In February of this year SAP eliminated its low cost maintenance option leaving new customers with a maintenance option priced at 22% of software license fees. With the influx of SASS and third party providers like Rimini Street, SAP’s 22% increase seems counterintuitive. SAP’s maintenance increase, though, brings it in line with Oracle – which…
Take Two Interactive Software, the publisher of Grand Theft Auto, has sued the Chicago Transit Authority in the Southern District of New York for pulling advertisements for the video game. The suit alleges (among other things) that the CTA’s actions: are unlawful content based restrictions that violate Take Two’s rights under the First Amendment; violate…
On May 14 Nintendo of America, Inc. was ordered to pay Anascape, Ltd. $21 million for infringement of Anascape’s patents in designing its Wii Classic, WaveBird and Gamecube controllers. Anascape also sued Microsoft for infringement. Anascape and Microsoft, however, settled On May 1st just prior to the start of the trial against Nintendo. Anascape alleged that the console…
SAP recently reported a steeper than expected drop in Q1 profits. SAP was apparently impacted by acquisition related costs, the weaker dollar and delayed investments on new software. If you are currently involved in a software acquisition with SAP, now may be the time to aggressively seek concessions as SAP may be more willing to negotiate in…
In March of this year, the Gibson Guitar Corporation, maker of the famed Les Paul Guitar, filed two patent infringement lawsuits. First, it filed suit against Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, Amazon.com, Game Stop, and Toys ‘R’ Us alleging that the popular Guitar Hero games infringe Gibson’s U.S. Patent No. 5,990,405 (the “’405 patent”) titled “System and…
The Software Freedom Law Center announced on March 6 that BusyBox and High-Gain Antennas have agreed to dismiss the GPL enforcement lawsuit filed by the Software Freedom Law Center on behalf of the BusyBox developers late last year. Consistent with previously dismissed GPL lawsuit filed by the Software Freedom Law Center (blogged about here), High-Gain Antennas…
Matt Karlyn, an associate at Foley & Lardner in an article on SearchCIO.com states that “it is critical to make sure that the license grant [in a software license agreement] aligns precisely with how your company intends to use the software being licensed.” The scope of the license grant, as Karlyn suggests, is easily one…
Last month the BSA reached settlements with Ron Ayers Motorsports, Sentage Corporation and TruStile Doors, LLC. Under the terms of the settlement the companies agreed to pay the BSA $72,053, $80,000 and $92,500 respectively to settle claims that they were using unlicensed copies of software on their computers. Implementing a software license management program so that you…
SAP has eliminated its Basic Support maintenance option priced at 17% of license fees leaving new customers with only a maintenance offering priced at 22% of license fees. Original story located here. Given SAP’s new maintenance scheme, choosing a lawyer to negotiate your SAP software licensing agreement that knows what maintenance concessions SAP will agree to…
The National Consumer Council (the “NCC”) in a study reported here found that software licenses are confusing and have terms that protect the interests of the vendor over those of the end user. To anyone that has reviewed or negotiated a software license these findings are hardly surprising. Signing a license without first having the agreement reviewed…