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Shrink wrap contracts are license agreements or other terms and conditions of a (putatively) contractual nature which can only be read and accepted by the consumer after opening the product. The term describes the shrinkwrap
Shrinkwrap

Shrink wrap, also shrinkwrap or shrink film, is a material made up of polymer plastic film. When heat is applied to this material it shrinks tightly over whatever it is covering....
 plastic wrapping used to coat software boxes, though these contracts are not limited to the software industry. Web-wrap, click-wrap
Clickwrap

A clickwrap agreement is a common type of agreement . Such forms of agreement are mostly found on the Internet, as part of the installation process of many software packages, or in other circumstances where agreement is sought using electronic media....
 and browse-wrap are related terms which refer to license agreements in software which is downloaded or used over the internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
.

Software licenses are commonly called End User License Agreements
Software license agreement

A software license agreement is a contract between a producer and a user of computer software which grants the user a software license. Most often, a software license agreement indicates the terms under which an end-user may utilize the licensed software, in which case the agreement is called an end-user license agreement or EULA...
 or EULAs.

United States
The legal status of shrink wrap contracts in the US is somewhat unclear.






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Shrink wrap contracts are license agreements or other terms and conditions of a (putatively) contractual nature which can only be read and accepted by the consumer after opening the product. The term describes the shrinkwrap
Shrinkwrap

Shrink wrap, also shrinkwrap or shrink film, is a material made up of polymer plastic film. When heat is applied to this material it shrinks tightly over whatever it is covering....
 plastic wrapping used to coat software boxes, though these contracts are not limited to the software industry. Web-wrap, click-wrap
Clickwrap

A clickwrap agreement is a common type of agreement . Such forms of agreement are mostly found on the Internet, as part of the installation process of many software packages, or in other circumstances where agreement is sought using electronic media....
 and browse-wrap are related terms which refer to license agreements in software which is downloaded or used over the internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
.

Software licenses are commonly called End User License Agreements
Software license agreement

A software license agreement is a contract between a producer and a user of computer software which grants the user a software license. Most often, a software license agreement indicates the terms under which an end-user may utilize the licensed software, in which case the agreement is called an end-user license agreement or EULA...
 or EULAs.

United States


The legal status of shrink wrap contracts in the US is somewhat unclear. One line of cases follows ProCD v. Zeidenberg
ProCD v. Zeidenberg

ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, Case citation, is a United States Contract law Legal case involving a "shrink wrap contract". The issue presented to the court was whether a shrink wrap license was valid and enforceable....
 which held such contracts enforceable (see, e.g., Brower v. Gateway ) and the other follows Klocek v. Gateway, Inc., which found the contracts at hand unenforceable (e.g., Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp.
Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp.

Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp., Case citation, was a U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York decision involving whether software license agreements are binding....
 ), but did not comment on shrink wrap contracts as a whole. These decisions are split on the question of consent, with the former holding that only objective manifestation of consent is required while the latter require at least the possibility of subjective consent. In particular, the Netscape contract was rejected because it lacked an express indication of consent (no "I agree" button) and because the contract was not presented directly to the user (users were required to click on a link to access the terms). However, the court in this case did make it clear that "Reasonably conspicuous notice of the existence of contract terms and unambiguous manifestation of assent to those terms by consumers are essential if electronic bargaining is to have integrity and credibility." Specht, 356 F.3d 17.

It may be worth noting that the user in the Zeidenberg case had purchased and opened the packages of multiple copies of the product, and therefore could not easily prove he remained ignorant of the contract/license; whereas in many cases, the so-called shrink-wrap "license" agreement has not been reviewed at the time of purchase (having been hidden inside the box), and therefore is arguably not part of the implicit legal agreement accomanying the sale of the copy, and is thus not enforceable by either party without further "manifestation of assent" to its terms. In general, a user is not legally obligated to read, let alone consent to any literature or envelope packaging that may be contained inside a product; otherwise such transactions would unduly burden users who have no notice of the terms and conditions of their possession of the object purchased, or the blind
Blindness

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define "blindness." Total blindness is the complete lack of form and visual light perception and is clinically recorded as "NLP," an abbreviation for "no ligh...
, or those unfamiliar with the language in which such terms are provided, etc. At the very least, the fair trade laws of most U.S. states would grant a buyer the right to cancel the purchase of a product where an enclosed contract provides terms of which purchaser can not be aware at the time the product is purchased.

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