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1) Offers are to be distinguished from ‘invitations to treat’, ‘expressions of intent’, ‘unilateral promises which are capable of acceptance’, and ‘agreements to agree’.
2) An acceptance is made when it is intelligibly communicated to the offeror by word or deed so as to demonstrate unqualified acceptance at a time when the offer is open for acceptance.
3) The offeror may stipulate the mode of acceptance.
4) An offer which has not been met by an unqualified acceptance, but by a qualified acceptance, has been rejected.
5) Governments may act to outlaw terms that are unfair or prohibit certain transactions as against public policy, public security or public morality.

One of the biggest problems in contract law concerns the situation where products are advertised in a shop window. What is the legal position of the shop window display? New technology has produced the problem of the goods being displayed on the website. Is this display analogous to the position of goods in the shop window?
Under British law, we resolve this problem through the invitation to treat doctrine. The seller is not bound to sell those goods in the window. The prospective buyer takes the goods to the till, where he/she offers to buy the goods and the shopkeeper accepts the offer to buy. The shopkeeper does not have to accept your offer.
Another example of the problems can arise with regard to automatic dispensing machines/kiosks and self service machines. Is a self-service petrol pump a standing offer to sell petrol to the world at large, which is accepted by the customer appropriating it? The usual answer would be that it is; and this might be contrasted with a customer taking beer from a shelf in a supermarket and drinking it on the spot, and the same customer presenting the beer at the checkout along with payment. It is clearly arguable that goods described on a website might be regarded as equivalent to being in a shop window; but it is also common for e-retailers to invite web customers to collect virtual goods in a virtual shopping trolley, represented by an icon. In both cases the suggestion would be that the customer has to make the offer, and it is for the seller to accept.
However the American courts have said, in the case of Amazon’s ‘1-click’ system, that when a customer has provided his credit card details and other information which identifies him to Amazon, that clicking once on a virtual item will constitute an acceptance. British law would reach the opposite conclusion.

Distance Contracts and Acceptance of the Offer
Problems can arise where there is a period of time between any offer and acceptance passing, during which one of the parties wishes to change their own position, for example, to withdraw an offer or an acceptance. Where communication is not instantaneous, such as by post, there have to be legal rules to cope with such problems. The so-called postal rule in the U.K. is that an unqualified acceptance which is posted concludes a bargain when it is posted. The bargain is not concluded when the post is received. The rationale for this appears to be that once posted the acceptance can not be i本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。