

Legal Actions Every App Developer Should Take - mfaustman
http://blog.upcounsel.com/legal-actions-every-app-developer-should-take-right-now/
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!
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joonix
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.

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mfaustman
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).

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

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eitland
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 ;-)

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ronyeh
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.

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

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mfaustman
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.

