Protect your business against IP infringement claims

The Ubuntu Assurance from Canonical covers your business for claims of intellectual property infringements arising from your use of Ubuntu. The Ubuntu Assurance is included in Canonical Support contracts for eligible customers. This offering is designed to safeguard your business and make deploying Ubuntu even easier through warranties from Canonical and an indemnification offering.

Our assurances

Throughout the open source world, all possible care is taken to respect intellectual property rights. In the unlikely event of an intellectual property issue in Ubuntu, Canonical will replace or modify the infringing portion of the software so that it becomes non-infringing, or obtain the rights for you to continue using the software.

While respecting the importance of intellectual property rights, Canonical believes that software patents stifle the innovation that makes the open source world thrive, and unnecessarily cast a shadow of doubt and fear over the Linux community. Canonical is a member of the leading collaborative patent pool, the Open Innovation Network. As a member of the OIN, Canonical pledges not to assert its patents against Linux. Additionally, this network of companies provides a patent pool as a defensive measure against attack. Canonical joined the OIN in April 2007.

Indemnification

In order to allow you to deploy Ubuntu without complicated legal concerns, Canonical will assume your legal defence, pay all legal defence costs, and pay any resulting damages judgement or settlement, for any claim brought against you worldwide by any third party for alleged intellectual property rights infringement due to your use of Ubuntu software provided to you under certain Canonical Services and Support agreements. Intellectual property rights include patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secret.

This indemnification is not applicable to users of Ubuntu who do not have a specific agreement in place with Canonical covering their usage of Ubuntu.

Aggregate indemnity payments made to you will be capped at the lesser of $2.0 million, or 200% of your aggregate spending with Canonical in the 12 months preceding the date a claim is first brought against you.

If Canonical believes, or it is determined through adjudication, that any part of the software as distributed to you by Canonical violates a third party’s intellectual property rights, Canonical will provide you with a functionally equivalent non-infringing substitute at no cost, or refund 100% of what you have paid Canonical for Services and Support in the preceding 12 months.

Accepting Ubuntu Indemnification requires you to formally accept the Responsibilities and Terms and Conditions below. You are not required to accept Ubuntu Indemnification when you obtain services and support from Canonical.

Your responsibilities

You must have purchased a minimum of $15,000 in Canonical Services and Support during the twelve month period preceding any claim against you.

You must maintain at least the same level of Canonical Services and Support you have in place at the time a claim is brought, while that claim is pending.

You must notify Canonical in writing within thirty days after you receive notice of a claim under this indemnification, must allow Canonical sole control of the defence and any settlement negotiations, and must provide Canonical all the information, authority, and ongoing assistance it needs to effectively defend or settle the claim.

At the time you accept this indemnification, you must not already be in litigation with, or have received notice of alleged infringement from, a party against whom you seek indemnification. Indemnification will not cover counter-claims brought against you in response to litigation initiated by you. Indemnification will not cover punitive damages for wilful or intentional acts on your part.

To remain under this indemnification, you may not modify the software provided by Canonical. You may not combine the indemnified software with other software or services that you offer for license or resale. The indemnification is provided only to you, and may not be resold or transferred if you redistribute Ubuntu to other users.

If at any time Canonical offers to provide you with an updated version of the software modified to reduce or eliminate the likelihood of infringement of third-party rights (a “non-infringing substitute”), you must implement the new version, and cease all use of previous version(s), within thirty days of receiving notice from Canonical of the new version’s availability.