Technology and Software Licensing Lawyer India

Most businesses now run on software: operations systems, ticketing and booking platforms, connected devices, analytics tools and customer-facing apps. Sport now runs on software too: officiating, ticketing, wearables, performance analytics and fan platforms are woven into how every league, club and event functions day to day.

And in both cases, most of these contracts are signed without anyone asking the two questions that matter most. The licence terms decide who owns the resulting data, and who carries the risk when the system fails at the worst possible moment. A stadium full of people and a broadcast deadline that doesn't move, or a product launch, a trading window, or a peak sales day for anyone else. We negotiate those terms before they're needed, not after a vendor's outage becomes your crisis.

In practice, this starts at procurement, reviewing vendor proposals and licence terms so a client knows what it's agreeing to before signature, not after an issue surfaces. From there, we negotiate the three things that matter most: data ownership, including who owns raw feeds versus anything derived or aggregated from them, since that's where most long-term commercial value sits and where standard vendor contracts are usually silent or one-sided; operational terms that hold up when something goes wrong mid-season or mid-event, such as uptime tied to the window that actually matters and remedies with real teeth, not a delayed fee credit; and the compliance layer underneath it all, ensuring vendor agreements carry data protection obligations consistent with the client's own statutory duties, alongside open-source and IP indemnity review.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, and the Rules notified in November 2025 have brought privacy under a single law. Compliance is being rolled out in stages: the basic procedural provisions are already in force, consent manager registration follows in November 2026, and the main obligations i.e., how data must be handled, when a breach must be reported, what security measures are required, and extra protections for children's data, become mandatory in May 2027. Federations, academies and platforms that wait until then to start will be trying to fix years of existing data practices under deadline pressure, all at once. The organisations that start now, treating May 2027 as a deadline to build toward rather than a date to worry about later, are the ones that will actually be ready when it arrives.

• Software licence, SaaS and subscription agreements
• Technology procurement for leagues, federations, clubs and venues
• Data ownership, derived data and analytics rights
• Development, integration, hosting and maintenance agreements
• Service levels, uptime commitments and remedies for failure during live events
• Open source review and intellectual property indemnity negotiation
• Gap assessments, data mapping and compliance programmes for federations, clubs, leagues and platforms
• Privacy notices, consent architecture and consent manager readiness
• Website and app privacy policies, cookie policies and terms of use
• Children’s data and academy compliance, including verifiable parental consent
• Handling of athlete health, biometric and whereabouts data
• Data processing and vendor agreements, back to back obligations and audit rights
• Breach response, notification and regulatory engagement
• Cross border transfer analysis
• Intermediary compliance