Don't Be Gentle It's A Rental – Or Isn't It? Correctly Classifying An IT Service In A Contract

This is also because when creating the Austrian General Civil Code ("ABGB") the legislator wasn't thinking about the 21^st century software industry with SaaS, ASP, PaaS or IaaS contracts. In most jurisdictions, including Austria, there is generally no legally regulated contract type obligation.

This makes it tricky in the software sector, because the core of every IT contract is first and foremost to identify the specific good or service owed, describe it in detail, and classify it legally under the correct contract type. Only then can the resulting legal consequences be contractually regulated. In practice, this poses a great challenge to entrepreneurs, customers and lawyers.