Selling a software as “standard software” or “software product” raises justified customer expectation concerning software quality and future releases, which – if not met – often end up hotly disputed in courts of law. This presentation will present typical court cases concerning software products, their technical root causes and the current guidelines for court appointed experts to assess these types of disputes. The presentation closes with specific advice to software product managers.

Dr. Oliver Stiemerling is publicly certified and sworn expert for information systems and has served in several hundred German and international court cases as technical expert witness. He is also the editor of the series “examination guidelines for information systems” published by the IT subgroup of the German federal association of publicly certified and sworn expert witnesses and has co-authored the examination guideline “Standard Software”. He wrote his PhD thesis about customizing technologies for standard software and designed several software products.