How does this agreement define &#39;revenue&#39;? Microsoft restricts its license of some particular software for organizations with "more than one million US dollars (or the equivalent in other currencies) in annual revenues...." My clients are small business owners, less than 50 employees. I am confident that none of my clients net over a million dollars in profit in any given year, but can I define "revenue" as profit? If a client sells widgets for $5k each, 201 in a year, and makes 2% profit after Costs of Goods Sold, is that $1.005MM revenue, or $20.1k revenue? I don't want someone to give me assurances that I can win against Microsoft in court, but I don't know where to look to confirm my suspicion that revenue has very little legally to do with how much money moves through your account in a given year, but instead how much money you actually make. My suspicion comes from the fact that Microsoft seems to be equating an organization with $1MM in revenue with one that has 250 PCs in use at any given time. Without explicit legal clarification from Microsoft, can I determine how a court would construe this otherwise undefined term?
You cannot define "revenue" as profits. Indeed, you probably can't even deduct cost of goods sold. Revenue is the amount of money that a company brings in from selling goods and services (investment income is arguably more ambiguous, and loan proceeds would clearly not be revenue). In the absence of other indications, a court would probably look the generally accepted accounting practices (GAAP) to define revenue, or perhaps definitions used by the U.S. Small Business Admnistration, or dictionary definitions, in the context of a contract. Whatever "revenue" means, it almost certainly doesn't mean "profits". Revenue makes more sense than profits in any case in this circumstance. They are trying to use a measure that is hard to manipulate, easy to determine from accounting records, easy to estimate in the absence of good record keeping, and that reflects the scale of the enterprise. Revenue is a standard measure of small v. large businesses for many purposes. Profit, in contrast, can be easily manipulated (e.g. through salaries paid to insiders and related party cost of goods sold contracts). Businesses are also much more likely to publicly disclose their revenues (and hence create evidence relevant to the contract) than to disclose their profits.
What are exactly the legal consequences of "All rights reserved"? Almost none. You have to explicitly grant copyright rights. You don't even need the Copyright notice for them to apply. My "almost" is because the notice makes it harder for somebody to argue "they didn't realize". Do I still need an additional SW License Agreement or is the Copyright notice above + a Disclaimer of liability sufficient? If this is free software (I know you said it isn't), do yourself (and everyone else) a favour by picking a license you like. Preferably either GPL or MIT (depending on your taste). There are far too many free licenses already. Please don't add another. (It also makes it much easier for any user of your software: "Oh yeah, GPL v2. We understand that. We can use it." as opposed to "What are the implications of using this one??" As this is not free software, I think you need a paid-for lawyer (who understands IPR in your juridiction.) Edit: In principle, I believe you don't need anything. The code is copyright, so the customer can't do anything with it (without explicit permissions that you haven't granted). However if the customer doesn't realize that or thinks you won't mind, you then have to go to court to enforce your rights (and probably end up with a disgruntled customer). A short, clear, license will make it clear to the customer what they are allowed to do, and save all that aggravation.
My question is, because I am not making any income from the distribution of the game, would the use of the copyrighted music fall under Personal Use? There are some &quot;private use&quot; exemptions in Australian copyright law but they have some fairly narrow conditions. These exemptions are fairly narrow because the point of copyright law is not to prevent you from making money with someone else's intellectual property but to protect the other person's ability to make money with it. If Alice writes a song and Bob distributes it free of charge, Alice loses revenue. Similarly, it is Alice's right to decide whether that song should be included in a freely available open-source software product, and her right to decide whether to allow that use without charge or in exchange for a license fee.
