A Short & Happy Guide to Business Contracts by Rachel J. Barnett

Author:Rachel J. Barnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647086008
Publisher: West Academic Publishing
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

California Privacy Law

When papering agreements, parties should consider applicable laws governing the privacy and security of personal information to the extent such information is collected, used, processed or stored 108

during the business relationship. For example, on January 1, 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA” or the “Act”) became effective, and this landmark law provides California residents with certain privacy rights and protections over their personal information collected by businesses. The CCPA is considered one of the most expansive consumer privacy laws to date in the United States.

In general, the CCPA broadly defines personal information as information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. For example, personal information under the CCPA could include a consumer’s name, postal address, social security number, email address, records of products purchased, internet browsing history, geolocation data, biometric information (e.g., fingerprints), and inferences from other personal information that could create a profile about a consumer’s preferences and characteristics.

The CCPA also sets forth basic rights that California consumers can request from businesses with respect to their personal information. The privacy rights provided to consumers under the Act include, but are not limited to, the right to request access to categories and specific pieces of personal information collected about them, the right to request a business delete their personal information that was collected and maintained (with certain exceptions), the right to opt out of a business selling any of their personal information, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising their CCPA privacy rights.

How does this impact contract drafting? A business will want to include language in their contracts with service providers that process personal information of California consumers on behalf of the business in order to ensure that such vendors will comply with the CCPA. The business will also want to maintain a list and a folder 109

of all vendor contracts that process or touch upon consumer personal information and review these agreements to confirm they have language compliant with the Act, as well as other applicable privacy rules and regulations.

In particular, a business can negotiate language that makes clear that the vendor is restricted from retaining, using, or disclosing consumer personal information for any purpose other than that of performing the services for the company under the contract. The language can also state that the service provider is prohibited from selling consumer personal information (provided that is the parties’ understanding). In other words, the premise is: “Let’s set some boundaries and agree that any consumer personal information collected is to be used only to provide the services hereunder. Oh, and don’t even think about selling our consumer personal information to someone else.” In effect, contractually limit the service provider from using consumer personal information outside of the direct business relationship between the parties or as otherwise permitted by law.

In addition, a business will want to negotiate language in the contract that the service provider will support consumer privacy rights set forth in the CCPA.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.