Legal restrictions on automating software via RPA

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

More and more software companies update their user's agreements, in particular include paragraphs which contain prohibitions on using RPA technology (or other software which imitates human actions). In this regard, how do you cope with it? We see this as a real threat to RPA, all benefits of this technology eliminated by such agreements (extra costs, etc.).

Thanks.

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Anton Sauchyk
Senior RPA Analyst
EY
Europe/Minsk
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[VivekGoel]

RPA as I see is more and more valuable to enterprises. Any Enterprise, which procures any software may have their different T&Cs. 

Now If I as an Org, as bought any software, I have absolute right to use any technology that I wish to get maximum benefit out of it. My T&C are limited to not tinkering/re-distributing the source code. 

If it's about publicly hosted websites/apps, then I as an org has no control over it and I have to obey the T&C's and that's where captcha and other bot detection techniques come into picture.



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Vivek Goel
"If you like this post, please press the "Recommend" Button.
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[DaveMorris]

I haven't seen a user agreement prohibit the use of RPA technology specifically, and I would be curious to see that. I would think that wording against RPA or bots in general is primarily to keep people from using it wrongly. For a long time, CAPTCHAs have been around to keep bots from doing nefarious activities. But I cannot imagine that a software company would actually be attempting to stop an organization from automating the UI of that app if it is being used in accordance with how the app is designed to be used.

I suspect that in many cases if you were to reach out to that software company, you may be able to try getting your legal team and their legal team to draft up an agreement on how RPA will be used on that app. They may want to investigate the tool and get eyes on some use cases, but I have only seen or heard of great adoption by software companies for their UIs to be automated using an RPA tool. Think about it. They continue to have their tool used a lot, and then they effectively don't have to add APIs to their application. I suppose the cases I have dealt with and heard of could be in the minority.

Could you point to some specific pieces of software that prohibit RPA? I'm curious about the wording.

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Dave Morris
3Ci @ Southern Company
Atlanta, GA
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[Anonymous]

Hi Dave,

One of the examples: "You may not bypass the SOFTWARE's user interface that is provided with the SOFTWARE, or interact with the SOFTWARE by means of automation software including, but not limited to, scripts, bots, Robotic Process Automation software unless you have entered into a separate written agreement with COMPANY".

Yep, there's a lot of hype over great adoption, etc. But at the same time we see tendency that companies try to prevent using their software in RPA bots as it perhaps may decrease their sales because we can utilize only one license 24/7 without breaks instead of buying licenses for each human-user who works e.g. 5 days a week. At least it's just one of our ideas.


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Anton Sauchyk
Senior RPA Analyst
EY
Europe/Minsk
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[DaveMorris]

Ah, so actually I think that statement lines up with what I was hoping. The software company wants you to enter into an agreement with them about how RPA will be used on their software. They aren't looking to ruin RPA capability. That's very helpful to see. Thanks! I hadn't really considered the need to verify with a tool vendor, but this probably should be a standard practice when standing up RPA anywhere. It's also possible that these discussions do happen at a higher level and I just haven't been involved. I'm a low level guy. 😃

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Dave Morris
3Ci @ Southern Company
Atlanta, GA
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[PavelKrál]

Hi,

I have problems with this too. One customer portal has changed terms of use and they written there that using automation on human accounts is forbiden, to use automation you needs to meet a specific user name. So we need to contact them and let them create a special RPA account. In this case, it can be solved, but as well i just seen another customer implementing captcha so our RPA cant login. We will contact them and hopefully we will meet some agreement or solution.

Looks that with RPA, companies should start to check all legal agreements, terms of use, etc.

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Pavel Král
RPA Specialist
MANN+HUMMEL Service s.r.o
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