Just been having some more fun reading the supplier contract from Sun Microsystems. Here's my favourite clause to-date:
4.3 Effectuating License. Subcontractor hereby grants Sun a fully paid-up, worldwide, non-terminable, unrestricted Intellectual Property Rights license in perpetuity to use, make, have made, offer to sell, sell, reproduce, make derivative works of, display, modify, distribute, assign, disclose and sublicense through multiple tiers of distribution, both directly and indirectly through third parties, any material or Intellectual Property Right which is necessary for Sun's full and unrestricted enjoyment or utilization of the Developed Property, Derivative Matter or results of the Services. The foregoing license rights are also granted with respect to any Developed Property where Subcontractor's assignment under Section 4.1 is precluded by law or is otherwise ineffective.
Obviously, other items in the contract have some effect on this clause, but what's so funny is that the clause is deeply viral. Although the clause is deeply viral, they then go to the somewhat absurd lengths to also include anything in section 4.1 (which by default is already included).
For example, the stuff we developed for Sun requires Confluence, Theme Builder and Community Bubbles. That one clause, if we were stupid enough to sign the contract, would effectively give Sun the full IPR to our plugins. Hrm... Let me think about that for a picosecond...
Unfortunately, for these large technology companies, this seems to be the norm. By default they try to screw you over. I would have expected Sun to differentiate themselves from the Microsoft crowd.
