Tag: online agreement

• Hubbert v. Dell Corp., 2005 WL 1968774 (Ill. App. Ct. 2005) (court upheld arbitration clause in Dell’s for cause regarding alleged false claims made by Dell to online purchasers of the computers. Court found different colored hyperlinks on each page like a multipage contract).
• Hines v. Overstock.com, Inc., 668 F. Supp.2d 366 (E.D.N.Y. 2009) (both arbitration and forum selection clause invalid due to no actual or constructive notice)
• Van Tassell v. United Mktg. Group, LLC, 795 F. Supp. 2d 770 (N.D. Ill. 2011) (holding arbitration provision was unenforceable where it was included website’s conditions of use but difficult to find, because users had to scroll all the way down home page, click on Customer Service link, then scroll down and click another link to find it).
• Friedman v. Guthy-Renker, LLC, 2015 US Dist LEXIS 24307 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 27, 2015) (where two plaintiffs clicked on checkbox that only referenced credit card terms prior to purchase, arbitration not binding; for plaintiff who clicked on checkbox which had a link to the terms the arbitration provision was binding)
• Cvent, Inc. v. Eventbrite, Inc., 739 F. Supp. 2d 927 (E.D. Va. 2010) (terms of use not valid as they were buried at bottom of first page and on no other page).

In In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation, 185 F. Supp. 3d 1155, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60046, (N.D. Cal. 2016):

• A class action against Facebook was filed pursuant to the Illinois Biometric Informration Privacy Act (BIPA). Parties agreed to transfer case to N.D. California, but wanted Illinois law (and not CA law) to apply.
  • Plaintiff’s alleged that facial and other recognition used by Facebook violated BIPA
• Facebook argued that its choice of law clause in its current Terms of Use required the use of CA law.
• There were three plaintiffs at issue and court reviewed the sign up procedure for each (2005, 2008 and 2009).
  • When Facebook updated its Terms it emailed a notice to all user’s email addresses and the next time each user logged on, they saw “jewel” notification in their personal newsfeed alerting to the change in such documents but no affirmative action was required by each user).BUT said the general and individualized notice was enough, that the agreement was effective, but that in the situation it would not apply CA law.
• The Court said that the notice provided by Facebook was enough to have a binding choice of law provision (seemed to like the “personalized” nature of the news feed notice).
• But the Court then still chose to apply IL law as opposed to CA.

In Jerez v. JD Closeouts, LLC, No. CV-024727-11, 2012 WL 934390 (N.Y. Dist. Ct. 2012):

–The court held that a terms of sale provision found on the “About” page of the website was not enough to enforce the forum selection clause.

• Plaintiff ordered products ($6,000 worth of tube socks) over the Internet, and sued claiming there were defects.
• Seller moved to dismiss claiming the forum selection clause required the dispute be heard in a Florida state court, and Plaintiff claimed he never saw clause.

–Court found the clause was not reasonably communicated where it was “buried” and “submerged” on the website, and could only be found by clicking on an “inconspicuous” link to the company’s About Us page.  Seller’s attempt to have the terms incorporated by reference in a printed contract and letter agreement were not enough for the court.

• Court relied on Specht and Carnival Cruise Lines.

–Similar holding in Cvent, Inc. v. Eventbrite, Inc., 739 F. Supp. 2d 927 (E.D. Va. 2010).

In Pollstar v. Gigmania, Ltd., 170 F. Supp. 2d 974 (E.D. CA 2000):

–Pollstar kept track of concert information on its website, which any user could download by accepting the terms of Pollstar’s license.

»License prohibited commercial use of information.

»License was not on Pollstar’s homepage, but on different page of its site.

»Visitor is alerted to existence of Pollstar’s license only by reason of a small grey print on grey background (with a link to terms, but other links on homepage were blue)

–Gigmania downloaded information from Pollstar’s site and used it on its own site for commercial purposes. Pollstar sued to enforce terms.

–The court refused to enforce the terms of the license agreement because it found that the link to the license was hard to read based on the way it was presented.

• Notably, the court did not rule that the license agreement was unenforceable, only that the website did not give users adequate notice of it.

Below is a brief overview of Register.com v. Verio, Inc., 356 F.3d 393 (2d Cir. 2004):

–Register.com sued Verio for violating the terms of use of its WHOIS database, which Verio used to get information on who registered domain names with Register.com to offer web services to the registrants.

• As part of receiving the information from WHOIS, Register.com’s terms stated that the domain name registrant information, which consisted of email, phone number and mailing address, could not be used for marketing purposes. The terms of use were, however, proffered after the domain name registrant information was presented to the user of the WHOIS database.

–VERIO claimed there was no contract as it never agreed to the terms, and in any event any user of the WHOIS site could receive the information before seeing the terms.

• The court said that this argument may only have worked if Verio used the WHOIS database once, but Verio did it every day with full knowledge of the terms.

–The Second Circuit held that Verio’s continued use of Register.com’s WHOIS database constituted consent to Verio’s terms of use, expressly  rejecting Verio’s argument that they were not enforceable because the user had not clicked an “I agree” icon.