Open Source in Software Procurement – 3. Warranties
By David W. Tollen This is the third in a series of five posts on Open Source in Software Procurement. Click here for the prior post, and click here for the intro, which lists all five topics. Fear of open source software leads licensees to draft terms like this: “Vendor warrants that the Licensed Software does […]
Open Source in Software Procurement – 2. When It Matters
By David W. Tollen This is the second of five posts in a series called Open Source in Software Procurement. Click here for the first/introductory post. Open source software is software licensed (a) with its source code included and (b) with the right to modify and redistribute. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. Concerns about OSS arise […]
Open Source in Software Procurement – 1. Intro
Contract drafters rarely understand open source software (OSS). They see it as a threat, so when they’re buying software, they try to exclude OSS from their vendors’ products. In most cases, the concern is misplaced. Software licensees may have good reason to worry about copyleft software, which is one type of OSS. But other open source […]
California Tech Sector Law Firm of the Year
We’re very pleased to announce that David Tollen’s law firm, Sycamore Legal, was awarded Technology Sector Contracts Law Firm of the Year, for California. The awards are presented annually by Global Law Experts, which publishes a magazine and online guide on premiere attorneys around the world. You can see the awards publication by clicking here. (It’s a […]
Last Chance: Re-Register your DMCA Agent by the End of the Year
by Deborah Pulido If you are an internet service provider taking advantage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbor, you have until December 31, 2017 to re-register your designated DMCA agent. As David Tollen reported back in 2016, the Library of Congress has changed the rules for designating an agent to receive “takedown” notices […]
Article on Modification of Online Contracts
This is a good article from the ABA’s Business Law Today publication: Online Contracts: We May Modify These Terms at Any Time, Right?
Law Review Article Cites The Tech Contracts Handbook
A South Carolina Law Review article cites The Tech Contracts Handbook — and in fact relies upon it heavily. The article is THE UNDERCOVER DETECTIVE LOOKS AT DATA BREACH CONTRACT CLAUSES: WHO SHOULD BE RESPONSIBLE UNDER THE CONTRACT FOR COSTS OF COVER? (67 S.C. L. Rev. 535, Spring 2016). The author is Professor Jill Bronfman of […]
When Law Firms Buy Cloud Services
by David W. Tollen and Nathan Leong You’re a lawyer looking for online software and other tools to run your firm—tools like email, word processing, calendaring, timenotes, legal research, and particularly document management. You stumble across a great suite of tools from a reputable company and sign up. You love your new powers; now you’re […]
Is Technology a Threat to Attorney-Client Privilege?
By Phil Brown and David W. Tollen Lawyers love tradition, but many clients want to communicate with 21st Century tools. Texting, Skyping, SnapChatting: all of these would mystified most lawyers ten years ago. But habits change. The flood of technological “advances” in communication methods brings new threats to attorney-client privilege and confidentiality. The truth is, […]
New Form: Customer’s ITMA (Information Technology Master Agreement)
We’ve posted a new contract in the forms library — and it’s available in MS Word (no charge, as always). It’s meant to serve as a customer’s primary contract for purchasing any and all IT (other than hardware or IaaS): namely, licensed software, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and/or IT professional services. You can use it to acquire […]