Offer Agreement on Marketplaces: Issues of Legal Status and Balance of Parties’ Interests

Citation: Ivannikov Ivan, "Offer Agreement on Marketplaces: Issues of Legal Status and Balance of Parties’ Interests", Universal Library of Innovative Research and Studies, Volume 02, Issue 04.

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The article investigates the fundamental rupture between classical contract-law doctrine and the actual relations that arise on global electronic marketplaces. The relevance of the topic is argued by the fact that the dominant business model of platforms artificially constructs legal reality through inflexible adhesion contracts (ToS), degrading product listings to the status of invitations to make offers. As a result, a systemic imbalance forms in which the consumer is deprived of legal certainty, while the platform evades responsibility by positioning itself as a passive intermediary. The purpose is to critically analyze this contradiction, drawing on international experience, and to propose scientifically grounded mechanisms for harmonizing the interests of the marketplace, the vendor, and the consumer. The author concludes that the existing model is untenable and that there is a global trend toward strengthening platform liability. The author’s contribution lies in developing an innovative approach that goes beyond the binary logic of offer/non-offer. It proposes introducing a qualified-offer standard to enhance certainty, implementing a multi-tier system of platform liability based on the degree of its involvement in the transaction, and ensuring mandatory transparency of key contractual terms directly in the user interface. The materials presented will be helpful to legal scholars specializing in digital law, practicing attorneys in e-commerce, and regulators tasked with adapting legislation to the realities of the platform economy.

Keywords: Balance of Interests of the Parties, Offer Agreement, Marketplace, Online Platform, Legal Regulation, Public Offer, Judicial Practice, Digital Economy, Electronic Commerce.

https://doi.org/10.70315/uloap.ulirs.2025.0204010