In the morass of licensing transactions from 2007 we have noticed some trends that will be relevant to your software license negotiations in 2008.

1. Increased use of the vendor hosted software model. A few years ago, it seemed like the vast majority of software licensing transactions that passed across our desks were traditional software on a disk or downloaded software hosted on the servers of the customer. This year, we saw a significant increase in vendor hosted applications, often referred to as ASP or Application Service Provider

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The US District Court in Utah has ruled that "Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights" that are the subject of the dispute between Novell and SCO.  The opinion will undoubtedly impact SCO's suit against IBM.  The opinion is here.  The Court concluded:

"Therefore, Novell is entitled to a declaration of rights under its Fourth Claim for Relief that it was and is entitled, at its sole discretion, to direct SCO to waive its claims against IBM and Sequent, and SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent. Accordingly, Novell's motion for partial summary judgment on its Fourth Claim for Relief for declaratory judgment is granted, and SCO's cross-motion for summary judgment on Novell's Fourth Claim for Relief is denied."

SCO responded in a statement that it "is obviously disappointed with the ruling", but that it is only a flesh wound, and that even though its arms and legs had been chopped off,  it could still butt IBM and Novell with its head.

The following, in no particular order, are our top ten favorite TechKnowledgy stories of 2006:

1.  Posner Appears Live as Avatar on Second Life.  If the words in that headline are gobbledygook to you, you better get with it!  Second Life is a popular online virtual world where users interact with each other through "avatars", which are basically animated cartoons of themselves.  Judge Richard Posner appeared live on Second Life on December 7th, and was interviewed on a variety of topics for two hours.   The illustrated transcript can be found here.  The idea that one of the most influential legal minds of our time is willing to embrace this emerging technology is just, well, cool. . ..

2.  Supreme Court Alit in Patent Cases.  While the world focused on the drama of the appointment of Justice Alito, IP lawyers had some drama of their own, with a fully loaded patent docket.  Decisions included

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The subscription based software model is already mainstream, with 40% of software vendors reporting that they offer some form of subscription based offerings. However, the advent of SaaS (Software as a Service), multi-core processors, and virtualization (in effect creating "virtual machines" in a software environment were no hardware exists, thereby allowing many physical computers to be consolidated into a few servers that host the virtual machines), are causing both vendors and customers to rethink how they measure and charge for the right to use software.

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In a textbook example of why it is important to carefully read and negotiate software license agreements, particularly those for mission-critical software applications, a robotic parking garage came to a grinding halt in Hoboken New Jersey last week, effectively imprisoning the several hundred cars that were parked there.

This situation had it all. The city was terminating its services contract with Robotic Parking, Inc. of Clearwater Florida, and intended to

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