SWS Copyright Notice

Copyright notice embedded in every SWS file, the customer’s obligation to preserve it, and a short explanation of why it matters to both parties.
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Copyright © Cedar Hills Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

SWS (Software Web Services) is the property of Cedar Hills Group, Inc. and is protected by United States and international copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction, redistribution, or disclosure of any portion of SWS is prohibited.

The Required File Header

Every file delivered as part of SWS — PeopleCode, records, fields, pages, components, and supporting scripts — carries a header comment substantially in the following form:

/*
 * SWS (Software Web Services)
 * Copyright (c) Cedar Hills Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
 *
 * This file is licensed to the end customer under the SWS License Agreement.
 * See: https://sws.books.cedarhillsgroup.com/legal/license-agreement/
 *
 * Redistribution, public disclosure, or removal of this notice is prohibited.
 */

The exact wording may vary slightly between object types — PeopleCode comments use /* ... */, while some Application Designer objects record the notice in their Description or Long Description fields — but the substance is the same: this file belongs to Cedar Hills Group, and its use is governed by the SWS License Agreement.

Customer’s Obligation to Preserve the Notice

Under Section 4 of the License Agreement, the customer agrees not to remove, alter, or obscure any copyright notice or file header delivered with SWS. This obligation applies to:

  1. The SWS source files as installed in every PeopleSoft environment.
  2. Any copy of the SWS source files moved into version control, backup, archive, or migration tooling.
  3. Any excerpt of the SWS source shared with internal staff, contractors, or consultants authorized to access SWS under the License Agreement.

The customer may add its own comments — local implementation notes, change history, internal ticket references — but must not remove or modify the Cedar Hills Group header.

Removal of the header is listed in the License Agreement as a material breach and is a ground for termination of the license.

What Copyright Protects — and Why It Matters to You

Copyright protects original creative expression automatically from the moment it is fixed in a tangible form. For SWS, that means every PeopleCode file, every Application Designer object, and every line of logic that ships to the customer is protected under United States and international copyright law the moment Cedar Hills Group writes it. No registration is required for protection to attach (though Cedar Hills Group may register copyrights with the U.S. Copyright Office as a matter of course).

Practically, copyright gives Cedar Hills Group the legal right to act if SWS is copied, redistributed, published, or disclosed outside the scope of the License Agreement — including seeking injunctive relief, damages, and, where applicable, statutory damages and attorney fees.

For the customer, that protection is useful for two reasons:

  1. It is what makes the license enforceable. The license is valuable to the customer precisely because the thing being licensed is protected property. A product that anyone could freely copy would not be sustainable for Cedar Hills Group to support long term.
  2. It clarifies responsibilities within the customer’s organization. The notice on every file makes it clear to every engineer, contractor, and consultant that the code is third-party licensed material — not the customer’s own code — and that the usual “copy this into the team snippets folder” reflex is not appropriate.