I'd like to make some general points with but no specific comments with regards to Reuters.

Unless someone writes a piece of software specifically for you on a bespoke basis it is highly unlikely that it will be sold to you. An unencumbered sale would imply a transfer of all rights which would mean you could do what you like with it (including selling copies on to others at whatever price you fancied) and the original owner would no longer have any rights to develop, use or sell the software. It is possible to buy a copy of software in a manner which gives both parties continuing rights to develop, use and sell the software. Typically this happens between software houses where one party wishes to develop the software for a particular market of no interest to the original owner or include it as part of a bigger system. Often such sales contain some ongoing restrictions on both parties (although this is legally difficult under European law)  but generally both parties can do what they like in the medium term.

I would be extremely surprised to learn that Prit Sells his software.

Most software (including, freeware, shareware and commercial software) is provided under licence. The most permissive licences apply to freeware for example the GNU public licence (as used for Linux) which provides access to source code and allows ongoing development and distribution but which still provides some protection of the original authors intellectual property rights and restricts the commercial exploitation of the software.

The most permissive commercial licences (and the most common) are perpetual and transferable. You have the right to use the version you bought for as long as you want and you can sell your licence transferring  your  rights to others.

In a specialist market like GP computing where suppliers don't want competitors to obtain a legitimate copy of their software and they have some reasonable prospect of achieving this licences are often non-transferable.

It is also common in the GP market for licences to be time limited (typically annual) with the licence renewal being linked to payment of annual support fees.

The AAH Meditel licences for System 5 and System 6000 are perpetual but non-transferable. So we could not remove our software if you decided not to renew support. However, or software does include both the Read Codes and Multilex drug data which are subject to an annual licence so if you stop paying support to us you would have to make independent arrangements to continue to use Read and Drug data (which on an individual basis will cost your more than your are likely to be willing to pay). Most suppliers systems, including Prit's, contain one or both of these items and some systems have other third party components which are subject to time limited licences so in practice your right to use your GP system software stops if you fail to renew your support contract.
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Ewan Davis
AAH Meditel - Voice +44 (1) 527 579414 Fax +44(1)527 837287
Email [log in to unmask] also at [log in to unmask]


-----Original Message-----
From:	Ahmad Risk [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:	Saturday, July 04, 1998 5:44 PM
To:	GP-UK; [log in to unmask]
Subject:	Re: vamp

On Sat, 4 Jul 98 15:18 BST-1, Dr Nicholas Robinson wrote:

>well i've finally terminated my contract with vamp.
>
>they are threatening to send round an engineer to remove my manuals and wipe my discs - can they do this
>
>is it legal??

Yes.  They own the software,  you don't,  you only have 'licence' to
use.  They will regard the manuals and the software on the discs as
their property and must be removed as they are 'commercially sensitive
information'.

They cannot just go in any odd time they like.  They must give you
notice that allows you to prepare and extract the patient data.

If the disks are yours,  don't let them have them as even after
formatting a HDD,  data can remain!

Make sure that you have your replacement system well and truly in
place,  functioning and everybody is trained before you finally pull
the plug on the old system.

I am in the middle of this process now.  Ended the Vision contract, 
installing Prit's PMP system,  converting data and tarining the staff. 
Hoping to go live next week and it's final curtain for Vision.

Prit actually sells you the system.  It's yours!  You don't get any of
this nonsense.

If anybody wants to see it in action,  call me :-)

Ahmad


________________________________________

Dr Ahmad Risk
http://mednetics.org
home: +44 1273 748198
work: +44 1737 240022
fax:  +44 1737 244660




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