Different licensing situations in software development - Part 4

In previous posts (licensing situations in software), I have talked about how not licensing any sort of stuff not owned by you can cause a lot of problems. This can be when you are using software that is not owned by your company (and for which you have not taken the license to use within your software), or when you are using content such as images that does not belong to you. Another great example is when you use quotes / sections from books / parts of poems that do not belong to you (which can happen if you are developing a software that does some sort of word processing / helps in the creative process / have a website that provides some sort of content (such as a site that provides you electronic greeting cards)). All these cases lead you towards violation of somebody else's ownership and possible legal action against you.
If you think that this is not serious, consider the following cases:
Claims by Microsoft (link). These claims are from Microsoft against Open Source software.
Action against Microsoft (link). This was a judgment against Microsoft by a judge for the incorporation of some software.
These are big cases, but there are smaller cases that happen all the time, where companies have to pay damages because they are using some components for which the licensing is not proper. So, you need to ensure that any component that you integrate, or any content owner by others that you integrate, all needs to be thought through and part of a strategy.
Well, this is enough for this post, will write more on this topic in the next post.