IT students may assume that lawsuits have nothing to do with them. However, that is not the case. As a programmer, you should know that some things could put you at risk of litigation one day. To avoid this, you should get familiar with potential lawsuit areas. This article will explore four of these areas. Keep in mind that this is a brief explanation, and you should read more about these issues.
Legal students are not the only ones who should care for the legal system. In addition to reading essay examples and working on their academic skills, many students, programmers included, should also get familiar with it. Browsing Writix and other legal websites can help get a better understanding of the laws of the European Union. So, what European laws are important for all developers to know?
Contractual Issues
Once you finish your education and become a full-fledged developer, know that you could get into contractual issues. If projects carried out by consultancy fall behind the deadline, you would have a problem. Similarly, if the project failed to provide what had been promised, it could put you in legal hot water.
Another example is when a service provider with an SLA, or service level agreement, misses that SLA once too many times. Many of these contracts state explicit penalties. For instance, you could end up refunding money. Alternatively, your customer would not be obligated to meet early termination fees.
When you become involved in a project with a contract included, you and your team need a clear understanding of the contract’s implications. That way, you will avoid getting behind schedule and comply with other things defined in the contract.
Data Storage Problems
Another thing you should learn on time as a student is concerned with potential data storage issues. If writing a SaaS (Software as a Service) application, it goes without saying that you take partial responsibility for that data. Therefore, the rightful owner could sue you if the application gets lost, damaged, or accessed by another party.
Even if your clients put data in your system which shouldn’t be there, you could end up in a pickle. You may receive a call from lawyers. In another scenario, you would need to deal with law enforcement officials. Although your terms of service get you some legal cover, this problem could still happen. It is better to get familiar with rules on time rather than learn your lesson this way.
Also, keep in mind that you need to use protection methods so that no account would succeed in accessing another account’s data. Thus, you need to use encryption to secure any sensitive data. Moreover, you should employ an SSL, or secure sockets layer, when transmitting important data.
Last but not least, you need to know the relevant laws concerned with subpoenas and similar. That way, should you be asked to give out user data, you know your legal obligations.
Patent Violations
Another lawsuit that you as an IT student could be facing someday is concerned with patent violations. Not to mention that the number of lawsuits regarding patent violations has risen during this decade.
As patent waters can be tricky, you need to be very careful. If you are engaging in something that is seemingly unique in your space, the first thing to do is check for existing patents. You could also get in touch with a patent attorney. Note that if you are trying to apply a well-established algorithm, it is possible that a deep patent coverage already exists.
Copyright Issues
Once you complete four academic years and find a job, you should be careful not to make mistakes with copyrights. Programmers get into hot water due to patent and copyright violations most frequently. Although open source software has contributed to business immensely, some developers with no firm understanding of the licenses end up having these issues.
To avoid copyright problems, it is necessary to fully grasp licensing as well as the copyright of anything present in your application. That applies to graphics and code copied from the Web. Even though somebody posted it on the Internet, it doesn’t mean it is public domain.
Conclusion
To sum up, EU law is not something that just law students need to be familiar with. Knowing the laws helps other students to avoid undesirable situations in the future. Therefore, it is in their interest to get to know potential lawsuits depending on their field of work. When it comes to IT students, they need to inform themselves about four potential lawsuit areas. These have to do with copyrights, contracts, patents, and data storage.
If developers violate a contract agreement, get the application damaged, or similar, they’ll have to deal with the lawsuit. Therefore, it is important to be aware of potential issues and avoid them before it is too late.
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