Intellectual property in software and data is often the key asset in a business. Effective protection and exploitation of that asset is essential to promoting growth and commercial opportunities. We regularly advise clients on the customer and supplier side in relation to licensing and technology transfer agreements in this area. Options open to suppliers range from licensing and distribution agreements (where the customer “bundles” a supplier’s software within its product for onward distribution to its customers), OEM reseller agreements (where a distributor is permitted to license a supplier’s software on a stand-alone basis) to white labelling agreements (where a supplier product is re-badged and licensed on by the distributor).
In today’s digital age exploitation of data or content is now a lucrative route to market. We advise businesses in both the private the public sector (including some of the government's “Trading Funds”) on how best to maximise the value in the data it owns and our IT lawyers are well-versed in addressing the critical legal and commercial issues that arise, including management of royalty mechanisms, limitations on liability and ensuring the license scope fits with the data licensor’s commercial objectives.