Sources of Liability Liability can come from: Statute law Contract law Common law Statute Law There may be (almost certainly are) laws in the jurisdiction where Joes Cheap Carnival are operating relating to Work Health and Safety. In general, these laws will impose a non-delegable duty (i.e. one you cant get out of) to comply with certain minimum standards. If operating your software as instructed with reasonable assumptions gives results that lead to an unsafe design then you would be liable in both cases. Contract Law If you are selling this software then you can limit your liability in any way you like providing that the limitation is not unlawful. For example, under Australian Consumer Law (which covers B2B transactions up to AUD$40,000 - how much are you selling for?) you have a non-excludable warranty that the software is fit-for-purpose; so, again, if operating your software as instructed with reasonable assumptions gives results that lead to an unsafe design then you would be liable in both cases. Common Law Only parties to a contract can take action under a contract; anyone you owe a duty of care to can sue your for negligence. A person injured by a machine your software helped design need to demonstrate: You had a duty of care; it would be hard to argue you didn't, You breached that duty; the software was not "fit-for-purpose", There was a factual cause in a "cause and effect" sense; 'but for' your software there would have been no loss, There was a legal (proximate) cause; you may be able to raise something here, if your software was used incorrectly by an engineer, your breach may be too distant Harm; the person must suffer real loss. The only plausible advantage of making your software open source is that you are showing a greater amount of care by allowing your algorithms to be sort-of peer reviewed. This is not a legal shield I would really like to depend on. TL;DR Nothing can stop someone suing you - if they want to sue you they can sue you. Your best defence to a lawsuit is to demonstrate that you did everything a reasonable person could do without the benefit of hindsight Do you really think publishing your code is "everything a reasonable person could do"? You would be far better off: Taking out professional indemnity insurance Validating you algorithms thoroughly Engaging an independent third-party to validate your algorithms Developing proper and thorough testing procedure for your software Testing it in-house Engaging an independent third-party to test it Thoroughly documenting your software including all the assumptions along with the domains where they are valid and invalid.
All Licenses are granted in the shape of contracts. Contracts contain clauses that allow or disallow their transferability. The typical way a License for a software is obtained is to buy a key that acts as proof of purchase, and then agreeing to an EULA. For example the Win10 one. very typical clauses from the Win10 EULA explicitly forbid to transfer of the license without the device it was installed on: Installation and Use Rights. a. License. The software is licensed, not sold. Under this agreement, we grant you the right to install and run one instance of the software on your device (the licensed device), for use by one person at a time, so long as you comply with all the terms of this agreement. Updating or upgrading from non-genuine software with software from Microsoft or authorized sources does not make your original version or the updated/upgraded version genuine, and in that situation, you do not have a license to use the software. c. Restrictions. The device manufacturer or installer and Microsoft reserve all rights (such as rights under intellectual property laws) not expressly granted in this agreement. For example, this license does not give you any right to, and you may not: (iii) transfer the software (except as permitted by this agreement); Transfer. The provisions of this section do not apply if you acquired the software in Germany or in any of the countries listed on this site (aka.ms/transfer), in which case any transfer of the software to a third party, and the right to use it, must comply with applicable law. a. Software preinstalled on device. If you acquired the software preinstalled on a device (and also if you upgraded from software preinstalled on a device), you may transfer the license to use the software directly to another user, only with the licensed device. The transfer must include the software and, if provided with the device, an authentic Windows label including the product key. Before any permitted transfer, the other party must agree that this agreement applies to the transfer and use of the software. b. Stand-alone software. If you acquired the software as stand-alone software (and also if you upgraded from software you acquired as stand-alone software), you may transfer the software to another device that belongs to you. You may also transfer the software to a device owned by someone else if (i) you are the first licensed user of the software and (ii) the new user agrees to the terms of this agreement. You may use the backup copy we allow you to make or the media that the software came on to transfer the software. Every time you transfer the software to a new device, you must remove the software from the prior device. You may not transfer the software to share licenses between devices Cincom Systems, Inc v Novelis Corp., 581 F.3d 431 (6th Cir. Sept 2009) held that you can not transfer software that was merely licensed, even as the part of your company that uses the software becomes part of another company through a merger. The licensor had put express language that forbids the transfer of the license by licensee into the contract: When Alcan Ohio merged with Alcan Texas, the license granted by Cincom solely to Alcan Ohio transferred to the surviving corporation, now known as Novelis. Because Novelis did not abide by the express terms of Cincom's license and gain Cincom's prior written approval, Novelis infringed Cincom's copyright. Likewise, the court in Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc., 934 F. Supp. 2d 640 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) held that you can not re-sell an (installed) digital item as you create a new copy without the