Patent Law

Anatomy of a Software Licensing Mediation

By Les Weinstein, Michael Young, John Leo Wagner, Eric van Ginkel, and Victoria Pynchon

Here's a great post on the mediation of a software licensing dispute from Disputing by Peter S. Vogel.

After receiving a Temporary Restraining Order ('TRO') the Judge ordered a mediation conference between the plaintiff software licensor and their customer in Alabama. The software in dispute was a specialized tax website that the plaintiff had spent many years developing, and after defendant abruptly terminated the license the plaintiff was shocked that the defendant had a competing website providing specialized tax services somewhat a kin to the plaintiff. So the trial judge had no trouble issuing a TRO. As oftentimes happens the Judge ordered me to mediate the case since I was a programmer and have a masters in computer science. My law practice of more than 30 years has always been limited to representing buyers and sellers of IT and Internet services.

Step One – In Depth Review of Plaintiff's Technology

Since the defendant was in Alabama I arranged a meeting with the plaintiff licensor's technical staff at my offices a few days before the mediation conference. Plaintiff's IT staff demonstrated the construction and schema for their data base, and how the website processed data. This exercise lasted a couple of hours, but provided good insight about their IT solution and web business.

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Full post as published by IP ADR Blog on August 13, 2009 (boomark / email).