What is a Terms and Conditions Agreement?
A Terms and Conditions agreement is the agreement that includes the terms, the rules and the guidelines of acceptable behaviour and other useful sections to which users must agree in order to use or access your website. Additionally, they are a binding set of rules that serve as a legal contract between you and the users who visit your website. In the event of a legal dispute, arbitrators will look to this agreement to determine whether each party acted within their rights. Terms and Conditions are also known as Terms of Service or Terms of Use. The purpose of a Terms and Conditions agreement is to also prevent misunderstandings between the business owner (you), and the consumer. The agreement helps you:
- Protect your intellectual property
- Avoid website abuse
- Define the limits of your legal obligations to the consumer
Is a Terms of Use agreement required?
A Terms and Conditions agreement is not legally required. No laws require you to have one. Not even the one that are wide-reaching like General Data Protection Regulation of the EU. However, having one comes with a number of important benefits for both you and your users/customers.
GDPR Compliance requires you to have other website policies such as Privacy Policy, Cookie policy and applicable disclaimers.
It’s up to you to set the rules and guidelines that the user must agree to. You can think of your Terms and Conditions agreement as the legal agreement where you maintain your rights to exclude users from your website in the event that they abuse your website, where you maintain your legal rights against potential website abusers, and so on.
Why do you need a Terms and conditions Agreement?
- Exercise Legal rights
- It can help you counter legal issues and liabilities as mentioned above. In the event of a legal dispute, arbitrators will look to this agreement to determine whether each party acted within their rights.
- Prevent abuses
- Since it is legally binding contract, you will be able to take action when users violate rules and guidelines provided in this agreement. That applies to abusive actions including posting or sharing defamatory content, spamming other users, and also using harmful language, among others done by users.
- Protect your content
- You should also own everything you create and post on your website or app. It’s vital that you protect your intellectual property rights. By setting out what your rights are in the Terms and Conditions agreement, you can take action against users who infringe your rights. It should be clear that the logo, brand, and content belongs to you.
- Ban users and terminate accounts
- Additionally, You will be able to terminate users’ accounts and ban them based on any illegal activity or misconduct.
- Set the governing law
- You will also be able to communicate with your customers the legal boundaries that you have as a holder of a terms and conditions statement. You can decide which country’s laws apply to govern the agreement.
- Limit liability
- You will also be able to set the limits of your liability and let your customers know that there are certain things that are out of your control. By doing this, you’re also protecting yourself from a host of lawsuits that could involve you should there be issues or breakdowns in your line of business.
- Manage User Expectations
- Additionally, you can manage a user’s expectations of your website or platform. When the terms are clear, users know what they can and cannot expect from you. You can set your own site rules and the consequences for violating these rules, within legal limits.
What should a Terms of Use Agreement include?
In general, almost every Terms and Conditions agreement should include the following clauses:
- Introduction
- Right to make changes to the agreement
- User guidelines (rules, restrictions, requirements)
- Copyright and intellectual property
- Governing law
- Warranty disclaimer
- Limitation of liability
- Termination of accounts/service
- Contact information
FAQs
These are all the same type of agreement. Terms of Service and Terms of Use indicate rules, limits, and protections just as much as Terms and Conditions. Only the names are different. The name of the agreement basically depends on the preferences of the business.
A Privacy Policy is used to inform users about how you collect, handle and use their personal information. In other words, it helps protect your users. However, A Terms & Conditions agreement (T&C) is used to maintain more control over your website or app. In other words, it helps protect you as the business owner.
Your T&C should be easily and freely accessible at any time. Ideally, Within your website footer as it easily accessible.
For your T&C to be enforceable, you need to get your users to agree to it. The best way to do this is with a clickwrap method, which means asking your users to click something to show they consent to your T&C.
A Privacy Policy is not only the legally required document to disclose your practices on protecting personal information, but it’s also a great way to show users that you can be trusted, and that you have procedures in place to handle their personal information with care.