1---
2layout: default
3title: Legalities
4parent: Release & Milestone Tasks
5grand_parent: Contributors
6nav_order: 70
7---
8
9<!--
10© 2021 and later: Unicode, Inc. and others.
11License & terms of use: http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html
12-->
13
14# Legalities
15
16## 1. Scan for Copyright notices
17
18Check source and data files, especially newly contributed ones, to make sure the
19proper copyright notice is in place. For example,
20
21```
22© 2016 and later: Unicode, Inc. and others.
23License & terms of use: http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html#License
24```
25
26Scan the source code to make sure that every file that was touched recently has
27the current year in the copyright statement. See the [ICU Copyright
28Scanner](../../../copyright-scan.md) page and follow the link to the scripts and
29the readme.
30
31Scan the source code to include third-party company names in copyright notices
32if necessary.
33
34~~Scan for text files that do not contain the word "Copyright": find_textfiles
35-nosvn -novc -noeclipse | xargs grep -i -L Copyright (See the find_textfiles
36Perl script attached to this page.) There are files without word "Copyright" in
37ICU source repository including some test data files (no comment syntax defined
38for these test data files), Unicode data files, tzcode source files and others.
39Review the output file list and determine if each of them should have ICU
40copyright statement or not.~~ ***The script [find_textfiles](find_textfiles)
41associated with this document is not maintained. Use the ICU Copyright Scanner
42above instead.***
43
44## 2. Update license files
45
46Check ICU, Unicode and other license terms. Make sure these files are up to
47date. The [Unicode data and software license
48term](http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html) is updated annually (usually year
49number only). The easiest way to get the updated license is to do View Source on
50unicode.org/copyright.html and scroll down to the plaintext version of the
51software license ("Exhibit A").
52
53See [svn changeset r39632](https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/commit/0001f6c5e92f6f3a8d66c7dbc47cc24df7633a71)
54for an example; there should be only two files to update.
55