software, united-kingdom, insurance, liability-insuranceWould a startup selling software as a service require public liability / other related insurance?
For example, if server outages made the service unavailable and a customer decided to sue for loss of earnings, would the company be liable? If so, would public liability insurance cover this?
Is there any form of liability insurance for this type of scenario?
I think most service providers, instead of paying for insurance, address this issue by including something like the following in their Terms of Service:
XXX will use reasonable efforts to ensure that the Network and Services are available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. However, there will be occasions when the Network and/or Services will be interrupted for maintenance, upgrades and repairs or due to failure of telecommunications links and equipment. Every reasonable step will be taken by XXX to minimize such disruption where it is within XXX's reasonable control.
You agree that neither XXX nor the Network will be liable in any event to You or any other party for any suspension, modification, discontinuance or lack of availability of the Network, the service, any Subscriber Content, or other Content.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.