About

Introduction

The idea behind uTerms is to assist consumer law organizations in ensuring that terms of online services are fair. We are all bound by these agreements (“I have read and accept…”), though we cannot influence their content. For such situations, European Union has put unfair contract terms legislation in place. In theory, consumer law enforcers have competence to challenge businesses who use unbalanced contracts. In practice, there are so many platforms out there, and their contracts so long and so nontransparent, that consumer law organizations simply have not enough resources to check all of them. Hence, the idea to automate at least some tasks in their work. That’s why we created uTerms.

The team

Hans-W. Micklitz

HansHans-W. Micklitz is a Professor of Economic Law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Holder of an ERC Grant 2011-2016 on European Regulatory Private Law, Finland Distinguished Professor of the Academy of Finland 2016-2020. His research interests encompass the transformation of private law through the European integration, the external impact of the transformed European private law on non-EU actors, legal theory and the problem of the “justice through algorithms” – regulation of and through algorithmic techniques in the digitized society.

Przemysław Pałka

PrzemysławPrzemysław Pałka is a PhD researcher at the Department of Law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Currently completing his thesis titled “Towards a General Theory of Virtual Property”. Interested in cyberlaw, methodology of legal scholarship and legal theory. [homepage]

Yannis Panagis

yannis Yannis (Ioannis) Panagis is currently working as a Special Consultant/Data Expert at the iCourts Centre of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. Yannis is coordinating the construction of the Database of International Courts, available at http://www.icourts.dk, and the data analysis tasks. Yannis’ current interests lie in the intersection of Machine Learning, Network Analysis, Natural Language Processing, Legal Information Systems and Databases. Previously, he was active in Algorithms, String Processing, and Web Engineering. Yannis has coauthored 16 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 22 articles in peer-reviewed conference proceedings and 4 book chapters. Yannis holds a PhD in Computer Engineering and an MSc in Computer Science, both from University of Patras, Greece. [homepage]

Feel free to reach out to us at uterms.software@gmail.com!