CLAUDETTE: an Automated Detector of Potentially Unfair Clauses in Online Terms of Service

For instance, consumer protection agencies and/or consumer organisations may be involved to a different degree, there may or may not be fines for using unfair contractual terms, etc. (Schulte-Nölke et al 2008). One thing that all member states have in common is that if a business uses unfair terms in their contracts, in principle there is always a competent party with the authority to challenge such contracts. Unfortunately, the legal mechanism for enforcing the prohibition of unfair contract terms have failed to effectively counter this practice so far. As reported by some literature (Loos and Luzak 2016), and as our own research indicates (Micklitz et al 2017), unfair contractual terms are, as of today, widely used in ToS of online platforms. In our previous research (Micklitz et al 2017), we developed a theoretical model of tasks that human lawyers currently need to carry out, before starting the legal proceedings concerning the abstract control of fairness of clauses.