Course description
It is vital to get IT contracts right to get the best outcome for your client. Whether you are new to drafting and negotiating IT contracts, or need a refresher with latest and best law and practice, this in-person seminar is for you.
Over two days, you'll find out about all aspects of IT contracts, including: background and preparation, including tendering; key IT terms and what they mean; software licences; exclusion clauses; understanding how an IT project works; a historic overview of IT warranties; copyright and database rights; outsourcing agreements; dealing with third-party rights; and how to deal effectively with any problems. The course includes practical and group exercises to aid understanding, as well as pointers on drafting traps to avoid.
With this course, you'll gain the tools to deal confidently with this important area of law and develop a new area of expertise for your firm.
Upcoming start dates
Outcome / Qualification etc.
Training Course Content
Introduction
This in-person seminar will cover everything you need to know to understand and deal with IT contracts. It will also cover how to negotiate and draft those IT contracts.
By attending this course, you will learn about what could be a new area for you or update yourself to the latest and best law and practice. Find out:
- Will I be able to know enough about IT to be able to work better with IT contracts?
- Will I gain practical knowledge of the etymology of IT projects?
- Will I become familiar with software licences?
- Will I understand the special features of outsourcing and IT service contracts?
- Will I understand liability in IT contracts and how to limit or exclude it
- Will I understand the differences between copyright and database rights?
- Will I be able to identify and deal with typical problems with IT contracts?
- Will I gain a practical understanding of third party rights in IT contracts?
What You Will Learn
This course will cover the following:
Day One
- Course introduction and delegate introduction
- Background to an IT contract (Pre-contract preparations)
- Part 1: Prevention is better than cure
- Differences in perspectives of IT suppliers and IT customers
- IT contracts words to avoid...and to encourage
- Part 2: Preparing to negotiate
- IT tendering and procurement
- Managing IT negotiations
- Pre-contract documents
- Interim agreements and pre-contract contracts
- Structure of IT agreements
- Responsibility for technical schedules
- Understanding enough IT to work with IT contracts: Part 1
- Lawyers v IT consultants
- Computer architecture
- Storage devices
- Software - what is it?
- Source code v object code
- Databases
- Classical networks - what are they?
- Understanding enough IT to work with IT contracts: Part 2
- The Internet
- IP Addressing and DNS
- ASP to Software as a Service (SaaS) to the Cloud
- Virtualisation
- Content and data
- Analogue to digital
- Communications
- Encryption
- Future trends
- Software Licences
- Software
- The software licence:
- Background/Commercial questions/Goods or Services?/Express terms:
- Usual restrictions/Safeguards against restrictions/The effect of the Software Directive/Warranties to a standard/Date and currency warranties /communicating the licence terms/shrink and web-wrapped software
- Maintenance & support adjuncts
- Escrow
- Etymology of an IT project: group exercise: Part I
- Waterfall commercials - how to negotiate
- Etymology of an IT project: group exercise: Part II
- Waterfall software development
- Waterfall development contracts
Day Two
- Software Development
- Agile v Waterfall methodologies
- Crowdsourcing and open source development
- Agile contracts
- Software as a service
- Advantages and disadvantages
- LHA v SaaS agreements
- Customer sensible due diligence
- SaaS agreement
- Copyright and database rights (Part 1)
- What is copyright?/Important copyright issues/Database rights/sources of most disputes/ Copyright and enforcement bodies/FAST and the BSA/audit clauses
- Copyright and database rights (Part 2)
- Porting software
- Non-textually copying software
- Software patents
- Moral rights in software and typefaces
- Outsourcing and IT Services contracts
- Overriding principle/Structure of an IT services agreement/Services/SLAs/Change control and project/system scope creep/how are IT suppliers managed/Supplier warranties v customer pushbacks
- IT Reseller Agreements
- Software distribution - what does the industry do?
- Sales agents
- Sales representatives
- Resellers
- Contracts
- Problems with IT contracts
- Typical disputes in IT projects
- Methods of IT dispute resolution and corresponding clauses
- Litigation/ADR/Mediation/Arbitration
- Expert determination
- Neutral evaluation
- Ping-pong determination
- Disclosure issues
- Software ownership issues: who owns it?
- Open source software
- The rise of OSS
- Historical concepts
- The open source definition
- The trajectory of OSS today
- OSS as an industry
- OSS licences
- IT warranties and clauses
- Implied terms
- Anglo v Winter Brown
- Quality
- Material substantial or reasonable
- Anti-virus clauses
- Date issues and clauses
- Comm issues and clauses
- Currency issues and clauses
- Sizing warranties and scalability issues
Expenses
MBL Seminars Limited
MBL is a leading learning and development provider for professional service firms. Over the past 18 years, more than 198,000 people across 23,000 different organisations spanning 81 countries, have chosen us to deliver their training. With over 800 expert speakers...