united-states
Is accepting an EULA considered binding, if I am an employee testing a company product?
<p>I work as a software engineer and the product I work on displays an EULA the first time it starts. Due to the nature of the job, we have to reinstall it on a somewhat regular basis - so this happens fairly frequently.</p>

<p>The software, however, will not function if the license has not been accepted (no surprise there). This means I <em>have</em> to accept the license in order to do the job.</p>

<p>Then, under these circumstances, is my acceptance of the software EULA considered legally binding?</p>

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<p><strong>Edit for clarity:</strong> I develop the software whose EULA is in question, and I am directly employed by the copyright holder of said software (and the second party to the EULA). I'm not <em>concerned</em> about anything nefarious happening (I wouldn't stay very long at a company where I feel like I have to watch my back) - this was simply a matter of curiosity that struck me this morning while I was reinstalling an instance of the product.</p>

<p>The question is a bit sparse on relevant details, but yes, a EULA is binding, even when you agree in the course of employment. It may not be you who is bound, though. In case 1, you install a program at word to do something, the EULA says "don't copy any of these files", you see a cool file and decide "Neat, I'm taking a copy home. I can do this because I installed the program at work and am not bound by the EULA". Wrong. Case 2: you are installing software on behalf of a customer. It's not you that is bound by the EULA, it's the customer. Case 3: you work for the company that develops the software and holds the copyright, either fixing bugs or testing the security of the system by trying to crack it. In that case, you have special permission from the copyright holder that overrides whatever restrictions would normally from from the EULA. I don't know if that covers the kind of case you are concerned with. To reduce the matter to a simple sentence, just because you agree to something in the course of a job does not mean that the agreement is invalid. </p>

<p>If you are the QA (Quality Assurance) engineer at your company, whose job it is to test that the "Accept" and "Reject" buttons for accepting the EULA of your company works, then by pressing these buttons you are not accepting or rejecting the EULA, but you are testing that the buttons work. </p>

<p>Imagine you were a web developer for a company selling cars, and the website allows customers to order cars by clicking on the right buttons. And you have to make sure that these buttons work. When you as the developer of the website or as the QA engineer click on the "buy" button you are not buying a car, you are developing and testing the website. </p>

<p>Obviously this is a very special situation. </p>
