Contract Law Case Study

E-Business Contract Law Case Study Analysis

I. My first gut was to say that this was a contract. The website made an offer to send free software to anyone who sent his/her email address. Upon further review, I have decided that this example does not meet the essential elements of a contract as described below.

Our lecture stated “to be an offer, a communication needs to be sufficiently definite so it manifests the willingness to enter into a bargain (a binding contract), not just to conduct further negotiations toward ultimately entering into a bargain.” With the opened question of “cool software,” that leaves it open for further negotiations. What type of software is “cool software”? If the offer was more specific I think we could go on to the next rule of acceptance by entering and sending our email address, but this offer had no terms, there was no payment for the software and was left up to the offeree to determine what type of software was considered cool to him or her.

This offer is also lacking certainty and definiteness of terms, which would not make it complete. According to our text, “At a minimum the offer has to contain the identities of the parties to the contract, the subject