Agreement to policies provided by a website link: today&#39;s version or any future version? If I am asked to sign something saying that I agree to follow the policies that are provided from a website link, does that mean I'm agreeing to whatever the state of that website is on the day I'm signing, or any and all future updates to that website? It doesn't specify either way: neither &quot;as of the date of signing&quot; or &quot;any and all future updates&quot; is written. I'm not sure if that type of &quot;blank slate&quot; agreement is legal. This is in USA.
does that mean I'm agreeing to whatever the state of that website is on the day I'm signing, or any and all future updates to that website? That type of &quot;blank slate&quot; agreements is lawful and it means &quot;the conditions of which you are made aware&quot;, hence the terms as of the date you entered the agreement. To supersede that meaning, the agreement would need to be explicit about referring to &quot;any and all futures updates to that website&quot;. Your willful agreement of unknown future updates is described in Restatement (Second) of Contracts at § 154(b) as [the party being] aware, at the time the contract is made, that he has only limited knowledge with respect to the facts [...] but treats his limited knowledge as sufficient You might want to save a copy of the terms if you are concerned that the counterparty might unilaterally change the terms and allege that your acceptance was in reference to those.
This depends very much on the nature of the agreement, and whether it affects the client's rights and obligations. It may also depend on which US state this is in. If the agreement is "We will hold the negotiating meetings at your office instead of mine." the client's rights are not affected and the client probably has no veto. If the agreement is "Yes we will plead guilty to manslaughter." it isn't valid without the client's consent. If the client is giving up any rights or making any significant concessions, then the client's consent is probably required, but I can give no better answer without an indication of the subject of the agreement.
You're under 18, so you're viewed as a minor under the law, and as such, you can't agree to and sign legally binding contracts. The TOS for the applications are agreed to by your parents by default, because your parents are responsible for you and have no choice in parental guardian-type duties, such as education. Agreeing to the software TOSs may also be done for all student users by the school with their software site license(s) and under an agreement with your parents; ask for and read any written policies the school has. And, you don't have a say in data handling at your school; that will be another school policy for data and network security, and hopefully a policy exists. If a policy exists, it will set by the school board and it will respect a variety of local, state and federal laws. That said, you can approach the school board and outline your concerns and ask to take tests and assignments with pencil and paper. But they are not obligated to change policies for you or make accommodations, other than established accommodations required by law, such as under the ADA act. Once you're 18, you can fight the power. Until then, you're a minor.
An agreement to agree is void There is a multitude of case law on this point. If the NDA was not available to you when you signed the employment contract and the term was couched as you describe; then the term would be unenforcable. That is, your employment contract would be binding except for that term i.e. you could not be compelled to sign the NDA. Now, there may be a requirement on you to negotiate in good faith in an attempt to find an NDA you can agree to but if you can't find one you can't find one. You cannot (legally) be fired for this reason. Now, if the NDA was available, and you were told where to find it, and irrespective of if you did or didn't find it, you would be bound to the NDA.
The essential parts of a trade secret are that (a) it is something that you keep secret, and (b) something that gives you an advantage in trade because you know it and others don't. A trade secret remains a trade secret if you give it to someone else under a non-disclosure agreement. If it is available where anyone can download it, either intentionally or by carelessness, then it isn't a trade secret anymore (as soon as it actually gets downloaded). If it gets made public through some illegal activity, well, that's too complicated for me. Anyway, YOU don't have to pretend anything. A claim that something is a trade secret doesn't make it one. And if something is a trade secret, no claim about it is necessary. If you download the software without doing anything illegal then it isn't a trade secret. To reply to the comment: If the sequence of events is this: I download the source code. I read the license. The license says "by using the software ..." then clearly I have the source code before using the software. At that point the trade secret status is lost. We don't need to discuss whether the license would have been enforcible, because the software is already downloaded before the license starts applying. I can tell anyone in the world about it. (I can't give the software to anyone, because that is copyright infringement, a totally different matter).
However, this uses the text "rights in an invention"; does that cover copyright? Yes. (Is this the correct law?) It certainly seems to be. Does "Relate … to the employer's business" cover the entirety of software engineering, or just the particular software engineering my employer does? Imagine that you work for a company that writes trading software. In your spare time, you develop a photo editing tool. Do you think a court would find that your project "related to the employer's business"? I do not. Or does my employer own copyright on everything down to the love letters I write? Google does not own everything their employees create; they only claim to. If someone challenged them on it, a court would decide, and probably not in their favor.
The written document is given very high priority, so parties will be held to what is in the document. Both parties sign at the bottom, as a way of signalling their agreement with the terms specified in the document. If conditions are added or subtracted (by crossing out), especially with pre-printed forms, the "customer" (person who didn't write the contract) can initial such modifications, as a way of clearly signalling that they indeed agree to the deletion of such-and-such clause. Since both parties have a copy of the signed agreement, this is not strictly necessary. The potential issue would be that an unscrupulous person could cross out a clause after the contract was signed, and claimed that they aren't bound by that clause. A comparison of the two copies would then reveal that the unscrupulous person was attempting fraud. There is nothing special about handwriting in or crossing out conditions, except that it poses a potential evidentiary problem as to what exactly was agreed to, if for example one party threw away their copy and then maintained that the crossed-out clause had not been crossed out. (So, keep your copy). In case you are proposing a scenario where one party is unaware of a change, i.e. at the very last minute Smith crosses something out and signs it, and Jones did not see that happen, then both copies would be the same and Jones would be legally bound to what's in the paper. Smith should announce to Jones that a clause was being deleted. We might suppose that there are innocent reasons why Smith made changes without making an announcement to Jones, in which case the parties do not have an agreement. There may be amicable ways to deal with that situation, but push could come to shove, in which case the written form of the document is generally taken to be the most important piece of evidence (though not always the only admissible evidence, unless you're in Colorado, Florida or Wisconsin).
Written promise pre-purchase vs signed agreement, what's stronger? The signed agreement is decisive because it &quot;states that it supersedes any previous agreements&quot;. The language portrays that the customer no longer considers the refund option a requirement for moving forward with the transaction. Signing that contract without the right to a refund releases the supplier from having to do good on his previous promise. what about false advertising? There is no false advertising. False advertisement is the supplier's act, whereas the subsequent waiver --by signing the agreement-- is the customer's act. The fact that the customer's informed decision benefits the supplier has nothing to do with false advertising.