A Terms and Conditions agreement acts as legal contracts between you (the company) who has the website or mobile app, and the user who accesses your website/app.
Having a Terms and Conditions agreement is completely optional. No laws require you to have one. Not even the super-strict and wide-reaching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Your Terms and Conditions agreement will be uniquely yours. While some clauses are standard and commonly seen in pretty much every Terms and Conditions agreement, it's up to you to set the rules and guidelines that the user must agree to.
You can think of your Terms and Conditions agreement as the legal agreement where you maintain your rights to exclude users from your app in the event that they abuse your app, where you maintain your legal rights against potential app abusers, and so on.
Terms and Conditions agreements are also known as Terms of Service or Terms of Use agreements. These terms are interchangeable, practically speaking.
Check out our Terms and Conditions FAQ article for more helpful insight into these important agreements.
You can use this agreement anywhere, regardless of what platform your business operates on:
Desktop apps usually have an EULA (End-User License Agreement) instead of a Terms and Conditions agreement, but your business can use both. Mobile apps are increasingly using Terms and Conditions along with an EULA if the mobile app has an online service component, i.e. it connects with a server.
What's a Terms and Conditions Agreement from termsfeed
A Terms and Conditions is not required and it's not mandatory by law.
Unlike Privacy Policies, which are required by laws such as the GDPR, CalOPPA and many others, there's no law or regulation on Terms and Conditions.
However, having a Terms and Conditions gives you the right to terminate the access of abusive users or to terminate the access to users who do not follow your rules and guidelines, as well as other desirable business benefits.
It's extremely important to have this agreement if you operate a SaaS app.
Here are a few examples of how this agreement can help you:
In summary, while you do not legally need a Terms and Conditions agreement, there are many many reasons for you to have one. Not only will it make your business look more professional and trustworthy, but you'll also be maintaining more control over how your users are able to interact with your platforms and content.
In your Terms and Conditions, you can include rules and guidelines on how users can access and use your website and mobile app.
Here are a few examples:
If your website or mobile app allows users to create content and make that content public to other users, a Content clause will inform users that they own the rights to the content they have created. This clause usually mentions that users must give you (the website or mobile app developer/owner) a license so that you can share this content on your website/mobile app and to make it available to other users.
Because the content created by users is public to other users, a DMCA notice clause (or Copyright Infringement ) section is helpful to inform users and copyright authors that, if any content is found to be a copyright infringement, you will respond to any DMCA takedown notices received and you will take down the content.
A Limit What Users Can Do clause can inform users that by agreeing to use your service, they're also agreeing to not do certain things. This can be part of a very long and thorough list in your Terms and Conditions agreement so as to encompass the most amount of negative uses.