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Legal Issues Concerning Intellectual Property Rights

Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2011 10:21 pm
by Martin Ryan
What This Post Is NOT About: This post in no way seeks to stifle discussion about the future direction that TM1 or any other software tools or services should take, speculation on such issues or legitimate criticisms of them.

What This Post IS About: Protection of legitimate intellectual property rights and contracts held by IBM or any other software suppliers, contractors or producers.

This post seeks to set out and clarify the policies that apply to posts in this Forum in respect of those rights.

Discussion Of Beta Projects
Please do not discuss Beta or other pre-release copies of the software that you have seen, unless the viewing was at a public demonstration. Information relating to such releases is typically covered by a non-disclosure agreement which is legally binding. Any such posts will be removed from public view, at least until the information concerned is in the public domain. Again this does not cover things that might be in a future release, only things that have been seen via an NDA.

Requests For Passwords, Etc
Any requests for passwords to web sites, archive files, software applications, etcetera (other than the default one for the TM1 sample applications (which is in the manual anyway) or ones which are otherwise in the public domain) will be removed. Anyone who replies posting such passwords, without having legal authority to do so, may at the discretion of the administrators have their accounts suspended or deleted. This would not be done lightly or as a first resort, however.

Requests For Sample, Materials, Etc
Similarly, posts which either ask for or upload software, documents, or other materials which are not openly available but which normally require a password supplied by the creator / distributor of the materials will be deleted, and may result in a suspension of the poster's account.

Liability For Breaches
Liability for any breach of contract or other legal breach rests with the person who made the post. None of the administrators or any of the Forum sponsors will be held responsible for such breaches.

Reporting Breaches
If you are a software supplier who believes that a post has been in breach of these policies, please do NOT contact the Forum sponsors who have no say over what is posted in the Forum. There is a link to The (Admin) Team on the front page of the forum; it's best to contact one or more of the administrators listed on that page. The issue will be dealt with as soon as possible after it is received.

Rights Run Both Ways
(This clarification was posted on 18-Feb-13)
The fact that something (including but not limited to techniques and code) has been published in this Forum does not remove the author's rights under the various copyright laws. There is an implied right to use posted content at the reader's own workplace, but unless the original author has specified otherwise such content may not be appropriated and incorporated into commercial products, including web sites. It certainly may not be appropriated, modified in some minor way, and re-posted as the work of another individual, firm or company. This includes individuals posting on the web site of their employer, however large that employer may be.

On behalf of the Admin team.