The Chinese Restaurant Menu And Yogi Berra Approach To e-Commerce Contracting

e-commerce contracts don't always follow the rules of traditional drafting. Although e-commerce has existed for several years, few attorneys or firms have large bodies of forms from which to draw for drafting e-commerce contracts. Even a leading online contract-forms site, www.onecle.com, which extracts forms from SEC filings, doesn't have a category for e-commerce contracts. (Searching that site by company, however, quickly identifies several e-commerce companies' actual contracts.) <br>The absence of "standard" e-commerce forms should not be surprising to anyone involved in the development of online business over the last decade. The hallmark of e-commerce has been innovation, as entrepreneurs try, and then discard, new business models at a furious pace in their quest for dominance of a new landscape. As a result, many e-commerce contracts are sui generis ' they don't follow a model. Each deal has unique aspects, which must be considered separately and covered by one or more agreements. If the drafter wants to protect his or her interests adequately, then the form of a traditional agreement should not dictate the content of an e-commerce contract.

23 minute readNovember 29, 2005 at 10:32 AM
By
Stanley P. Jaskiewicz
The Chinese Restaurant Menu And Yogi Berra Approach To e-Commerce Contracting

What makes a License Agreement a license agreement? In fact, why are so many e-commerce contracts called license agreements in the first place ' and should they be?

This premium content is locked for LawJournalNewsletters subscribers only

ENJOY UNLIMITED ACCESS TO THE SINGLE SOURCE OF OBJECTIVE LEGAL ANALYSIS, PRACTICAL INSIGHTS, AND NEWS IN LawJournalNewsletters

  • Stay current on the latest information, rulings, regulations, and trends
  • Includes practical, must-have information on copyrights, royalties, AI, and more
  • Tap into expert guidance from top entertainment lawyers and experts
Subscribe Now

Already have an account? Sign In Now

For enterprise-wide or corporate access, please contact Customer Service at [email protected] or call 1-877-256-2473.

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2026 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Continue Reading

The Race You Didn’t Know You Were In: Why AI Is Setting the Pace for Law Firm Marketing

The volume and sophistication of work hitting law firm marketing departments is accelerating. That moves the burden from responding to being ready: ready with differentiated positioning, ready with competitive intelligence, ready to get a compelling pitch to the right client before a formal process even begins. That requires more sophisticated output, produced faster, by teams that are already stretched past capacity.

April 01, 2026

Copyright, Free Speech and Victim Rights In the Digital Age

The annals of copyright decisions could provide a reasonably representative catalog of what our culture has been up to over the past 200 years. A Feb. 3 decision from the Southern District of New York is a case in point. It involves a sex-trafficking conspiracy, Tweets attacking a troubled crypto firm, and a claimed transfer of copyright ownership through a restitution order in a criminal case, all over an undercurrent of competing First Amendment and victim-privacy concerns.

April 01, 2026

Matthew McConaughey Combats AI’s Unauthorized Use of His Voice and Likeness

Matthew McConaughey secured eight federal trademark registrations covering his voice and iconic catchphrases in a novel legal strategy aimed at combating AI’s unauthorized use of his voice and likeness. The move signals an important evolution in the power dynamics between talent/brands and the companies providing generative AI tools.

April 01, 2026