Software Licencing & Intellectual Property
Information about Software Licencing and Intellectual Property
Software licencing and intellectual property is often a complicated and frequently overlooked aspect of website design and development.
What is Software Licencing?
It is extremely rare for you to actually own the software you are using. You don’t actually own the copy of the operating system you are currently using. What you actually own is a software licence. A software licence is a legal permission issued by the developer or publisher to use the software. The copyright and ownership of the intellectual property of the software remains with the developer. If you don’t have a licence, then you are in breach of copyright and are engaged in theft of intellectual property.
Software licences are also used in website development. Apart from very basic examples, most websites use some form of programming library, component or functionality that has been developed by someone else. If, and when these components are used, they are used under licence.
Calzada Libraries and Components
Nearly all of our websites include a software library or component developed by us. These components include common functionality – like email sending – that it is used across multiple websites.
Even with our Bespoke Websites, the ownership of the intellectual property for these Calzada libraries and components remains with Calzada Media Limited. Whenever we use a library, we issue a lifetime licence for the component solely for use with the customer’s website.
3rd Party Libraries & Components
A third party library or component is a reusable software component that typically provides commonly used functionality like form handling or image manipulation. Using 3rd party components often save considerable amount of development time. There is no need to design, development and test functionality as that has already been done for you.
Many of our websites use 3rd party libraries and components. Typical examples are ckEditor Rich Text Editor or jQuery. We always disclose which 3rd party components we use in a website, and in some circumstances it is a requirement of the
Irrespective of which libraries are used, ownership of their intellectual property remains with their original publisher and/or developer. Their use with any website is done in strict accordance with their respective licence.
Camino CMS
A good proportion of our content managed websites are powered by our own content management system, Camino. With Camino powered websites, we issue a licence for the lifetime of the website to use Camino.
Camino Licencing Information
TaxiOffice
As TaxiOffice is a subscription based service, we issue software licences that are valid from the start to end dates of each subscription period. If payment is required for a subscription, the licence is only valid if payment has been received in full.
TaxiOffice Licencing Information