The webcomics blog about webcomics

Sticky In The Legal Sense

So over the weekend I was talking with my wife’s sister, the lawyer, and an interesting term came up that’s new to me: Contract of Adhesion:

n.(contract of adhesion) a contract (often a signed form) so imbalanced in favor of one party over the other that there is a strong implication it was not freely bargained…. An adhesion contract can give the little guy the opportunity to claim in court that the contract with the big shot is invalid.

Now she’s not IP or entertainment lawyer, but this little concept isn’t particular to IP or entertainment contracts — it’s a part of common law. Anyway, I can’t think for the life of me why I found this interesting in the context of webcomics. Nope, not at all.

In other, completely non-legal (as opposed to barely legal) news:

By reading this comment you agree to pay me $50.

The contract of adhesion rule applies to those annoying software EULAs:

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/commentary/circuitcourt/2007/08/circuitcourt_0801

Gotta admit that Winston had a point about Spurgeon. It’s a real waste when there’s a whole vast online world of comics that Nobody Reads.

[…] Tim Broderick offers tips on how to submit your work to publishers. Mind you, you should beware contracts of adhesion when doing […]

RSS feed for comments on this post.