As we have just learned – beware – an email exchange can be a written contract and electronic signatures can be signatures. If they do not provide an update notice regarding the impending changes to your legal agreements, they look like a Browsewrap agreement: if the user does not know anything about the changes, the user can argue that he could not accept the new terms because the conditions were not properly presented. Whatever the reason for the change, updates to your legal agreements must be communicated to your users before they take effect. Today, pixels reign. Emails, instant messaging and other electronic communications (together for this article “emails”) have revolutionized the way we all communicate and correspond. They made it lightning-fast and much more informal than paper correspondence, such as traditional letters and faxes. But, like most innovations, these electronic means of correspondence have created new problems. The main one is the involuntary and unwanted contract. The win should be that you and your customers should be protected from the accidental conclusion of a contract that they did not intend or discussed or negotiated.
Businessmen and lawyers should think that every e-mail sent corresponds to a damp signature on a paper letter that can form the basis of a binding contract, unless the contractual intent is clearly and explicitly invoked. Remember that most parts of an agreement are not set in stone. Don`t hesitate to negotiate for better terms if you feel you need it. Keep the sound of this positive letter. A negative tone will oppose your proposal. Since most SaaS apps contain a version of an account table, you can use the dashboard to properly inform users of upcoming changes. Click the Manage with a single click tab on the agreement you want to edit from Elance, provided a notification indicates that eight of its legal agreements are being changed. The email contained links to the updated chord sections and it even summarized each section to give a really correct overview.
Both the Federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, which applies to all intergovernmental and foreign transactions, and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (“UETA”), a version adopted by California[1] and the majority of states, provide that no legal effect is denied to a contract and signature simply because they are in electronic form.
