Andrew S. Bosin is a SaaS Software as a Service lawyer representing European SaaS companies, vendors, developers, startups and applications solutions providers doing business or entering into SaaS Subscription or end user licensing agreements in the United States.
As a SaaS service provider you should fully understand from a legal standpoint if you are going to be doing business in the US whether you should license your product to customers or not?
As a Software licensing attorney who also owns a SaaS Software company I’m often asked whether or not a SaaS Agreement providing services to a customer needs to also contain a license Agreement. The short answer is no.
Software on the enterprise level used to be based on the model of the client, or end user, running another company’s software on its local computer systems by means of a client server. That model as we know it barely exists at this time. Rather, the business model has moved toward cloud computing and software as a service.
If the end user or the party using another company’s software no longer has that software running on its local computer and instead is accessing the SaaS Software through the cloud, the question remains is whether or not a license agreement is necessary?
The main purpose of a license is and/or was for a software company to protect its intellectual property. A software company would essentially hand over its software likely via cd-rom to a customer who would then run it on its local computer systems. Without a license, the customer could essentially steal the software or re-sell it or possibly modify it. So with traditional based software the end user license agreement allows the customer to continue to have access to the intellectual property of the software company as long as the customer agrees to certain terms and conditions.
On the flip side, with a SaaS Software agreement there is no license per se contained therein. Rather, the customer is allowed continued access to the Saas provider’s services offered as long as it abides by certain terms and conditions contain in the SaaS Agreement.
Please call Andrew for a free legal consultation at 201-446-9643.
www.njbusiness-attorney.com | andrewbosin@gmail.com
One of the leading SaaS Software Agreement Licensing lawyers in the United States Andrew S. Bosin is located in New Jersey just outside of New York City and serves European SaaS Software Service Providers located in England, London, UK, Paris, Dublin, Ireland, Edinborough, Scotland, Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Germany, Madrid, Spain, Austria, Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw, Barcelona, Prague, Brussels, Birmingham, Switzerland, EU, and the European Union.