More on using other people’s work
I’ve written before on the topic of using other people’s work as the basis for your contracts.
Google apparently didn’t learn that they need to not necessarily borrow from themselves, either, for the EULA related to Google’s new browser, Chrome.
But the bigger issue in this new EULA from Google were the terms itself. Specifically, the license for Google’s new browser states/d, in part, that Google will have “a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute” anything displayed through the browser.
Woah!
At least they’ve changed it. But the fact that it got in there at all is problematic.
Google, for their part, blames it on a copy/paste error… that it was erroneously inserted to make it similar to their usual language, to “keep things simple for their users”.
Um… sure. 
The Licensing Handbook Blog is the companion site to the Software Licensing Handbook. Covering licensing topics on a regular basis, Jeffrey Gordon attempts to offer advice, add humor and sometimes even a bit of wit to a practice that most people find abhorrent – namely, reading a contract from start to finish.
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