To Alex, it seemed like he spent half of his time preparing software development agreements for his clients to sign.
The Borrowing Mistake
He “borrowed” provisions (copyright infringement) from different software agreements he found online and hoped the agreements he created would protect him if something went wrong.
Because he was a developer instead of a software lawyer, Alex didn’t know that many of the provisions he “borrowed” actually favored his clients at his expense as the developer.
Code Ownership Problems
In addition, Alex’s app dev agreements didn’t make it clear who owned the intellectual property. Clients thought they owned the source code as work-for-hire. Yet Alex was recycling the code and reusing on multiple projects for different clients.
In addition, some of the code that Alex used was open source code. This meant that he couldn’t transfer ownership of the code to his clients even if he wanted to…and the clients had no idea this was the case. They thought they owned everything because they paid Alex for app development.
How To Get Help
If you’d like the avoid the lawsuits and other legal problems caused by using an amateur software development agreement, it’s time to schedule a phone consultation with Software Lawyer Mike Young.
