If a software company is doing business internationally, does that mean it has to have one of those long, convoluted license agreements in order to protect itself in all the legal circumstances that it may encounter? I don't know the answer, but for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, it seems to be a question that's coming up more and more.
I've recently heard from several overseas readers who were eliciting my advise on how their companies could go about creating a EULA that would be as fair and simple as possible. "My company is about to globally release our first product, and I need an easy-to-read EULA for it," a reader with a European-based company wrote me recently. "We really want to avoid having one that's cumbersome and difficult to read. As we want to make sure our users understand their rights and limitation in using the software, it serves everyone that the terms be readable without need of legal counseling."
Naturally, I pointed to our FEULA, since it has been designed with input from both the customer and the software publisher side. But the European reader was concerned that the FEULA might be a little too customer-friendly for his company's needs. "This does not mean we plan to be unfair to our customers," he wrote. "But we are focusing on the corporate market, and we can't afford to leave any 'handles' for these companies to misinterpret to their benefit. Or, worse yet, sue us because we didn't specifically state that the product is sold as is, we take no responsibility, etc."
A reader on a similar quest for a company based in the Far East expressed similar concerns about whether they could afford to meet customers halfway with their EULA terms. "We will be selling this product to consumers in many different regions with many different laws," the reader wrote. "Would we face increased liability if we do not include the standard disclaimers? If so, our investors will demand we put all of these provisions in our EULA."
Now, let me just say I don't believe the FEULA is all that customer-friendly -- I've had some consumer-side folks tell me they think it leans to much to the publisher's side. But it is disturbing that these two readers, both of whom seemed quite sincere in their desire to at least keep their EULAs simple and readable, were having so much trouble figuring out how to do so. Are their fears justified? Do they really have to choose between protecting their companies or being fair to their customers?
Well, I don't know. But what I suggested to both is that they study the EULAs that readers have posted in the "EULAs with Good Terms" section in the EULA Library. After all, Grisoft is a European company itself, and Adobe does business everywhere, and presumably they know how to protect themselves. And I've just added another EULA to that list from a small Australian software company called Picnam, which we will discuss in more detail next time.
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