Law Commons^™

The Impact Of Eu Unfair Contract Terms Law On U.S. Business-To-Consumer Internet Merchants, Jane K. Winn, Mark Webber

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This article focuses on the application of European Union unfair contract terms law to retail Internet transactions that U.S. businesses might engage in with European consumers. It compares attitudes toward consumer protection regulation in the U.S. and the EU to provide some context within which the specific provisions of unfair contract terms law can be understood.

While many lawyers and legal academics in the U.S. who study the development of online markets are aware of the profound differences in U.S. and EU information privacy laws, the magnitude of the divergence in consumer electronic contracting law is ...

The Use Of Mtas To Control Commercialization Of Stem Cell Diagnostics And Therapeutics, Sean O'Connor

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The recent focus on patents as a hindrance to stem cell research may turn out to be a red herring. The real culprits are material transfer agreements (MTAs), which govern the transfer of cell lines and other biological materials. The MTA’s primary purpose in life sciences research is to set contractual rights and obligations between parties where one party transfers biological materials to the other. For example, MTAs often focus on the physical handling, use, and distribution of the materials by the recipient, ensuring that the recipient complies with regulations for research involving humans or animals.

Although these interests ...

Diverging Perspectives On Electronic Contracting In The U.S. And Eu, Jane K. Winn, Brian H. Bix

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The focus of this Article is the interrelated set of issues that have arisen, on one hand, from Internet transactions regarding the downloading of free or purchased software, as well as other Internet sales, and on the other hand, the distinctive transactional problems that modern business practices have created under the rubric of "shrink-wrap" or "terms in the box"—a late presentation of terms associated with the sale of computers or the licensing of software (with the terms included in the packaging, rather than presented to the user ahead of time)—but not necessarily confined to those transactions.

Such transactions ...

Fiduciary Duties And Unincorporated Business Entities: In Defense Of The "Manifestly Unreasonable" Standard, Mark J. Loewenstein

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This article wades into the debate between contractarians and anti-contractarians over the extent to which statutes on unincorporated business entities should limit the ability of the participants in those entities to contract around fiduciary duties. Statutes enacted in the past several years provide considerable, but not complete, freedom to limit fiduciary duties. Contractarians argue that statutory limitations are inefficient and unnecessary, while anti-contractarians take the view that the statutes provide too much freedom of contract. This article stakes out a middle ground, arguing that the drafters of the statutes got it right and that in the absence of statutory limitations ...

Boilerplate And Economic Power In Auto Manufacturing Contracts, Omri Ben-Shahar, James J. White

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This Article is structured as follows. Part I compares the terms and conditions in the purchase orders of the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and highlights important differences in the substance of these boilerplate provisions. It argues that these differences cannot be easily reconciled with the prediction that sophisticated parties draft the most efficient boilerplate terms. Part II examines how these forms are drafted, how their terms are negotiated, and how the OEMs guard their terms from erosion. It provides some insight on how tailoring occurs and how the internal organization of a party to a deal affects the terms that ...

On The Stickiness Of Default Rules, Omri Ben-Shahar, John A. E. Pottow

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It was once perceived, and still is commonly taught, that default rules in contract law must mimic efficient arrangements. Otherwise, these rules impose needless transaction costs upon parties who seek to opt out of them to reach more efficient positions. In settings where these costs are high, parties might find themselves "stuck" in a default, unable to reach the outcome that they prefer. The strong version of this account-that the only factor that can make an inefficient default rule stick is the direct cost of drafting a tailored provision-has been gradually reappraised. It is by now recognized that factors beyond ...

Foreword [To Boilerplate: Foundations Of Market Contracts Symposium], Omri Ben-Shahar

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It is tempting to open this symposium with yet another "boilerplate" salute to the challenge that standard-form contracts pose for contract law doctrine. You may have seen many tributes to this fundamental problem. If I were to offer my own variation on this familiar introduction, I would have perhaps tried to come up with an original spin to induce you to read forward another paragraph or two. I would probably have talked about a major divide within contract law between the "law of negotiations" and "product regulation." The former is the body of doctrines that determine the legal consequences of ...

Cisg Article 31: When Substantive Law Rules Affect Jurisdictional Results, Ronald A. Brand

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No abstract provided.