Short answer: copyright is the most popular and easiest way to legally protect your SaaS software, but it only covers part of what matters. It protects your code as written expression. It does not protect the underlying functionality, and your GUI is a closer call than most vendors assume. While
Short answer: the Oracle v. Google API case told software companies that APIs and even functional code can be copyrightable, that these disputes are intensely fact-specific, and that proving copyrightability is far easier than proving infringement. On May 9, 2014, the appellate court handed down its 69-page decision in the
Short answer: your software infringement indemnity should cover only your software, not your software combined with the customer’s or a third party’s technology. In AFLAC v. Intervoice, the vendor owed no indemnity because the infringement claim arose from that combination. This is what to know about the “combination exception” to
Short answer: a statistical study of 358 trade secret cases shows the people who steal your secrets are almost always insiders, employees and business partners, and the one thing that decides whether you can stop them is whether you took “reasonable measures” to keep the information secret. For a software
Short answer: your sales leads should belong to the company, but social media has blurred the line. Settle it in advance with a policy and employment-agreement language that says all contacts are company property, including connections made on LinkedIn, and back it up by treating the list as a trade
Short answer: the Oracle v. SAP case (a $1.3 billion jury verdict, later reduced to about $356.7 million) is a list of what not to do to a competitor: do not download more of their software than you are licensed for, do not ignore the terms of use on their
Short answer: when an employee leaves for a competitor, your ability to stop them from using what they know comes down almost entirely to what you did beforehand: marking and restricting your confidential information, running exit interviews, and using confidentiality agreements. Starwood v. Hilton shows the payoff of protecting trade
Short answer: a software or SaaS company should consider buying a patent — not just filing one — when its business model is easy to copy and it faces real execution risk. A purchased patent can be a defensive moat against fast-following competitors, and it gets you coverage faster than
Short answer: Creative Commons is a free, standardized way to license copyrighted content from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved,” and as a software company you should use it for your blog and marketing, never for your software or your documentation. Knowing how it works also keeps you from
Short answer: copyright law does not stop your customers from reverse engineering your software, your contract has to, and even then courts have carved out fair-use exceptions for interoperability. So the reverse engineering clause in your EULA or SaaS terms is doing real work, and you want it drafted correctly.
Short answer: registering your software with the U.S. Copyright Office is cheap and easy, and it unlocks two things you cannot get otherwise: your attorney’s fees and statutory damages. For a software company, that is some of the best legal insurance money can buy. Most people do not realize there
Short answer: yes, you can sometimes get copyright protection for your software’s graphical user interface, but only for the original, artistic expression in it, not the functional layout. The more your GUI looks like a creative design choice, and less like the only sensible way to arrange the buttons, the
Short answer: mostly yes. A well-drafted limitation of liability caps your exposure near the contract value. The big exception is a fraud claim, which plaintiffs use to jump the cap. You manage that risk with anti-reliance drafting and by handling customer problems early. Most clients believe they have an airtight
Short answer: copyright protects your software automatically, but a license agreement (a contract) lets you define and limit exactly how the customer may use it. Smart software companies rely on the right mix of both, not one alone. While this is a complex legal issue, let me try to simplify
Short answer: under copyright law software is protected automatically the moment you create it, the owner gets a bundle of exclusive rights, there are real exceptions like fair use, and registering early is what lets you collect statutory damages and attorney’s fees. Here are the four things I tell software
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