Consuming a copyright WSDL

[kendolondon]

I have a bit of a legal question... I'm being asked by a customer to interface to a third party vendors web services and I've been provided with a set of WSDL files carrying that third parties copyright notice.

Now, I happen to know that the 3rd party expects the customer to pay a hefty license fee for each system that they hook up via these web services and I also know the customer has no intention of paying them (the customer takes the view that, when they were sold the web services module, for a very significant amount of money, there was no indication that there was a restriction on it's use!)

So, to my question - am I opening myself to a claim of copyright infringement were I to use these WSDL files to build an interface to the web services? Am I effectively including third party copyright material within my application?

I'm concerned because both my company and the 3rd party vendor are based in the UK whereas the customer is in the Far East. If the 3rd party decided to get letigious about it, it'd be a hell of a lot easier to come after me in the UK courts!!!

[Arjay]

I would have your company contact the 3rd party's legal department to determine your company's liability.

I suspect that what your customer is attempting to do would be in violation of their agreement.

If this is true, I would inform the customer that I would be unable to continue the project until the legal issues are resolved.

Of course this will probably make your customer mad, so even if they work out the legal issues with the 3rd party, they may not want to do business with you again.

That's okay, because there are worse things than not doing business with a dishonest party - like being in court because of doing business with a dishonest party.