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Can you help me with my software licensing question?

We are a small but global group of companies. We have an office in the USA and we have a dollar account. How legal is it to buy USA softawe for use in the USA and UK? We use Citrix XenApp/Terminal Server so it's all rather grey to start with.

Primarily, it's Adobe software which for reasons better known to Adobe (greed?) costs the same in dollars as UK pounds. So you can buy Adobe Master Collection for $2,499 but it costs the same in pounds - but import would be be nearly £1,000 cheaper.

Cheers, Rob.

Community
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Rob Nicholson
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6 Answers6

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The most restrictive export laws that I've seen is centered around strong encryption. The US Government doesn't want strong encryption to get to the wrong place.

Take a look over here for an interesting overview.

Jack M.
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It depends on the software and the license agreements, but it many cases it is legal. Similar to you, we have offices in many countries and often we make our purchases in the US due to the lower cost.

I can't comment on importing specifically to the UK though.

Doug Luxem
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I'm UK based, it's legal so long as you pay import duty and VAT on the software.

Chopper3
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In Ireland, is is also legal to import US software. You just have to pay and duties and, of course, VAT.

fpmurphy
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Lots of software licences prohibit you from doing this. You need to check the individual licence because breaching the terms is as bad as using a pirate copy.

The typical Adobe licence has no further restrictions than the standard US export banned countries.

http://www.adobe.com/products/eulas/

Also bear in mind that you may have activation/support/content issues with it being out of its natural region. They are not always identical worldwide.

JamesRyan
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Will you be running the app on Citrix XenApp/TS? where is that system based? in the US/UK or both?

Paying import duty and VAT will usually not bring the Adobe software anywhere close to the same cost as the UK edition, but if your running it on a Citrix/TS server (or virtual desktop) located in the US then you can avoid that all together

Ryan Coates
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