BUILD YOUR OWN DESTINY: WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW
If you are involved in writing, administering, or using information technology agreements in any way, congratulations. You are working in a time of transition and new possibilities. You have the opportunity to solve an interesting problem: how can software and other IT agreements be updated to reflect the new reality of workers no longer tethered exclusively to company-owned equipment?
The new solution you or others arrive at will probably have these elements:
- It will find a way to compensate software publishers fairly for the new ways their intellectual property is being used.
- It will inoculate companies against under-licensing risks incurred because their workers have so many device options at home and on the move.
- It will align software licenses to both actual and intended usage (considering the way the software is hosted on a server or virtualized server that may be in your data center or a cloud along with the end user license or access grant).
- It will make it easy for companies to develop revised policies on data security.
- It will be able to accommodate new technologies when they come along.
The first step? Dig out your existing software, maintenance, and other license agreements and read them carefully. As you do, be mindful of the fact that, even if your company has not instituted a BYOD policy, some people are probably already accessing company servers with non-company-owned devices. Pay attention to provisions in your existing agreements that restrict access from off-premise locations, or that define users or devices in a way contrary to the operational definition you would give it knowing what you know now, or that seem inappropriate to the technology world as we use it today.
After all, that's a powerful computer in your pocket, and it isn't going away.
Susan Ross, senior counsel at Fulbright & Jaworski, was assisted by Diane Carco, President, Swingtide, Inc.
This article originally appeared in Law Technology News.
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