I recently logged on to the sysdev portal to do some attestation signing and was redirected to the dev center dashboard. Here I found that there were some new legal agreements to accept before the signing service could be used.
There is a section on intellectual property rights in ‘Windows Compatibility Program and Driver Quality Attestment Testing Agreement V2.0’ which is concerning. I won’t reproduce the full text here, but it states that by using the portal you grant Microsoft ‘worldwide, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid up rights to reproduce, distribute, use and import, any and all Drivers and BIOSes that are, or are part of, Certified Products or Attested Products, in connection with the testing support, demonstration and distributions of those Drivers and BIOSes…’
My non-legal interpretation of this is that Microsoft can do whatever they want with your driver if you’ve signed up to this agreement. I’m hoping that I’ve misinterpreted it, but am having trouble reading it any other way. Has anybody else had an issue with the Intellectual Property Rights section of this agreement?
First of all, you’ve only been a member here for year, so I’ll make clear my position on interpreting legal agreements: We can all have whatever opinions we want, but unless you happen to be an intellectual property lawyer currently practicing and familiar with the law in YOUR jurisdiction and in the jurisdiction governing the contract, your opinion isn’t worth the time it takes you to type it.
HAVING SAID THAT… you only reproduced part of the agreement, and left an ellipsis (…) where it starts to matter. Assuming the part after … doesn’t impact anything, the plain English reading would suggest that you JUST give MSFT rights to “reproduce, distribute, use and import” your driver (package, I assume).
That doesn’t mean they “can do whatever they want with your driver” – far from it.
The plain English reading would suggest that they CAN distribute it, they can make copies of it, and they can use it… but only to support theirt esting, demo, or distribution the driver (package, I assume) (and whatever you may be left out after the …).
Note what I said in the first paragraph. The plain English reading of something is not necessarily what a legal agreement means.
But I signed the agreement for OSR without a second thought. Lots of big companies, with lots of annoying lawyers, PRESUMABLY sign the agreement (we don’t really know, some companies might have DIFFERENT agreements, right?).
Of all the things in the universe to worry about, this one doesn’t strike me as something I’d put on my personal radar.
Thanks for the response Peter. I am certainly not an expert on intellectual property and just to be absolutely clear, was not seeking to give or receive legal advice on this point; I’m getting that from our legal department. I was really just interested in whether other driver developers had seen this as an issue. In your case I can see that the answer is definitely not.
Its a clause that empowers Microsoft to distribute your binary via Windows Update or include it inbox and not much more.
Consider the symbiosis between your product and Windows. Your code is quite useless without Microsoft?s side of things, but from their point of view, their wonderful OS is equally no good if it can?t run on real hardware ? hence the need for 3rd party drivers etc.
From a technical point of view, what they cannot do is alter or tamper with your driver. The very digital signatures that they are enforcing will prevent that. So the only grant of license that these terms provide is the redistribution of the submitted binary ? which is in fact something you want anyways as users who actually own your hardware want that too.
So however scary sounding the words may seem, in my opinion, they are much less scary than the standard agreement for something like Office where users must ?indemnify and defend? Microsoft from any damage or loss that might be incurred through the use of their software. While a reasonable assertion that Microsoft is not responsible for the consequences of an email leaking classified information to the public just because it was sent via Outlook, it is a much more onerous legal burden I think.
From: xxxxx@gmail.commailto:xxxxx Sent: March 23, 2017 4:51 AM To: Windows System Software Devs Interest Listmailto:xxxxx Subject: [ntdev] Attestation signing legal agreement
I recently logged on to the sysdev portal to do some attestation signing and was redirected to the dev center dashboard. Here I found that there were some new legal agreements to accept before the signing service could be used.
There is a section on intellectual property rights in ‘Windows Compatibility Program and Driver Quality Attestment Testing Agreement V2.0’ which is concerning. I won’t reproduce the full text here, but it states that by using the portal you grant Microsoft ‘worldwide, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid up rights to reproduce, distribute, use and import, any and all Drivers and BIOSes that are, or are part of, Certified Products or Attested Products, in connection with the testing support, demonstration and distributions of those Drivers and BIOSes…’
My non-legal interpretation of this is that Microsoft can do whatever they want with your driver if you’ve signed up to this agreement. I’m hoping that I’ve misinterpreted it, but am having trouble reading it any other way. Has anybody else had an issue with the Intellectual Property Rights section of this agreement?