Legal Guidance and Research / Experts / Robin Fry
Robin Fry#1615
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Robin Fry

Memery Crystal
Robin is a copyright specialist and formerly Head of Intellectual Property at DAC Beachcroft. He has written extensively on copyright matters. His current focus is on software licensing ' largely dealing with audits or 'software license reviews' initiated by the major software vendors ' Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft and Informatica. He is currently a director at Memery Crystal LLP and also legal director of its software licensing consultancy, Cerno.

Practice Area

Panel

  • Contributing Author

Qualified Year

  • 1980

Membership

  • Law Society

Education

  • Exeter University
  • College of Law

1 Contributions by Robin Fry

Disabling devices in on‑premise B2B software: UK legal, contractual and regulatory risks, and drafting and practical guidance
PRACTICE NOTES
Disabling devices in on‑premise B2B software: UK legal, contractual and regulatory risks, and drafting and practical guidance
This Practice Note This Practice Note explores the use of non-contractual mechanisms by software suppliers to halt or restrict the operation of on-premise software in business-to-business licences, the resulting legal considerations, and the real-world impact on drafting relevant software licences. It introduces a range of disabling tools: Time bombs Logic bombs Back door/trap door Fork locks Remote control and switching off, or ‘deprovisioning’ Where a customer breaches licence terms, or fails to pay licence or support charges, the supplier can pursue legal action. Yet litigation brings expense and uncertainty, and may strain the customer–supplier relationship. As a result, a supplier may favour a more immediate, practical approach: deploying disabling devices to stop the software from running, triggered remotely or automatically by the supplier. For most developers, such features are straightforward to create and embed. Activating (or threatening to activate) these tools can give the supplier significant leverage over customers, especially where the software is critical to the business. That said, use of these devices has fallen markedly in recent years, in part due to a shift in the way software is licensed. First, there was a move towards...
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