SaaS and software products
Companies selling software or platforms to businesses or consumers.
In short
If you sell software to other businesses, your customer contract and your data processing terms carry most of the legal weight.
A software company sells a service that its customers build their own operations on. That makes the customer contract the most important document in the business: it sets out what the product must do, how reliably it must do it, and what happens when it falls short.
Enterprise customers read these contracts closely. Before signing, most will ask for a master services agreement, a service level agreement, a data processing agreement and a completed security questionnaire. Answers given at this stage become contractual promises, so they need to match how the product is hosted and supported.
A software company also handles personal data on its customers' behalf, which usually makes it a data processor under the DPDP Act. And because software is written by employees, contractors and open-source contributors, investors and acquirers will want proof that the company owns the code it sells.
What usually comes up
- Master services agreements and SLAs that match what the infrastructure can deliver
- Data processing terms and enterprise security questionnaires
- Open-source licences and ownership of code
- Data processing agreements and standard contractual clauses from EU and UK customers
Under the DPDP Act
Customers remain answerable for what their processors do with personal data, so they will ask for contract terms on security, breach notice and deletion when the contract ends.
What our work involves
- Drafting MSAs, order forms and SLAs, with a negotiation playbook for enterprise deals
- Data processing agreements and answers to customer security questionnaires
- Open-source reviews and assignments of code from employees and contractors
- DPDP compliance for personal data processed on behalf of customers
Related areas of work
- Subscription and cloud agreements
- Commercial contracts and review
- Data protection and privacy
- Intellectual property and software licensing
- International and cross-border work
- Product and technology counsel