Microsoft Improves Its Licensing Terms

prostoalex writes "Microsoft offers to pick up the legal tab, in case anyone gets pulled to court for using its products. News dot com dot com has a rather informative outline of new policies: Microsoft will cover unlimited expenses on injury and infringement claims, the company quadrupled the warranty on its products to a 12-month length, and the companies audited for licensing compliance will now get a 30-day warning instead of 15-day one."

Comments

Re:This is more interesting...

[donutello]

Geez, is reading really becoming that hard? From the article:

In older contracts, Microsoft agreed to pay all legal fees for volume license customers who got sued because of Microsoft, but only up to the value of the software they bought.

Under the new provision, which took effect March 1, Microsoft removed the liability cap in intellectual property suits and altered other parts of the agreements that potentially expand its liability.
(Emphasis mine)

Now that wasn't that hard was it?

Covers Legal Fees - How about actual Damages?

[fanatic]

I don't see where it says that you're covered if you use an MS porudcut and you lose the suit. The article did say: "Punitive damages, which can exceed the verdict for damages, were not addressed." And it also said:

Issue: Third-party injury
Old: Costs covered to value of software purchased.
New: No liability cap, if Microsoft was grossly negligent or acted intentionally.

So there are still loopholes here, for a company that has shown willingess to use and stretch every loophole to the breaking point.