A condensed version of this article appears as H.J. Onsrud, “Liability in the Use of GIS and Geographical
Datasets” in: P. Longley, M. Goodchild, D. Maguire, and D. Rhind (eds.), Geographical Information
Systems: Vol.2 Management Issues and Applications, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1999, pp. 643-652.
Liability in the use of geographic information systems and geographic
datasets
by Harlan J. Onsrud, Department of Spatial Information Science and Engineering, University of
Maine, Orono, Maine, 04469-5711, United States
(Research interests: legal, policy and institutional issues surrounding geographic information.
Telephone 207-581-2175; fax 207-581-2206, email onsrud@spatial.maine.edu)
1 Introduction1
Liability is a subject of great interest and concern in the geographic information system (GIS)
community. Use of GIS data and software inevitably results in some action or decision. If errors
or shortcomings have resulted in inappropriate actions or decisions and parties are harmed, the
specter of liability arises for dataset and software producers as well as for all other parties
involved in handling geographic information.
As a general proposition, legal liability for damages is a harm-based concept. For instance, those
who have been specifically hired to provide data for a database or those who are offering data for
sale to others are responsible for some level of competence in the performance of the service or
for some level of fitness in the product offered. If others are damaged by mistakes that a
producer should not have made or by inadequacies that should not have been allowed, the courts
have reasoned that producers should bear some responsibility for the damages. But for their
mistake or defective product, the damages would not have occurred. In commercial settings,
liability exposure often may be reduced through appropriate communications, contracts, and
business practices. However, liability exposure may never be eliminated completely. Nor as a
society would we want it to be. Modern societies generally support the proposition that
individuals and businesses should take responsibility for their actions if those actions have
unjustifiably caused harm to others.
However, the law does not require perfection. The law exists and responds to a realistic world.
No general purpose dataset will ever be complete for all potential purposes that users might
desire. Nor will the accuracy of data ever meet the needs of all conceivable uses. It is also
inevitable that errors and blunders will be contained in any practical database. Thus, the law
holds that those in the information chain should be liable only for those damages they had a duty
to prevent. Establishing the nature and extent of rightful duties has traditionally been
accomplished under theories of tort or contract law. Legislation may impose additional or
alternative liability burdens. Legislation affecting liability for spatial datasets and software
typically might be found in statutes addressing such issues as intellectual property rights, privacy
rights, anti-trust issues, and access rights.
The liability in data, products, and services related to computerized geographic information
systems is complicated by legal theory uncertainties surrounding liability for maps. This is
1 This article provides information of a general nature only. It is not intended to provide legal advice and
statements in it should not be acted upon without consultation with appropriate legal counsel. This work is based
upon work partially supported by the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) under
NSF grant No. SBR 88-10917. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
compounded by the complexities and uncertainties in liability for information system products
and services generally. Liability in GIS is further confused by the wide array of current and
potential applications of geographic information technologies. Each application requires
integration of information specific to the application and often will involve different attributes,
analytical methods, spatial features, and accuracy requirements. The specific software and end
users will also vary depending on the application to which the technology is being applied.
Thus, the complexity of the legal questions surrounding geographic information system liability
combined with the diversity of problems to which geographic information technologies are being
applied has tended to create diffuse, changing, and often undefined liability concerns for all
parties involved in geographic information production and use.2
People purchasing GIS software, datasets, products, and services are often disappointed in their
expectations. Representations that software will accomplish certain tasks or that a dataset is
complete or sufficient to accomplish specified tasks may be false or misleading. Datasets may
contain errors and software may achieve inconsistent or wrong results. In these instances the
disappointed purchaser or user usually has a contract relation with the technology product or
service provider upon which to assert their claim. Thus, any discussion of liability with regard to
GIS should probably begin with consideration of liability in the context of contract and licensing
arrangements. Whether GIS products or services are custom-developed or software and datasets
are sold prepackaged for the general consumer market, the relationships between the producer
and purchaser or user will probably be affected foremost by contract law principles.
In disputes based on contract principles, the issue of warranty, either express or implied, will
typically be raised as a basis of claim. In addition to warranty claims, the disappointed party
may attempt to pursue a parallel tort claim, such as negligence, in order to expand the types and
extent of damages that might be covered or to raise a broader range of duties on the part of the
technology product producer. Also, statutes of limitations may vary.
Tort theories come to the forefront when the goal of the law is to prevent harms to the public
generally. Thus, tort concepts such as negligence and strict liability may often be invoked by
third party users outside of and independent of contractual considerations. Certain geographic
information technologies and products if found defective may be held by public policy to be
unreasonably harmful to persons or property if offered on the market to the public. In these
instances, the tort theory of strict liability will be important.
In some instances, at issue may be an attempt by a dominant party to restrict the entrepreneurial
activities of those entering into a contract with it. In such instances, antitrust (or noncompetition
principles in a European context) may be relevant. Infringement of rights to intellectual
property, personal privacy, and access to government information may also give rise to
responsibility for damages.
Specific laws in regard to liability are dependent upon the specific laws of individual nations.
This chapter uses as its foundation primarily U.S. legal principles. However, in an attempt to
remain more general, the chapter focuses on "fundamental" legal principles and policies that
remain germane regardless of the national jurisdiction. In a U.S. context, many of these
fundamental principles are best illustrated through reference to the various Restatement of Law
documents and the Uniform Commercial Code.3

Contract liability concepts
A contract may generally be defined as a mutual assent between competent parties, usually
manifested by an offer and acceptance, upon a legal consideration to do or to abstain from doing
some act. The mutual assent may be express or implied and the legal consideration is often cash
in a GIS context.4 Once a contract exists, a party to the contract may recover for breach of
contract by showing the other party failed to perform as promised. It is not necessary to prove
fault on the part of the breaching party. It is necessary only to show that the terms of the contract
were not met. As a general proposition in regard to damages, parties are entitled to the benefit of
their bargain and thus damages are calculated by determining the amount that would place the
damaged party in the position that party would have been in had the contract been fully
performed.5
In the United States, contracts for the sale of goods are subject to Article 2 of the Uniform
Commercial Code (UCC) which generally applies to all goods offered for sale in interstate
commerce and has been adopted in entirety or large part by most states. If no explicit contract
exists between a supplier of goods and a consumer, the law applies the provisions of Article 2 to
the sales relationship. If an explicit contract for the sale of goods exists but is quiet in respect to
certain items that were not addressed by the contract but that are now in dispute, the UCC fills in
the gap to clarify the relationship between the parties. GIS software, hardware, and datasets
typically qualify as "goods" and thus their sale often would be subject to UCC provisions.6 Of
course, the parties to a contract have leeway to develop and agree to alternative provisions to
those contained in the UCC. Contracts for the performance of services are not covered by the
Uniform Commercial Code. Other nations often have similar default statutory provisions that
apply when a sale is not governed by explicit contract language.

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