Summary
The Federal Court of Australia recently handed down a judgement
which provides some insight into issues surrounding the
enforceability and effect of internet contracts :
Dialogue Consulting Pty Ltd v Instagram, Inc [2020] FCA
1846.
Dialogue is alleging in these proceedings that Instagram has
breached its Terms of Use by excluding Dialogue from access to its
platform. Instagram, which alleges that Dialogue was engaged in
unauthorised data scraping , sought a stay of
proceedings under section 7(2) of the
International Arbitration
Act 1974 (Cth) on the grounds that a version of the Terms of
Use which was originally in place when Dialogue commenced using
Instagram required disputes to be submitted to arbitration.
To embed, copy and paste the code into your website or blog:
On 24 November, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued its long-awaited judgment in the “Wikingerhof” case (ref. C-59/19), which had had the German hotel industry on tenterhooks. Although the name might suggest it had something to do with Vikings, the case was actually about the market power of foreign booking portals. The ECJ concluded that hoteliers may in future enforce their legal claims against these portals in their home country.
Image: Unsplash
What was the case about?
Like so many other hotels, the Hotel Wikingerhof, located in the far northern reaches of Germany, concluded a contract with the Dutch company Booking.com BV to act as an intermediary for room bookings. As usual, the contract came from Booking.com, whose general terms and conditions (GTC) were part of the contract. According to Booking.com’s GTC, the courts of Amsterdam have exclusive territorial jurisdiction to hear disputes arising from