Alasdair Taylor's blog

Sometimes, there will be a contractual relationship between a website operator and a website user; other times, there will not.

An end user licence agreement (EULA) is a legal document setting out the basis upon which a person may use software. In this post, I look at the issues EULA-related issues affecting video game developmers and publishers. The focus is on smaller and newer businesses, but much of the discussion is relevant to established businesses too.

One of the functions of commercial contracts is to provide business with a degree of certainty about the future. What widgets will be supplied? When will the customer pay? What will happen if the supplier does this, or the customer does that? Uncertainty is inherent in predictions about the future, but the Brexit process has introduced a new and fundamental uncertainty to the heart of the UK's legal system.

Clients who are new to legal documentation and may be unfamiliar with the operation of commercial law will sometimes tell me that they want a document that is "100 per cent legal" or similar. However, it is usually not possible to guarantee absolute legality and it may not be even be desirable. It all depends upon what they mean by "legal". There are several different ways in which a legal document may not be legal.

SEQ Legal was set up 10 years ago. Its purpose was to help small businesses, especially IT and internet businesses, to deal with day-to-day legal and contractual issues: drafting standard T&Cs, avoiding compliance pitfalls and negotiating with their own customers and suppliers alike.

Corporate groups usually share data, including personal data. The sharing of personal data is regulated under UK and EU data protection law (ie the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), and in many cases sharing will not be lawful without an appropriate framework in place. For SMEs, that framework will usually take the form of an intra-group data sharing agreement.

For this post, I interviewed cyber security expert Emma Osborn of OCSRC Ltd. Emma has recently produced a range of template cyber security documents in collaboration with SEQ Legal (available on Docular and Website Contracts), and in this post we explore the function of these documents in the SME context.

You've quit your job to set up as a consultant; you've got yourself an office, a new laptop and a new suit; best of all, you've shaken hands on your first project. The client asks for your T&Cs, but you have none. What are the options?

Due to popular demand, we have recently introduced a large number of new legal document packs on Website Contracts. The packs are particularly useful if you need lots of documents, or if you need different elements from different documents, if you're not sure exactly which documents you need, or if you just want to save on licence fees.

I’ve been negotiating the legal aspects cloud service contracts for over 15 years. In most negotiations, I represent an SME vendor selling to a corporate customer. In this post, I highlight the principles that inform my approach these negotiations.