Link: Law.com - Software Companies Allege Law Firm Misappropriated Mortgage Database. In the words of a movie character: "I thought I was out of the business, but they keep dragging me back in..." I was up in the clouds dreaming of the Rays and a pennant, and I came across this item about a law firm being sued for using software licensed to its client to prepare loan packages. Whether software is provided over the net as a service or located on a local computer system or network, the prevailing model is for a license to be issued to an individual user or firm. In addition, the Terms of Use for most software will prohibit you from providing it to someone else for their use without permission. Of course, letting your secretary or another lawyer in the firm use it will not likely engender a Federal lawsuit. But, you need to know what software your firm is using, and you need to understand the Software service agreements. One of the advantages of SaaS is that you are using software being created and maintained at a host server somewhere else. So, if you aren't licensed, they aren't going to give you access. But, this gives the software company a lot of control over your use, which might not be your cup of tea. This all gives me a giant headache, and is a big reason why I use as much open source, free, software as I can. I use a licensed copy of WordPerfect and Word. I use Amicus Attorney (with syncing with Outlook) and ProDoc. Other than that licensed stuff, I pretty much have moved to the open source world; Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, and such. Do you know where your software has been?
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