A software licensing attorney drafts and negotiates the license agreements, EULAs, and SaaS terms that control how customers use your software, what they can and cannot do with it, and how your intellectual property stays protected. Aber Law Firm has done this work for software and SaaS vendors only since 2009, across 650+ clients and 2,500+ deals, so your license is built around your business model instead of a generic form.
There is no one-size-fits-all software license. How you license, perpetual or subscription, on-premise or cloud, per-seat or usage-based, changes the terms that matter and the risks you carry. Buyers rarely read the end user license agreement, but the vendor lives with every word of it on every deal. Getting the license right once, in plain English, pays off across your whole customer base.
What a Software Licensing Attorney Handles
License scope and restrictions. The license grant is the heart of the agreement. We define exactly what the customer may do (and may not do): authorized users, permitted environments, restrictions on copying, modification, reverse engineering, and transfer. A vague grant either gives away more than you intended or starts fights later about what was allowed.
Third-party and affiliate use. One of the most common questions we get is whether a customer’s contractors, affiliates, or service providers can access the software. The answer belongs in the contract, not in an email after the fact. We have written about whether a third party can access or use your software and build the right language into the grant.
Warranties, support, and liability. Backup obligations, disclaimers, and limitation of liability decide who eats the loss when data is lost or the software misbehaves. The Utah Supreme Court has even addressed why telling customers to back up their data matters, which we cover in tell your customer to back up their data. We treat uncapped liability as a red flag and draft caps and indemnities tightly.
Demo, trial, and evaluation licenses. Free trials and proof-of-concept deployments need their own terms so an evaluation does not quietly become a perpetual right. See third-party demo and test licensing for the issues we watch.
Licensing, Copyright, and Open Source
Your license rests on copyright. Original code is protected under the U.S. Copyright Act from the moment it is written, and the statute’s essential-step provision in 17 U.S.C. Section 117 shapes what a licensee may do with the copies it runs. Where open-source components are linked into your product, copyleft obligations can reach your proprietary code. We align the license grant, the copyright position, and your open-source usage so you do not give away more than you mean to. For the IP side, see our software copyright lawyer practice.
Plain English Licenses That Help You Sell
Software licensing issues are not simple, but your license agreement does not have to be complicated. We draft simple, clear, plain English agreements that customers can actually read, which tends to shorten the sales cycle. You can read more about our drafting style. For cloud-delivered, subscription products, see our SaaS contract practice, and for a clause-by-clause starting point, our SaaS agreement template checklist. The practice is led by Jeremy Aber, who has focused on software licensing and SaaS contracts for vendors since 2009.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a software license agreement if I sell SaaS?
Usually you need SaaS subscription terms rather than a traditional license, because the customer accesses a hosted service instead of running a copy of your code. If any part of your product is downloaded or installed on the customer’s systems, a license grant still matters. We help vendors pick the right structure for how the product is actually delivered.
Can my customer let its affiliates or contractors use my software?
Only if the license says so. Authorized-user and affiliate-access language should be defined in the agreement; otherwise you face either an unwanted expansion of the grant or a dispute about what was permitted. We write that scope into the contract up front.
Does my license need to address open-source components?
Yes, if your codebase includes them. Copyleft licenses such as the GPL can impose obligations on code that links to them, which can affect what you are able to license to customers. We reconcile your inbound open-source usage with your outbound license terms.
Why hire a vendor-side software licensing attorney instead of a general business lawyer?
Because the leverage is in the details. A lawyer who works on software licenses every day, from the vendor’s seat, knows which restrictions hold up, which liability and indemnity terms enterprise buyers accept, and how to keep the agreement simple without giving anything away.
Ready to talk through your software licensing? Contact us to discuss your current agreements or upcoming deals.