5 things you
need to know
about
Online Community and Marketplaces
- Operating a marketplace and tapping into the ‘sharing’ economy are popular business models. Successful marketplaces such as Airbnb and Odesk seek to commercialise assets that would otherwise remain unused. Marketplaces involve complex legal relationships, so it is important that you have the right legal documents and legal structure in place.
- When running an online marketplace, you enter into two legal relationships: one with buyers, and one with sellers. It’s important to understand whether your business is facilitating a third and separate legal relationship between the buyers and sellers in the marketplace and to clarify in your marketplace terms and conditions that you are not responsible for this relationship.
- Websites and online marketplaces both deal with a considerable amount of intellectual property. Your terms and conditions need to address your content, any content from buyers and any content from sellers. Your buyers and sellers must agree to provide true and correct information and to uphold their obligations. As an example, sellers must provide the article to the buyer, and buyers must pay the amount agreed in the timeframe agreed.
- Running an online community or marketplace will require you to capture a significant amount of personal information from your users. It’s important that you comply with the Privacy Act. In particular, make sure that your website has a compliant Privacy Policy.
- Finally, make sure that you provide visitors to your site with a set of website terms of use. These are separate to your marketplace/ community terms, and form the legal relationship between you and your visitors.
