that there are pages and pages of tiny fonts on the screen that no one will ever read. 99% of the people will just click to agree "to abide by the terms of conditions" in order to use the website, mobile application, or make an online purchase. Most users do not know what rules they have agreed to abide by.

Whether one register on the website or service, download an application, or make an online purchase, clicking the "Accept Terms and Conditions" button is legally binding. There is no exemption for not bothering to read the terms and conditions because they are too long or too legalistic. Any exclusion of negligence liability for personal injury by businesses may be prohibited by the local Unfair Contract Terms law, otherwise online terms and conditions would generally be enforceable. 

In the past, there were some common law cases relating to parking tickets, where clauses included as fine prints cannot be incorporated as terms of a contract after it has been concluded. However, these case laws should not apply to online terms and conditions so long as:

• users are given the opportunity to review the terms and conditions before acceptance;
• the terms and conditions are in a print that is of reasonable size to read;
• the terms and conditions are not deemed to be Unfair Contract terms under local law; and 
• reasonable notice is given on any change to terms and conditions.

C. Personal Data Privacy Policy

If you have users from the Europen Union, it is essential that you have a privacy policy that complies with the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"). Even if you don't have users from the European Union, it would still be good for a Website / Application that collects personal data to have a Privacy Policy for the purpose of ensuring that:

• the personal data collected is collected in a fair manner on the basis of a thorough understanding of the information, and due consideration is given to minimizing the amount of personal data collected;
• once personal data is collected, it is handled in a secure and reliable manner and stored for the purpose for which it was used;
• the use of data is limited to or related to the purpose for which it was originally collected; and
• data subjects have the right to access, delete or correct their data.

D. Other Documents

There are certainly other legal documents, policies, and information a website/mobile application should include to clearly stipulate the rights and liabilities of users. The following are the more commonly used legal documents and policies:

You may also want to add a link "Legal Info" to the bottom of every page of your site which summarises the legal information to your website/app below:

LEGAL INFORMATION

Copyright

© [COMPANY]. All rights reserved. [SERVICE]  and [List of other logos/trademarks] are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of [COMPANY]. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

User Agreement / Terms and Conditions of Use

Click [insert link to terms of use] for information.

Trial Terms and Conditions of Use

Click [insert a link to trial terms of use] for information.

Privacy Policy

Click [insert a link to privacy policy] for information.

Refund Policy

Click [insert a link to refund policy] for information.

Video Policy

Click [insert a link to video policy] for information.

Disclaimers

Click [insert a link to disclaimers] for information.

Third-Party Legal Notices

[COMPANY] and other products/services distributed via [SERVICE_NAME] use certain third-party materials that require notifications about their license terms. You can find a list of these notifications in the file called [Name of the file] distributed with the website for a particular product/service. 

Claims of Copyright Infringement

[COMPANY] respects the intellectual property rights of others, and we ask that everyone using our internet sites and services do the same. Anyone who believes that their work has been reproduced on one of our internet sites or services in a way that constitutes copyright infringement may notify [COMPANY] via [SUPPORT].

[COMPANY] will only remove content based on a complete copyright infringement Notification. Your complete Notice must include all of the following information:

• A detailed description of the copyrighted content that you believe is being infringed;
• The URL where the allegedly infringing content is located and a description of the content;
• Your full legal name, physical address, telephone number, and email address;
• The following statement: “I have a good faith belief that the use of the copyrighted material I am complaining of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law”;
• The following statement: “The information in this notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury I am the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of the copyright or of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed”; and
• The electronic or physical signature of the copyright owner or authorized agent.

Upon review of a complete Notice, [COMPANY] will investigate before removing the allegedly infringing content. [COMPANY] will further make a good-faith attempt to contact the user who stored or transmitted the allegedly infringing content to provide such user the opportunity for a response before the removal of their content.]