RE: licensing and lawyers

["Dr. Alan M. Edelson" <amedelson@topnet.net>]

It sounds from the brief description given of Temple University's
settlement of a lawsuit that this involved multiple uses of proprietary
computer software in the university's computers, something that is all too
often done by university staff and students, as well as in corporate
offices. It does not sound as if the suit was related to the infringement
of a clause in a signed licensing agreement from a publisher. I suspect
that this newspaper article was probably not relevant to the question of
whether libraries need to have lawyers review all licensing agreements,
which, frankly, strikes me as utterly impractical. I would suggest that a
lawyer prepare a set of general guidelines to librarians at an institution
and leave it at that.

Alan M. Edelson, Ph.D.