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Comment by p_l | Hacker News Reader

That's not universal, and it's why certain terms are nearly never brought to court because everyone knows they will be laughed out and then they will have to change lots of EULAs for regionally illegal claims

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If it was certain, both parties would ignore it. It's only likely to be found invalid, not certain.

In many cases companies do, in practice, exploit other parties lack of law knowledge.

Also encountered many cases where a company simply didn't consider actually vetting what they put on contract against local law

It is standard practice to include certainly illegal clauses in contracts. There is no penalty for including illegal clauses, they don't impact the rest of the contract, and there's always the chance the other party is not going to catch it.

If any part of the contract is found invalid that can invalidate the whole not just the in illegal parts. That is why many contracts have a clause that if any part is found invalid the rest holds - you can point to that clause and tell the court we agreed not to do that - but the judge need not agree. In some cases the judge can decide without the illegal part the whole makes no sense and invalidate the whole. Usually (In Practice always) most contracts make sense except for minor details that don't matter to the point of the contract and so the whole holds except for those details. However if any part of it doesn't hold the whole is open to be rejected.

The practical guidelines I received in my life so far said that usually entire contract is not tossed, at least not in Poland / EU, but if suit depends on clause deemed invalid the suit will be thrown and there might be order that a new contract be drafted (especially important for cases like EULAs where you have a 1:many fanout of people signing a standard form contract)

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