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How to Avert or Survive a Software Audit

By Richard Raysman and Peter Brown

[Ed. Note: One would expect law firms to consider it beneath them to deliberately have staff members ' or those of an ancillary business ' use illegal software copies. But the potentially high cost and embarrassment that can result from even tacitly permitting violations of software licenses should merit proactive attention by firm management.]

According to a report released earlier this year by the Business Software Alliance, one of every four business software applications installed in the United States is unlicensed, and thus a potential copyright infringement violation. Numbers like these have turned many businesses into targets of software audits in recent years, as software companies have made battling unlicensed software in the workplace a top priority. Armed with the threat of stiff penalties under the copyright law and backed by highly active trade groups, software vendors are increasingly making businesses aware of the unlicensed software problem, and requesting that businesses perform a 'software audit,' in which the trade group will use an express or implied threat of litigation to ask that a company submit to a determination of whether unlicensed software exists on its computer system.

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