A common criticism of end-user license agreements is that they are often far too long for users to spend time reading them thoroughly. As of March 2012, the PayPal End User License Agreement was 36,275 words,[15] and by May 2011, the iTunes Agreement was 56 pages long. [16] Sources of information reporting these results stated that the vast majority of users had not read the documents because of their length. If you`re primarily deploying software through a browser, but the software has been downloaded, you`ll probably need a subscription agreement because you`re really in the SAAS industry. However, if you primarily provide downloaded software but certain services are provided (. B for example, support, maintenance, training, or web services), you`ll likely need an EULA because you`re licensing your software. In addition, some models may be more of a true hybrid, with a SAAS agreement for your online subscription service and then an EULA for the software downloaded and used with the subscription service. Software vendors often enter into special agreements with large companies and government agencies that include specially designed support contracts and warranties. A well-designed software license or SaaS agreement is structured around the technology, features, functionality, and business model of each product, and is not just based on a set of „perfect“ conditions from a model. As a software company, this means that if you hire a lawyer to advise you on your contracts, your lawyer should definitely push you to provide important details about how your product`s technology, features, functionality, and business model work, among other things! „Error“ means a hardware failure of the Software to operate in accordance with the Specifications.

The DMCA specifically provides for reverse engineering of software for interoperability purposes, so there has been some controversy over whether software license contractual clauses that restrict this are enforceable. Davidson & Associates v. Jung[12] of the 8th Circuit concluded that such clauses were enforceable as a result of the Federal Circuit`s decision in Baystate v. Bowers. [13] „Maintenance Agreement“ means the Software Maintenance Agreement between the parties in effect at the time of this Agreement. In a basic software license agreement, vendor support for the software may consist of telephone support from the vendor`s support department during normal business hours and new versions of the software that include minor improvements or bug fixes. Support is usually provided free of charge during the software`s warranty period. At the end of this period, Supplier will charge Customer for Support, and the price is generally a percentage of Supplier`s current software license fee. For each level of support that goes beyond a routine support service or bug fix commitment and is provided after the software warranty expires, a separate support agreement must be established specifying the vendor`s support obligations, support fees, performance standards (including response times) for support, and penalties for non-compliance with those standards.

Care must be taken to ensure that the software support agreement complies with the license agreement. A free software license grants users of that software the rights to use for any purpose, to modify and redistribute creative works and software, both of which are prohibited by copyright laws and are generally not granted with proprietary software. These licenses usually include an exclusion of warranties, but this feature is not only valid for free software. [4] Copyleft licenses also include an important additional provision that must be followed in order to copy or modify the software, which requires the user to provide the source code of the work and distribute its modifications under the same license (or sometimes a compatible license). Thus, derivative works are effectively protected against the loss of their original permissions and their use in proprietary programs. Recently[when?], publishers have started encrypting their software packages to prevent a user from installing the software without accepting the license agreement or violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and its foreign counterparts. [Citation needed] Regardless of the duration of the term, the software license agreement must address what happens when the term expires or is otherwise terminated. Of course, once the license expires, the licensee no longer has the right to use the software. In some cases, however, there are certain issues that need to be addressed after termination. For example, if the software collects data and other items, the software license agreement must specify the licensee`s access (if any) to the data after the license is terminated. As a software developer, you`ve probably invested a lot of time and money in developing the software you want to license. You probably also rely on her to bring you an income accordingly.

When thinking about all these efforts, you need to make sure that there is a way to protect them. This is where a software license agreement comes into play. Here are the top five reasons why you should have a software license agreement: Payment of license fees is usually stated in the software license agreement, unless the license is a one-time payment made before access is granted (for example. B if you purchase a software or video game CD from a retailer). For many years, most software has been sold in this way. However, the most common model today is a subscription-based system where the software license is granted for a specific period of time and continuous access is subject to additional future payments. This applies in particular to the Software as a Service (or „SaaS Agreement“). „Price“ means the royalties payable by licensee in accordance with Appendix B. An End User License Agreement (EULA, /ˈjuːlə/) is a legal agreement between a software developer or provider and the software user, often when the software was purchased by the user from an intermediary such as a retailer. An EULA sets out in detail the rights and restrictions that apply to the use of the Software.

[1] Some copyright owners use EULAs to circumvent applicable copyright restrictions on their copyright (for example. B the restrictions in sections 107 to 122 of the United States Copyright Act), or to extend the scope of control of the work to areas for which copyright protection is denied by law (e.B attempt to charge fees, private performances of a work beyond a certain number of performances or beyond a certain period of time). These EULAs are essentially efforts to gain contractual control over matters over which copyright excludes control. [2] These types of EULUs are compatible with the DRM objective, and both can be used as alternative methods to extend control over software. For financial reasons, Licensor may wish to limit the definition of Licensee. The broader the definition of licensee, the more companies or individuals have access to and use of the licensed software, which reduces the potential royalties that a licensor can receive. Certain license agreements allow licensee`s affiliates to use the licensed software. Many of these agreements define „affiliates“ as encompassing only the licensee`s parent company and subsidiaries that are at least 51% owned by the licensee or its parent company in order to restrict the use of the licensed software. Several companies have parodied this belief that users don`t read end-user license agreements by adding unusual clauses because they know that few users will ever read them.

As an April Fool`s joke, Gamestation added a clause stating that users who placed an order on April 1, 2010, agreed to irrevocably donate their soul to the company, which 7,500 users agreed. Although there is a checkbox to exempt from the „immortal soul“ clause, few users have checked it and Gamestation has therefore concluded that 88% of its users have not read the agreement. [17] The PC Pitstop program included a clause in its end-user license agreement stating that anyone who reads the clause and contacts the company will receive a cash reward, but it took four months and more than 3,000 software downloads before anyone collected it. [18] When installing version 4 of the Advanced Query Tool, Setup measured the time between publishing and accepting end-user license agreements to calculate the average read speed. If the chords were adopted quickly enough, a dialog box would „congratulate“ users for their absurdly high reading speed of several hundred words per second. [19] South Park parodied this in the episode „HumancentiPad,“ in which Kyle didn`t read the terms of his latest iTunes update and therefore accidentally agreed to let Apple employees experiment on him. [20] Many software licensors confuse the compensation provisions with the risk allocation provisions. . . .