Kavitha Gupta's blog

Managing Audits to Prevent Unauthorized Disclosures by Technology Teams by Keli Johnson Swan in Blogs , Software Audits Disputes involving software usage are on the rise for businesses of all sizes. In some cases, technical teams respond to a software publisher’s or a third party’s audit request and provide significant amounts of data without notifying anyone on the corporate governance or the legal teams.  It is critical for those teams to evaluate the publisher’s legal ability to audit, and to identify the data the publisher is entitled to request. It is not uncommon for the legal team to discover the existence of a software audit or license verification after the company has received a demand for damages arising from alleged over-usage of software. Often, employees responding to an audit request do not understand the request and provide inaccurate or incomplete information. Once this information is disclosed, it can expose the business to a damages...

UK Court rules licence fees payable for "indirect" use of software By Emily Parris | March 2, 2017 13:57 A recent judgment from the UK's Technology and Construction Court highlights how important it is for businesses to audit their use of third party software on a regular basis and to review licence terms before implementing systems changes that could impact use of existing applications.   Over-use or use outside the scope of the licence can lead to claims against the customer for retrospective licence fees and/or damages.  In this latest case, the court ruled that under the terms of its licence, drinks company Diageo should have paid licence fees to SAP for "indirect" use of SAP software by Diageo's sales staff and customers.  This "indirect" use occurred when Diageo's sales staff and customers used new systems developed for Diageo on a Salesforce.com platform to interface with SAP software.  The judgment establishes th...

Avoid Overpaying for Software Settlements by Keli Johnson Swan Jan 19, 2017 Most software audits initiated by the software publisher or a third party entity authorized to pursue copyright infringement claims on behalf of the software publishers, such as the BSA| The Software Alliance (“BSA”) or the Software & Industry Information Association (“SIIA”), are resolved outside of a courtroom.  Many of the settlements require payment of a monetary penalty as part of the resolution. There are many factors that precede the negotiation stage and affect the total payment. Once a company decides to participate in the audit and submits audit results, the BSA or SIIA identify any gaps in software licensing, according to the auditing entity’s rules. These gaps may range from a deficiency of licenses to acquiring the incorrect license for the software installed. Once the auditing entity determines the number of gaps, it calculates a total settlement based on the information p...