RE: ACUITY's Own Risk4 Jan 2024 12:51
Volmer / Brondby.
A really interesting one. Clearly would have been good to have more clarity legally to close the risk down but I can see the counterparties not wanting to spend hard cash on expensive IP lawyers as they dont need to engage unless Acuity provide some consideration.
Firstly Acuity did not give the right to IP, it was retained. Reading between the lines the software seems to have originally been developed in an era when there was a lot on "in house" developments using some third party support - hence the two counterparties and a lack of clarity of background / foreground IP.
There is really no fault from corporate legal / existing acuity management here, just some slightly messy history. The key element is no royalties seem to be passing between Acuity and the counterparties for ongoing contracts, and Acuity has full use to develop the IP further.
The risks are either
i) end users can obtain the open source software full of bugs and not pay Acuity. I can say this is not a risk, any company buying risk management software wants supported software and doesnt download free, potentially corrupted and cyber insecure, software into their network. Open source software tends to be in the academic world and is not used in large enterprises / government bodies, what is used tends not to be "enterprise" application specific software and is very simplistic.
ii) competitors somehow utilise this software. Again I really cant see this happening, compiling / decompiling / reverse engineering is a pain in the **** - more costly and time consuming than starting from a blank sheet of paper
Software is also pretty useless on its own, you need the consultants, pre sales engineers, sales to really understand the customer requirement and make it work - the overall service wrap is the key selling point.
One final point is that most software contracts usually has a clause which idemnifies the customer from third party claims, so a customer is secure that the supplier is on the line should a third party dispute the IP in use.
In summary I cant see either counterparty doing anything as its simply not in their financial interest to do so.