Our lawyers have extensive expertise in computer law and can assist you on all issues specific to this area (free software, licensing agreements, assignment of rights, audits of contracts or licenses, contract negotiation, IT litigation, etc.).

Acquisition of software copyright

Our lawyers can help you to resolve the legal difficulties that may arise when acquiring the copyright  on a software that was developed by third parties.

For this purpose, our lawyers can prepare:

  • Copyright agreement audits or software licence audits, in order to ascertain that you own the proper intellectual property rights for your project; and
  • Free software licence audits to ensure, in particular, that the applicable free software licenses do not jeopardize your project.

Protection of copyright on your software

Our law firm assists software editors in protecting their copyright on their work.

For instance, our lawyers assist software editors by preparing:

  • Recommendations to help software editors ensuring that they are indeed the owners of the proper copyrights on their softwares;
  • Software licencing agreements or service terms of use aimed at providing contractual frameworks for transmitting to clients any rights on their software, whatever mode they allow their client to access their software ( by download, Saas, PaaS, IaaS, etc.);
  • Recommendations allowing the service provider to avoid using certain free software programmes whose licences would hinder the final use of the software as intended by the client; and
  • Recommendations enabling the service provider to protect the source codes of the finished software.

Transmission of copyright on software

In order to enable copyright transmission, our lawyers draft and negotiate contracts (on behalf of those acquiring software rights as well as on behalf of IT service providers) such as:

  • copyright assignment agreements ; and
  • or software licencing agreements.

These contracts can be drawn up in French or English, at the request of the client.

Our lawyers can also localise these contracts in order to adapt a contract provided by the client to French law if it would otherwise be governed by foreign law.

Software pre-litigation and litigations

In the event of a dispute, our lawyers may also carry out a pre-litigation process, in order to promote an amicable resolution of the dispute. They can also assist you in litigations, especially in case of software infringement, or unfair or parasitic competition.

Our firm is a member of the French Association of Computer and Telecommunications Law (AFDIT).

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