As I am running out of regular subjects to post I decided to start doing posts on software. The differences between licensing software versus purchasing a good or service stems from the difference in intellectual property rights. With goods you buy and own them, With software you have the rights it use it. I wrote a post called “Differences between tangible property and intellectual property that highlights some of the differences.
Just like purchases of goods or services where there is a variety of templates and terms depending upon what you are purchasing, software has a variety of templates and terms that are based upon what is being licensed and how it is being licensed. For example a software license for a standard software product may be different in a number of aspects than a license for software that is licensed in conjunction with the purchase of a piece of capital equipment that needs the software to operate, The needs of the parties are different and the risks are different..
To start to blog about software I decided to first post a checklist of the types of terms that a buyer who will be negotiating terms for the “licensee” would be looking for in either drafting a license agreement or in reviewing a software developer’s (the “licensor”) standard template.
In future posts I will explain each of those focusing on terms that are unique to licensing software.If a term is common with one that’s used with the purchase of goods or services, I’ll refer the readers to the existing post.
I very much look forward to learning about this from your blog!
ReplyDeleteI'm actually working on a project to use software to help people negotiate licensing contracts. It's called Ridacto (http://www.ridacto.com), and it aims to use artificial intelligence to help attorneys and business professionals create more bulletproof contracts. Your suggestions on this blog have been super helpful, and I appreciate your sharing them and look forward to the posts in this series!