Software and IT

Providing legal services to the Software and IT industry requires lawyers with an in-depth understanding of the technical processes and jargon in this dynamic field. At Williams + Hughes, our lawyers have this understanding and the legal expertise to provide effective advice at each stage of a company’s development.

This includes: 

• Drafting, negotiating and advising on a wide range of licence related agreements including:
  • licence agreements/EULA's
  • reseller and distribution agreements
  • maintenance, support and service level agreements
  • subscription and SaaS agreements
  • hosting agreements
  • cloud agreements
  • website and app T&C's
  • NFT licence agreement and minting agreements
  • NFT trading platform T&C's
• Advising on termination of licence provisions
• Advising in relation licence compliance and software licence audits
• Advising on warranties (including exclusions and liability limitations)
• Advising software and mobile app start-ups in relation to business structuring, shareholder agreements, terms and conditions, fundraising documents, commercialisation agreements, distribution, branding and licensing agreements
• Advising on software development agreements
• Reviewing and advising on IT procurement contracts including maintenance, support and service level agreements, subscription agreements, hosting agreements, cloud agreements, IT procurement contracts, and e-commerce transactions

Our significant experience includes:

Mergers and acquisitions

• Advised sellers of Tier 1 mining and energy software company, including negotiating settlement of pre-existing IP claims against business, advising on IP and IT warranties and indemnities
• Acting for buyer of Titan Digital and Titan Brand marketing businesses (120 staff across Australia and South Africa), including all sale and related transaction documents
• Advised sellers of Orelogy, a leading Western Australian mining software company, in  relation to sale to to one of world’s largest mining and mapping software companies, including tidying up pre-sale IP ownership
• Acted for sellers of Conducive, a leading Western Australian systems integrator, selling to ASX listed Empired
• Advised buyer of Fastvue, a Silicon valley based software business, including reviewing IP ownership arrangements
• Acted for buyer of minority shareholders in Bang Online! business
• Acted for seller of HPC Data Centres to ASX listed Amcom
• Advising Perth based software company on acquisition of software product/platform from international oil and gas company

Procurement advice

• Successfully advised large agribusiness in relation to moving from in-house IT solution to Telstra hosted Cloud environment (production, disaster recovery, backup)
• Prepared procurement contracts for a multinational IT equipment and services company in relation to the upgrade of its data centres in Perth, Melbourne and Western Sydney
• Advising ASX listed property company in relation to terms of Microsoft Dynamics enterprise software licence
• Reviewing standard form procurement contracts offered by BHP, Rio Tinto and FMG
• Advising several large companies in relation to cloud deployments of enterprise software, including reviewing IT procurement and software maintenance and support contracts

Contract advice

• Prepared suite of software licencing, maintenance and support (including service level) contracts for Tier 1 mining and energy software vendor
• Advising on the intellectual property aspects of licensing arrangements of a major Australian wine producer
• Prepared suite of software licencing, maintenance and support agreements for spatial software developer (Australia and USA)
• Advised large private industrial company in relation to Oracle software licence audit, including compliance with licensing terms and challenging licence fees demanded for virtual machines and multiple software instances
• Acting for an ISP based in Geraldton who has branched into Perth with wireless wifi service
• Prepared numerous other companies regarding software license agreements, distribution agreements, reseller agreements, EUSLAs, support and maintenance and service level agreements (including SaaS and Cloud Agreements), consulting contracts, etc
• Prepared numerous website and app T&C's
• Prepared NFT licence and minting agreements and NFT trading platform T&C's
• Advised in relation to cryptocurrency issues and Mt Gox Rehabilitation Trustee claims