Software licenses are legal agreements that are concerned with the use or distribution of computer softwares. Apart from software materials that are in the public domain all other software are copyright protected. The purpose of a license is to protect software from illegal sale, duplication, or distribution by unauthorized persons.
Another aspect of licenses protection is through the creation of a confidential contract. In this type of situation, the license gives permission to the end-user of the software to use the particular software in one or more ways that would have been otherwise considered an infringement on the copyrights awarded to the owner of that particular software under the copyrights law.
A license has both a license and an expiry. These are two very different things. A license agreement may run from one to five years which starts from the invoice tax date but the expiry may be beyond this date as it is based on when the particular software was installed. Whenever software is about to reach its expiry date the program will give a notice that one needs to renew the software through input of a new serial number which is acquired when one purchases the renewed license agreement.
To protect software one must understand various aspects of how licenses work, which include things such as;
How to know when software is supposed to expire
– Anyone using a particular software should be aware of the expiry date. This is done by viewing the license information of the software. The information will tell one when the date it will expire or lose either partial or the total ability to perform its functions.
Consequences of expiration
– When it comes to software licenses and how to protect software one must also understand the results or consequences that result from license expiry. Regularly, before software expires, it will display some kind of warning message 90 days prior to its expiry date. When one sees this message, he or she should make the proper arrangements so as to be able to continue with the use of that particular software. If the 90 days pass and still the person using the software has not made the proper arrangements, they will be given some kind of grace period which is relatively a short period of time, after which, failure to renew the software license, the software will cease to function.
Transfer of license
– Organisations have details of their licenses kept in a database file so when transferring the software license from one computer to another one just moves the database file to that particular computer and the license details together with the serial numbers will also move to the second computer.
Software licenses and other software protection services are to make sure copyrights are protected against any infringements on copyrights through either illegal sales, duplication, or unauthorized distribution. This ensures that revenue and intellectual property rights are awarded to the owner.
