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Computer software can play an important role in a whole variety of legal relations. In these relations many different persons can be distinguished with unique sets of rights and obligations. Software usually acts as an object of the relationship, but we cannot deny the possibility it would adopt a position of another basic element.

Defining Software Law

Software Law can hardly be considered a separate legal discipline. It might be much rather characterized as a set of legal relationships in which software appears as a key element. The legal disciplines with the greatest impact on Software Law are probably commercial Law, Intellectual Property Law and ICT Law. But almost any other legal discipline may be considered as having at least some minor implications on Software Law legal relations. From those we should definitely mention Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and Public Administration Law.

Most Important Areas of Software Law

Altough it is almost impossible to charactrize the whole scope of the legal areas important from the point of view of Software Law, we may highlight the most significant areas:

Software protection - since software often represents an object of high economic value, a necessity to protect the economic interests of its owner has arisen. Lively debates concerning the legal protection of software make the topic one of the most discussed issue of Software Law. 

Software development - sometimes extremely costly process of software development requires detailed contractual regulation. The issue of know-how and trade secret protection can also be subsumed to the particular area.

Software distribution - a majority of software is being created in order to bring some profit to the owner. Therefore it needs to be distributed to the customers. During the process large number of legal relations is formed.

Software maintenance - after it has been distributed there is still need to make some effort in order to keep software functional. This area includes bug fixing, updating, software reinstalling etc. The rights and obligations of the involved parties would be mostly regulated by the contractual provisions.

Consumer protection - nowadays software is a quite common article intended to be sold to a large number of consumers. With no doubt the consumer protection regulations apply for these legal relationships as well. 

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