According to the official Pokémon website, “kids all over the world have been discovering the enchanting world of Pokémon [for over 15 years].” Not surprisingly, many of us who used to be kids in the 15+ years are playing Pokémon Go, but who would have expected nearly 4 of every 5 Pokémon Go players (almost 80%) to be adults. Put into perspective—at Pokémon Go’s peak of 25 million daily active users, close to 20 million adults may have been playing the location-based augmented reality mobile game every day! Still, that also means at least one out of every five players are children, which in turn represents millions of daily active users against whom one or more provisions of Pokémon Go’s Terms of Service (TOS) might be unenforceable.
Articles Tagged with clickwrap
Six Ways Site Design Can Potentially Render TOS Agreements Unenforceable
Our recent posts on successful legal challenges to the arbitration clauses in browsewrap and clickwrap agreements have a theme in common—even the most thorough and well-worded agreement can be rendered unenforceable by website design. With this in mind, we have put together a list of otherwise innocuous web design components that can be the bane of both browsewrap and clickwrap alike. Note, failure to pay attention to any one of these will not necessarily render your agreement weightless—many of these are culprits only when grouped together—but they are also each eminently addressable, so why not avoid potential pitfalls in the first place?
Clickwrap Kryptonite: Don’t Let Site Design Undermine Your TOS
We previously covered the developing legal issues with browsewrap agreements and the importance of reviewing and updating any such agreement to ensure users are bound to the terms. In a browsewrap agreement, the user’s assent to the agreement’s terms is inferred from the user’s use of the website. Often, the terms of a browsewrap agreement are accessible from a hyperlink placed on one or more webpages of the company’s website. As we mentioned in our initial post, browsewrap agreements have a close, usually more dependable relative—the “clickwrap” agreement. A clickwrap agreement requires the user to click a button to affirm assent to the agreement’s terms. As a result of this direct, affirmative action, many lawyers view clickwrap as a safer alternative than its browsewrap cousin.
How Binding Is Your Browsewrap Agreement?
Anyone who has purchased a product online or downloaded software for a computer, tablet or mobile device has likely encountered “browsewrap” and “clickwrap” agreements. Such agreements are the bread and butter of companies that sell or license products or provide services via websites or web applications. Clickwrap agreements require a user to affirmatively click a button to affirm his or her assent to the agreement’s terms, whereas with a browsewrap agreement, the user’s assent to the agreement’s terms is inferred from the user’s use of the website. (Often, the terms of a browsewrap agreement are accessible from a hyperlink placed on one or more webpages of the company’s website.)