Liability & Legality

**ink elf** · 02-22-2011, 05:20 AM

Hi Guys

To cover myself completely incase there are any problems with unpaid for work through my site I have created a terms and conditions agreement. I plan to link to this page from the order form and also from the online store. I have never written one of these before so I would appreciate it if you let me know what you think. I want to make sure that I am completely covered incase any problems do arise yet I also do not want to sound to 'warning' as to discourage buyers from using the site. This is what I have come up with, please let me know what you think:

Disclaimer

All work created by the Ink Elves team and sold through the Ink Elves website or other avenues, remains the property of Ink Elves until payment has been received. Articles that have been written and not paid for are not permitted to be used anywhere on the internet or anywhere else without the permission of Ink Elves. If an order is placed for some articles and payment is not received, Ink Elves reserves the right to do whatever they wish with the articles.

Articles which have been bought and used, resold or uploaded to the internet are not eligible for a refund. Where refunds do apply, the work will become the property of Ink Elves and any use of this work will result in a copyright infringement.

Once articles have been paid for you are welcome to resell, upload and distribute the articles as you wish. Once paid for, all rights to the articles are passed completely over to the buyer, the articles are removed from the online store and will not be sold again. If in the unlikely event there is a problem with the articles you have bought please notify us within 72 hours so we can rectify the problem or issue a refund.

By buying articles through the online store or ordering articles through our site you agree to these terms and conditions.

**chrishirst** · 02-22-2011, 08:26 AM

Run it by a real lawyer to ensure that it is enforceable, while it looks Ok there are some parts that could be seen as ambiguous and/or porly worded in the legal aspect.

eg:

Quote:

Articles which have been bought and used, resold or uploaded to the internet are not eligible for a refund. Where refunds do apply, the work will become the property of Ink Elves and any use of this work will result in a copyright infringement.

probably should be:

Quote:

Where the purchase has been completed and the [work] susequently resold, published on third party webpages or otherwise used it will not be eligible for a refund. Where refunds have been applied, the ownership and copyright of the work will revert to [the vendor] and any further use of this work will be deemed to be an infringement of the vendors copyright.

Probably not 100% but it is something close to what a friend uses on his GD work contract.

secondly:
Always use a contract with electronic signature

**ink elf** · 02-22-2011, 10:10 AM

Thanks Chris you have been more than helpful. I will run the text by my lawyer and if it is okay with you I will use your changed paragraph. I will also look into the electronic contracts - sounds like the perfect solution.