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From: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Liability
Message-ID: <1181@eosp1.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Oct-84 18:29:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: eosp1.1181
Posted: Tue Oct 16 18:29:38 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Oct-84 06:35:17 EDT
References: <12818@sri-arpa.UUCP> <58300003@uo-vax1.UUCP>
Reply-To: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison)
Organization: Exxon Office Systems, Princeton
Lines: 29

[I'm not a lawyer but I think that:]

The contract terms of sale for an expert system should also be a factor
in determining the systems liability.  I imagine that the vendor of
an expert system would include a strong statement that recommendations
of the system must be interpreted by the customer in every case
to determine reasonability, with the final determination being the sole
responsibility of the customer.  The vendor would probably restrict
carefully the area of expertise that in which the system could be
trusted, and might void even those recommendations as soon as a
customer "customized" his machine.  Finally, the vendor would also
state that he was not liable for any legal problems arising out of
recommendations by the system.

It is possible that in a competitive market, some vendors would not be
able to sell a system with such restrictions, but this is routinely
done for most types of software.

In some cases, the courts will void such [lack of] warranties, and
hold the vendor responsible;  in other cases, the vendor's restrictions
will stand.  When the vendor is able to limit his liability, he might
still be responsbile for problems arising due to vendor negligence,
or the failure of the product to perform in a way that any sensible
person would think was a reasonable minimum of capability.

	- Toby Robison (not Robinson!)
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