Officially launching today, PactSafe™ is a new cloud-based contract management application which allows companies and their legal counsel to manage, track, deploy and enforce online legal agreements such as “Terms of Use”, “Terms of Service” and “Privacy Policy.” The PactSafe dashboard organizes a company’s website agreements and then ensures the documents are trackable by version, enforceable, and clearly viewable on the company’s website.
PactSafe is the first of its kind, a patent-pending application that simplifies everything about digital legal agreements, and empowers businesses to focus on their core digital business without the hassle of dedicating valuable time and resources to managing their digital legal. After a simple implementation process, PactSafe allows businesses to manage and track every aspect of the digital legal agreements they need to conduct business.
For brands with regulatory disclaimer issues, PactSafe helps them meet those regulatory requirements while upholding the quality of their brand with an attractive, professional digital marketing presence. With PactSafe, a business always knows exactly where it stands with its digital legal issues, and can reduce legal fees and technical maintenance costs, and simplify workflow with development teams.
Lawyer and entrepreneur Brian Powers developed PactSafe based on his many years of providing legal and consulting services to businesses, including Internet companies and start-ups. Powers explains,
“Historically, lawyers often created online agreements for clients with no provision for ongoing management or enforcement assurance of the documents over time. This scenario exposed corporate clients to risk for litigation and the lawyers themselves were at risk for malpractice. We developed PactSafe to be a resource for corporate clients and their legal counsel to ensure that digital legal agreements were effectively managed and enforceable.”
Many high-profile companies like Facebook and Zappos have faced issues with their digital agreements, with unfortunate financial and reputation-related consequences. PactSafe solves these problems. The application manages and enforces both “browsewrap” and “clickwrap” agreements to ensure that digital contracts are successfully executed, can be proven valid when challenged, and are as transparent as possible to a business’s customers.
Browsewrap agreements, which users tacitly accept simply by using a website, need to meet the “constructive notice” burden. Constructive notice means that the agreement is conspicuously visible to the user upon visiting a website. PactSafe satisfies this burden by displaying an easy-to-see digital badge on a company’s website which overtly bids visitors to review certain agreements. When served up, the PactSafe badge collects IP address and machine identification data from site visitors, and also records dates and times when the badge was present. By capturing this data, PactSafe can prove that at a specific time and date, there was a valid browsewrap agreement in place because the user had opportunity to view it.
For clickwrap agreements, which require the end-user to click an “OK” or “Agree” button to indicate agreement, PactSafe allows companies to certify enforceability of the agreement by capturing user information upon receipt of the clickwrap signature. PactSafe officially certifies that the clickwrap agreement is an enforceable contract, recording when the digital agreement was executed, at what time, and by whom.
PactSafe can be used by any company whose website has a clickable transaction or signup feature. PactSafe was built with enterprise-level needs of software-as-a-service and eCommerce companies in mind, but also allows smaller volume websites to sign up online. Lawyers can recommend PactSafe to their clients to protect them from lawsuits, customer complaints, and other woes.
PactSafe is priced on a per-user basis ranging from $10 to $75 per account, per month for sites with less than 10,000 registered users.