Small businesses suing Yelp didn’t get the kind of review they were hoping for from a federal appeals court.

The businesses alleged the San Francisco company manipulated their ratings on Yelp to extort them to buy ads.

Yelp denies advertisers get more favorable treatment on its popular review service. It says its software that filters reviews to determine ratings does not distinguish between those who advertise and those who don’t.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled this week that it doesn’t matter anyway.

The plaintiffs did not prove that Yelp broke any laws, the court ruled. Even if Yelp does manipulate reviews, it does not constitute extortion, it said.

Read more here:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/09/04/yelp-ruling/15075131/

My question to fellow GD site owners is how do you protect all parties including yourself from costly litigation? Do you have a Terms of Use statement template you can share?

I think there are lawyers here. What’s your take on this?

I recommend reviewing a few Terms of Use clauses from services such as Yelp and WordPress.Com (which allows you to reuse theirs) to get an idea of what you should include. Obviously, consulting an attorney is the best course of action if you are serious about your business.

In this particular case suing for extortion is a very hard bar to meet and unless you have corroborating evidence to back up your claims (which it appears the plaintiffs did not).

It might sound trite but honesty is the best policy….

Both Yelp and WP.com allows reproduction and reuse of their TOS statements or just WP.com?

But I used Yelp’s TOS as a guide for creating one for a site I was involved in. You cannot wholesale copy it but it will give you ideas that you can plug into the WordPress.com version.

As usual, please do not consider this to be legal advice….