Website Contract

Contracts are vital documents when setting up any business, and an online business is no exception. An online business is particularly risky from ensuring you secure your desired website to understanding certain fundamental agreements you should have in place for legal protection and compliance.

What contracts will you need?

• Your website needs to stand out, so you will need to recruit a designer, and use an appropriately drafted contract to govern that relationship, and the work they are undertaking for you.
• If you are looking for complex website functionality you may also need to engage a website developer and require a contract for this purpose
• You will also require terms and conditions to govern the use of your site
• If you are an ecommerce site, you should have terms of business to govern your relationship with customers.
• A privacy policy is also essential, to enable your business to create a database that complies with the data protection legislation and respects customers’ confidentiality

What should you look for in contracts?

• Your contracts should be easily comprehensible by your customers
• Your contract should focus on the rights and duties of the parties insofar as they have commercial significance.
• The contract should deal comprehensively with ownership, licensing and use of your intellectual property.
• Any IP which is produced by your designer or developer such as software and designs should either belong to you or be appropriately licensed.
• Your contracts should protect you if third parties use infringing content on your website.

How can we help?

We can help to ensure you have the appropriate documentation in place, and to help you secure appropriate consents to avoid infringing the IP rights others.

As a law firm that employs staff with backgrounds in computer science we have particular expertise in the use of open source software.  We are also well placed to help you to successfully  commission sophisticated websites.