Contrary to common perception, for privately held IT companies, one law firm for the company may not be the right fit; at least from the view of a software licensing attorney. The founders have a relationship with one law firm that usually handles all the legal issues. I have found
I get this question often as copyright lawyer, so I thought I would briefly explain what intellectual property is (at a high level). Intellectual Property or IP, should really be viewed when compared to other types of legal property, namely real property (i.e. real estate) and tangible property (i.e. things
As a software copyright attorney, I was wondering if you read all the electronic contracts you enter into (yea right). But just in case you had, you may have noticed one sentence in certain contracts that states that one party (always the party that wrote the electronic contract) can change
Whether you resell your technology using a software reseller or SAAS reseller agreement, take a read. Until recently, if you were a reseller or an informational website you could not use the trademarks of the manufacturers you represent in the ad text of your Google ads. This kind of made sense,
Can Your Customer Transfer Their Software as Part of a Reorganization? Seems like a simple issue, but can your customer transfer your software or licenses to another entity? Well, the right way to address this is up front in your agreement, but this is too often not the case.
A recent case was dismissed before trial, as the terms of the end user agreement (EULA template) were so well drafted that as a matter of law it helped to resolve the main issue in the case. In Hayes vs SpectorSoft Corporation (dated November 3, 2009) the judge dismissed the
Did You Know the US Supreme Court Changed Software and SaaS Distributor – Reseller Law in 2007? I bet you missed it, but I always look for the software law perspective of these cases (how does this apply to software/SAAS reseller agreement, software/SAAS distribution agreements and software/SAAS oem agreements). The
Ok, ok this is a legal blog, so I am actually talking about naked trademark licensing issues here — a few nuggets for every software or SAAS executive to think about for their software or SAAS partner agreement, SAAS OEM agreement, etc. “Naked Licensing” is in essence a legal defense
I am a big believer that you have to build trust with your customers before they will work with you. So why does this matter to a lawyer? Well, for a SAAS company to build trust with its SAAS agreement, it needs to look bigger and more sophisticated that it
People often ask me can I use this or that work of a copyright owner. Basically, as a copyright attorney, there is a legal concept called ‘fair use’ which allows non-copyright owners to use copyrighted works in certain situations. What are the situations? Well, this is one of those it
The Altimeter Group recently published a report called the Customer Bill of Rights: Software-as-a-Service which caught my attention, as I am a SAAS attorney who works on SAAS agreements (some people call them SAAS license agreements). The report is titled ’39 Best Practices to Improve Client – Vendor Relationships.’ I
One of the things I am really passionate about (as a software copyright attorney) is simplifying complex issues in the law (maybe that is how I process things) and I have found that software law is too complex for most people to really effectively deal with. As the title suggests,
As a software copyright attorney, I try to keep up with the most recent cases affecting software companies. As a recent case decided on September 21, 2009 illustrates, if your goal is to keep your pricing information or price lists confidential you should protect that information through the consistent use
“New” Non-Latin Based Domain Name Extensions: What Is This All About? You may have heard that ICANN (the group that manages naming conventions on the Internet) recently announced that domain names will now be allowed in non-Latin languages. This may not seem like a big issue from the US perspective,
As a software copyright attorney, I realize a lot of the new way of marketing is based on becoming a publisher, but some people may not realize that there are important copyright issues in play here, which should be thought through, as they may be counter intuitive. General Rule –
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