The DMCA specifically provides for reverse software engineering for interoperability purposes, so there has been some controversy over whether contractual software licensing clauses restrict this situation. The 8th Davidson – Associates v. Jung[12] found that such clauses are enforceable after the decision of the Federal Circuit of Baystate v. Bowers. [13] Are software developers responsible for their software`s flaws? Many companies have parodied this belief that users do not read end-user licensing agreements by adding unusual clauses, knowing that few users will ever read them. As an April joke, Gamestation added a clause stating that users who placed an order on April 1, 2010 agreed to give their souls irrevocably to the company, which was accepted by 7,500 users. Although there is a box to be contributed to exclude the “immortal soul” clause, few users have verified it, and Gamestation has concluded that 88% of its users have not read the agreement. [17] The PC Pitstop program contained a clause in its end-user license agreement that stipulated that anyone who read the clause and contacted the company would receive a financial reward, but it took four months and more than 3,000 software downloads before someone collected them. [18] During the installation of version 4 of the Advanced Reading Tool, the installer measured the time elapsed between the appearance and acceptance of end-user licensing agreements to calculate the average playback speed.
While the agreements were accepted fairly quickly, a dialog box “congratulated” users for their ridiculously high reading speed of several hundred words per second. [19] South Park parodied in the HumancentiPad episode, in which Kyle had not read the terms of use of his latest iTunes update, and therefore accidentally agreed to let Apple employees act on him. [20] There is not a single form of software licensing agreement. A software license agreement can vary as much as the software to which it refers, and software and software licensing models are constantly changing and evolving. Despite this fluidity, a checklist of software licensing agreements can be a useful tool for both licensees, licensees and their internal stakeholders, whether negotiating a live agreement or preparing a software licensing agreement. In addition to the doctrine of implied exhaustion, the distributor may include patent licenses with software. Structural decisions on how such agreements are developed do not stop at user fees.