I don't believe the issues of IP rights in escrow have been fully litigated.
Escrow is an executory contract (in bankruptcy law terms). The whole point of bankruptcy is to let you tear up past "mistakes" and start over. If I were a creditor of a bankrupt software company I would argue that the IP value should be used to pay creditors, not given away based on a pre-bankruptcy executory contract. Don't shoot the messenger here, please. Charles Mills is not planning to do any such thing. He is just saying what a hypothetical creditor might well do. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Monday, March 6, 2017 9:00 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Software vendor trying to force MSU based contract On 2017-03-05, at 17:38, Knutson, Samuel wrote: > Most vendor products that provide meaningful value also are internally quite large and complex. Very few if any sites that inherited a source escrow from a vendor which goes out of business or sunsets a technology can support those products. Sometimes the products themselves include technology built using protected IP from IBM, or other vendors that is protected by non-disclosure arrangements. > Shouldn't a realistic DR test exercise recovery from escrow? > Consider that source escrow does not automatically imply the ability for a company that received an escrow to further disclose or share that IP with others (the community). You mostly likely cannot just take an escrow tape and upload it to GitHub. > Does the escrow agent retain the IP rights? If not, then who? Could multiple end customers get exclusive rights to the IP? That's an oxymoron. > The product might today be something you like but the firm is mostly likely going to be better served by locating a replacement than by trying to nurse along Abandonware. Source escrow just isn't worth the trouble for most systems infrastructure products. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
