I’m in the middle of establishing my new web venture in the US and seeking advice on all the normal legal forms associated with a site. My list so far includes:
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use
Copyright
Trademark
Submission Agreement (when a user submits a digital item for sale)
Purchase Agreement (when a customer makes a purchase)
What advice can you give me on getting these forms web ready?
It seems like the Privacy and Terms are rather canned and generic forms could be bought online and modified by myself?
Do you only need to add copyright text to the footer of your site or is there actually some legal registration?
Our name isn’t trademarked, do we really need to worry about trademarking our name so early in the game?
We would need a good lawyer to write up a good submission and purchase agreement to protect our company, do you have any advice on how to find someone that is inexpensive or maybe even free (ie. startup helper)?
Thanks
Ensure that they make sense for your audience, make sure their well written and cover everything you feel you need, remember that you can change them in the future (ensure you mention this in the terms of service), this means if there’s any mistakes or anything you need to add or remove, you can do so freely.
Most policies are pretty canned to be honest (and unfortunately very few people tend to read the agreements in the first place), the way I work it is to simply browse a bunch of websites, find their agreements and use those as inspiration for the layout, regions to cover and potential clauses which may work well for you. Don’t outright copy it (that would be plagurism) but use what they say (related to your business) to cover whatever you need. Writing one isn’t that hard, you just need to be specific, explain things clearly and do your best to consider possible issues (and address those).
No you don’t (copyright exists from the point of creation) however it’s highly recommended as then you do it anyway in case anyone steals your stuff and claims they didn’t know copyright exists (it’s not a viable defence but having the message gives you added backing).
Only if you feel your brand is valuable enough (and unique enough) that it would be worthy of investment.
Honestly, My advice (and the cheapest thing to-do) would be to attempt writing one yourself, no-one but you best understands what your business needs are and certainly if you know how to write fairly well, it’ll save both you and your lawyer time. There’s plenty of guides out there to writing legal documents however the one thing I will say is once you finish writing it, check it over, pass it around to your work colleagues (if you have any) and see if they can think of anything that might be missing, and once your done… pass it to a lawyer and get them to give it a quick scan over to help make it as watertight as possible. Paying someone to write the thing for you will spiral your costs upward, writing it yourself and having a lawyer read and provide feedback will be less expensive (plus it’ll give you experience).
I’m not a lawyer but that’s my advice, hope it’s helpful