Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: agreement

You need a thorough and detailed source agreement prepared, that covers you and your customers. You need a seperate agreement between you and your source. You are not likely to find any 'boiler plate form' that serves your purposes. Most businesses depend upon counsel to prepare and negotiate such agreements. Feel free to contact me if serious about protecting your business with enforceable agreements. The theory is to spend a small amount now to avoid spending a lot later in litigation.

Re: agreement

Agreements for purposes such as this need to be negotiated and written, provision by provision, on a case-by-case basis. The strarting point is to learn something about your customers' willingness to be bound to a single source or to commit not to work around you. Some will, many won't, and those who will usually want concessions.

Also, some suppliers are willing to give their middlemen protected territories or agreements not to sell direct. Again, these agreements result from negotiation or from an already-adopted policy of the source firm. If you can obtain one at all, it will probably carry strings attached such as quotas, credit requirements, minimum volumes, a restriction on your right to handle the source's competitors' products, and the like.

Any contract with an international aspect should be checked for compliance with the overseas country's laws and business customs, and may need to be translated.

While there may be examples of such contracts in advanced treatises on commercial contracts, you are not going to be able to find anything that even gives you an acceptable starting point at a legal stationers, and I'd say you'd be lucky to find anything on a forms-vendor's Web site. It isn't that the legalese is so specialized. It's because this is a business deal and every buyer-seller relationship is unique.