Customization

Customization is a product specially developed to the customer’s wishes. In ICT law it is relevant whether something concerns custom work or standard work because different rules sometimes apply to custom work.

Legal consequences are for example important when a consumer buys a product “remotely”. Normally, the consumer then has a period of fourteen days within which she can revoke/dissolve the agreement. There are a number of exceptions to this, including when the product is custom-made (for example, custom-made curtains).

Even if a party requests the source code of certain software, it is important whether this concerns standard software or custom software. The judge will be more inclined to assign the source code to the customer of the software if it concerns custom software. After all, the supplier of the software has less interest in retaining the source code, because the source code cannot be used for other parties and therefore has less economic value.