license for this. In a similar fashion, Disney recently changed the Terms of Service and contract on the digital codes that come with DVDs. The new terms explicitly forbid unbundling the code from the disk and forbid transferring the disk after using the code. This was what allowed Disney to gain an injunction in the case of Disney v RedBox. The end result is not out yet. In the EU, the ruling in one case fell different: UsedSoft GmbH v. Oracle International Corp. held in 2012 that there is possibly a right to resell your used license... as long as it is a license forever (emphasis mine): in the event of the resale of a user licence entailing the resale of a copy of a computer program downloaded from the copyright holder’s website, that licence having originally been granted by that rightholder to the first acquirer for an unlimited period in return for payment of a fee intended to enable the rightholder to obtain a remuneration corresponding to the economic value of that copy of his work, the second acquirer of the licence, as well as any subsequent acquirer of it, will be able to rely on the exhaustion of the distribution right under Article 4(2) of that directive As a result software licenses adapted and started to expressly sell the license as a license to obtain the service of a maintained software. To software as a service - which Windows and the Office suite are - this ruling does expressly not apply and you can not re-sell such a software license after it has been used. Signed License v. License Key That does not apply to the key, the representation of the payment. You can buy them in a store. They are a pretty tangible good. The principle is - in general - that you validate the license you sign by handing over the key to the supplier of the software. This usually voids the key. But... all those sites claim you can transfer?! not.... quite: once you agreed to the EULA and obtained the software service it can no longer be resold. Also, you just agreed you may not do that with transferable software. However, as long as you have the key unused the unused key for a license can be resold. That is a physical good that the first sale doctrine applies to. However, you may not retain a copy of the key to sell it, again and again, you would interfere with your customer's ability to contract as a used key often is rejected - you'd have defrauded the customer. Even in the EU, if you bought a perpetual license, you need to render your copy unusable under the ruling above: The CJEU held that the first purchaser needs to &quot;make his own copy unusable at the time of its resale…in order to avoid infringing the exclusive right of reproduction of a computer program which belongs to its author“ The CJEU therefore briefly commented “to solve that problem, it is permissible for the distributor – whether ‘classic’ or ‘digital’ – to make use of technical protective measures such as product keys“. The key is a means to show you are entitled to a contract. It is the consideration Microsoft gets for signing the other side of the contract. Most software resellers deal with keys, the resale of keys is expressly possible. Some software companies mark a used-and re-sold key and require to contact the company to make sure that the software has been disabled on the other end. Since many companies can't render the software disabled on the seller's end, they refuse to acknowledge the sale on the same basis: the software was not disabled or rendered useless, and as a result, the sale did not happen in accordance with the judgment.
If such a case came to court, the court would presumably rule that merely publishing the advertising could not be considered to be doing something "commercial". (Otherwise the contract would be absurd, as the question points out.) The court would therefore define "commercial" as some act beyond merely displaying the advertising -- perhaps charging for the website on which it is displayed, or using it to sell goods. Moreover, since the company apparently wrote the contract, any ambiguity in it would be construed against the company, if there is another reasonable interpretation. Thus the contract would not be void, and could be sued on, but the company would win only if it established some conduct that the court was prepared to consider as "commercial" in light of the circumstances and the purpose of the contract. By the way it is not really on point, but it is a common misunderstanding that: some customers may be organized as nonprofit and they're not allowed to make profits Nonprofit entities may do business and make income that would be considered "profit" for an ordinary corporation. What they cannot do is distribute that income as "profit" to owners, shareholders, members, or other individuals.
In United States v. Microsoft, Microsoft was accused of abusing its monopoly power by bundling. A prerequisite for this type of Sherman Act Section 2 claim is that the company must have monopoly power to abuse. Market share is one of the primary measures courts use to determine if a company has monopoly powers, and therefore can be punished for abusing them. At the time of the Microsoft case, its market share was over 80% of all PCs and over 95% of Intel PCs. In United States v. Alcoa, 148 F.2d 416, Learned Hand considered three possible market share numbers. He wrote that market share of more than 90% "is enough to constitute a monopoly; it is doubtful whether sixty or sixty-four percent would be enough; and certainly thirty-three per cent is not." Worldwide, iOS has about 15% of the smartphone OS market. In the US, it's about 40%. According to Judge Hand, that's well below "doubtful" and awfully close to "certainly not" a monopoly. No monopoly equals no monopoly power equals no Sherman Act Section 2 violation.
No They will list the price they are charging you. This will normally be greater than what they paid because that’s how business works. The amount they are allowed to charge is what you agreed in your contract with them (which may incorporate a price list) or, if the contract is silent, a reasonable amount. What is reasonable will be related to what the market in your geographical area charges. While this is indirectly related to the input cost of a given item, business can and do charge what the market allows.