The Legal Liability Of Software Defects

In the information age which is basis of the Internet and computers, there is a largenumber of productions and consumption of the software, whose main content areintelligence and information. And the software is becoming a new-styled transactionobject in the market. The emergence of big data dues to the development of computertechnology and popularization of the Internet, and the big data is collected, transmittedand stored by the software which is as a port. These datum contain a lot of people’spersonal information such as property, privacy, behavior trajectories. However, the useof the software tends to be not only technological but dangerous as well. Once defect isfound in the product and cause damages, it will be catastrophic to influence the users,the social and even the country. In the early age, all counties protect the software as akind of intellectual property and give it intellectual property rights, because thedevelopment of technology is encouraged. But the software is regarded as “special kindof products” strictly. With the development of commodity economy, the need ofprotecting the lawful rights and interests of users from the perspective of "productliability" becomes more and more urgently. This "product liability" is different fromproduct liability in the product liability law; the legal liability of software defects is aspecial tort, and it has its own liability principle, components, and exemptions and soon.This paper develops upon the background of the development of knowledge-basedeconomy and the emergence of hi-tech social risks, and is divided into five parts todiscuss the legal liability of software defects. The first part discusses about thedefinition, classification, legal protection, product attributes and defects of software.Then through a comparison among the software, common products and intellectualproducts, the second part elaborates on the legal nature of the legal liability of softwaredefects. The three part advances the principle of the legal liability of software defects bylearning from foreign related theory and comparing to product responsibility principle.The fourth part discusses the cognizance of software defects, damages and theirscausation in the law. The last part is analyzing subject of liability, exemptions and theways to take responsibility of making tort. In a word, this paper is analyzing the legalliability of software defects learn from the United States, Europe and other countries ofintellectual products infringement judicial precedent, and combined with the comparison of the basic theory of product liability. At the same, the author hopes to putsforward some Suggestions to the basic problems of the legal liability of softwaredefects.