Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
>
> On Mon, 8 May 2000, Paul Fernhout wrote:
>
> > "Indemnification" as I understand it means, you pay the other person's
> > bill if anything goes wrong.
>
> Not quite. It means that if anything goes wrong because your code
> violates someone else's IP, neither BI nor Stanford are liable (i.e. they
> can't be sued.) In that situation, BI/Stanford would still have to stop
> using that code. Indemnification cannot be used as a loophole to avoid
> paying IP licensing fees.
Based on previous discussions with my IP lawyer, indemnification as
broadly construed is in effect a warranty to ensure the customer for the
Intellectual Property can use the IP and will not have any additional
legal costs associated with that use. What you say is correct, BUT you
are ignoring who *is* then liable in this case (the contributor!) as
well as the implications of that liability given however Stanford/BI
have chosen to use the contribution (i.e. Stanford/BI's loss in not
being able to use the code, and the cost of redressing that loss).
Example: Some company contracts with me to develop a software package
for displaying compressed images. I unknowingly infringing someone's
patent on displaying bitmaps. The patent might even have been issued ten
years after I supplied the code, despite my own prior art -- it doesn't
matter. Someone sues the company. Unfortunately for me, I have agreed in
writing to a broad indemnficiation claue similar to the one in the
Colloquium's "permission to use". The implications of indemnification
are as I understand them in this case are:
A) I have to pay all the company's related legal bills and any
settlement.
B) I have to fix the problem.
Since the indemnification clause is so general, it does not specify:
A) That I as the contributor have any control over the legal defense, or
B) What acceptable remedies are for fixing the problem.
Thus, the worst case implications are:
A) The company hires expensive incompetent legal defense which I have to
pay outrageous fees for,
B) because they are incompetent the case is lost in the worse possible
way (despite prior art), with the worst possible settlement,
C) I have to pay the worst possible settlement,
D) I still have to fix the problem. Since there is no specification I
can replace the code, the company may not want to accept a replacement,
and this may means negotiating a licensing fee with the owner of the
patent, or alternatively, if the patent owner will not license, paying
the company whatever it wants so they stop using the code. The company
may have done anything with the code because there are no distribution
restrictions in the agreement. They may have sublicensed it to many
other developers, embedded it in millions of set-top box computers,
based their business model for going IPO on exclusive rights to that
code, etc. Thus, the costs of "fixing" the problem could be exorbitant.
The only hope in that case is that an unsigned indemnification agreement
of this scope would not hold up in court (which I believe may well be
the case).
In practice, one might expect some good will and a better than worse
case outcome, but I think it could get *that* bad. That is why last
time I "indemnified" a client for something (only after being enticed by
a large sum of money for the project), there were specific limitations
insisted upon by my IP lawyer, in effect:
A) Indemnification only applies if I control the legal defense,
B) I could replace the code with other code which accomplishes a similar
end goal, and
C) The use and distribution of the code would be limited to the
companies internal operations for purposes of the indemnification (i.e.
I could estimate in advance the scope of the risk).
Perhaps someone on this list with their own convenient access to their
own good IP attorney might want to check with legal counsel to see if my
statements on indemnification are correct in a worst case situation.
This is important because you are putting your company's assets on the
line if you participate as an employee (not an individual). By the way,
has anyone else had their company's legal counsel review the agreement
who can comment on it?
When I have seen unsigned or clickthrough indemnification agreements,
they are usually the other way around, written to protect the code's
author, as in: "You may use this code or service which the author
supplies, but you indemnify the author if your use is legally actionable
for whatever reason." For example, the mailing list service (egroups) we
currently use has such a "other way around" indemnification provision in
its terms of service:
http://www.egroups.com/info/tos.html
(By the way, from that agreement they gain some rights to the list
content as well, so I guess one could go to them as well as BI/Stanford
for some rights to this content, as long as it is distributed only to
"members of the list" however that gets defined.)
(I am not a lawyer, so consult with your own lawyer for legal advice
before making decisions based on anything written here...)
The deeper emotional issue is what a one-side "permission to use"
agreement for the Colloquium "feels like" to any open source developers
lurking out there.
-Paul Fernhout
Kurtz-Fernhout Software
=========================================================
Developers of custom software and educational simulations
Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com
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