Technology & IT insurance

In short: Media and intellectual-property liability covers claims that your software, content or product infringed someone else's copyright or trademark, or defamed them. For tech firms these exposures usually sit inside a technology professional indemnity or combined technology policy — but the scope varies widely, so IP-heavy businesses should check exactly what is granted, limited or excluded before relying on it.

What is media and IP liability for a tech company?

Every technology business creates and ships intellectual property, whether or not it thinks of itself that way. A SaaS platform is code, UI, documentation, marketing copy and a brand name. An app publisher pushes out screens, icons, sound and text. A dev agency reuses libraries, frameworks and open-source components across dozens of client builds. Each of those is a piece of content or product that someone, somewhere, might claim belongs to them.

Media and intellectual-property liability is the exposure that flows from that. It is the risk that a third party accuses you of infringing their rights — copying protected code or design, using a trademark that clashes with theirs, lifting content without a licence — or of causing them reputational harm through something you published. It is a liability exposure, meaning it responds to allegations made against you, not to loss of your own IP. Protecting your own patents and trademarks is a separate discipline.

The practical point for a tech firm is that these claims rarely announce themselves as “IP claims.” They arrive as a solicitor's letter about your product name, a takedown demand over a stock image on your landing page, or a competitor arguing your codebase looks suspiciously like theirs. The cost is not just any eventual settlement — it is the legal spend to defend or rebut the allegation, which starts the moment the letter lands.

Which IP and media claims actually hit software and IT firms?

The exposures cluster into a few recognisable shapes. Understanding them helps you judge whether your cover reaches far enough.

• Copyright infringement. Someone alleges your software, code, documentation, imagery or marketing content reproduces their protected work. Open-source licence disputes — using a component in breach of its licence terms — sit near here and are easy to trip over at scale.
• Trademark or passing-off claims. Your product name, logo or brand is said to conflict with an existing mark, or to mislead the market into thinking you are connected to another business. Fast-growing SaaS names collide with prior registrations more often than founders expect.
• Defamation. Content you publish — a comparison page, a customer-facing report, a marketing claim, even user-generated content on a platform you operate — is alleged to have harmed a person's or company's reputation.
• Breach of confidence or misuse of information. A former employer or partner claims your product embeds their confidential material or trade secrets.

Notice how ordinary these are. You do not have to be a patent-heavy deep-tech firm to face them. A three-person agency that names a client's app carelessly, or drops an unlicensed font into a build, has the same category of exposure as a scaling platform — just at a different scale.

Larger or more complex risk? Speak directly to a director — call 0117 325 0027 or email info@apexinsurancebrokers.co.uk.

Does technology professional indemnity already cover this?

Often, partly — and this is where tech firms get caught out. Technology professional indemnity (tech PI), which in the US market is usually called technology errors & omissions (tech E&O), is the core liability policy for IT and software businesses. It responds to claims that your professional work — the software, service or advice you delivered — caused a client financial loss. Many tech PI wordings extend to include a measure of IP infringement and defamation cover, precisely because those exposures are so bound up with delivering technology work.

The catch is the word “a measure.” Where IP cover is granted inside a tech PI policy, it is frequently narrower than the main professional indemnity section. You will commonly see a lower sub-limit for IP claims than for the policy overall, specific exclusions (patent infringement is very often carved out entirely), and conditions about how the IP was created or cleared. Defamation cover may be limited to unintentional acts. None of that is a flaw in the product — it is the market pricing a genuinely harder-to-underwrite risk — but it means the headline limit on your schedule is not the number that matters for an IP claim.

So the honest answer is: your tech PI probably does some of this work already. Whether it does enough depends entirely on the wording, and whether your business is IP-light (a managed-service provider running other people's software) or IP-heavy (a product company whose entire value is proprietary code and brand). Our guide to technology professional indemnity insurance walks through what the core cover does and does not reach.

Why should IP-heavy tech firms check the scope so carefully?

Because the gap between “we have IP cover” and “we have IP cover that would actually respond to our biggest exposure” can be wide, and you only discover which side you are on when a claim arrives. A few things are worth reading with a broker rather than assuming:

The sub-limit. If IP infringement is capped at a lower figure than your main limit of indemnity, ask whether that cap is realistic against the cost of defending a determined trademark or copyright dispute. Defence costs alone can be substantial before any question of a settlement.

What is excluded. Patent infringement is the most common carve-out, but not the only one. Look for exclusions around deliberate acts, prior known circumstances, and IP you licensed in but did not properly clear.

How “your product” is defined. Product companies should check that the policy's definition of covered activities actually captures shipping and licensing software to the world, not just performing services for named clients. A wording built around consultancy can leave a product firm's core exposure only loosely addressed.

Contractual overreach. If you have signed client contracts with broad IP indemnities — agreeing to indemnify a customer for any IP claim arising from your software — check whether your policy responds to the liability you have taken on, or only to your liability at common law. This is a frequent, quiet mismatch.

IP insurance mechanics vary considerably between insurers, and the terminology is not standardised, so two policies that both say “IP cover” can behave very differently. That variation is exactly why a broker is useful here: the value is in reading the specific wording against your specific business, not in a generic checklist.

Where do combined technology policies and cyber fit in?

Many tech firms now buy a combined technology policy that packages tech PI, public and products liability, and cyber into one place. For media and IP purposes, the combined route can be cleaner because it lets you see the IP grant, its sub-limit and its exclusions alongside everything else, rather than assuming a standalone PI policy has it handled. Our overview of combined technology insurance explains how the sections interact.

It is worth being precise about what cyber does and does not do here, because the two are easily conflated. Cyber insurance is built around the consequences of a security or data incident — funding breach response, forensics, notification, business interruption from downtime, and third-party liability if others suffer loss because your systems were compromised. It is not an IP policy. A claim that your software infringed a copyright is a media/IP matter for your PI or IP cover, not a cyber matter. We have a stage-by-stage view for startups that puts each cover where it belongs.

One related caution while cyber is in view: on UK data-protection penalties, the insurability of fines under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 is legally uncertain and is often excluded or restricted. Treat cyber as funding your response to a breach and your liability to affected parties — not as something that reliably pays a fine from the Information Commissioner's Office. The distinction between these products is covered in our comparison of professional indemnity versus cyber insurance for tech companies.

What should a tech firm do before a claim ever arrives?

Good IP hygiene reduces both the chance of a claim and the friction if one comes, and insurers notice firms that take it seriously. A few habits carry most of the weight: clear the names and marks of new products before you launch and market them; keep a record of the licences behind the components, images, fonts and libraries you ship; make sure client contracts assign IP cleanly and that any indemnities you give are ones your insurance can actually stand behind; and manage open-source obligations deliberately rather than by accident.

When you then come to arrange cover, the underwriting conversation is genuinely easier — and a broker can position an IP-aware business more favourably. If you are still mapping out your whole programme, our guide to what insurance an IT company needs sets media and IP liability in the context of everything else, and contractors can start with IT contractor insurance.

Two quick points to keep the picture straight. Professional indemnity is not a statutory legal requirement for IT firms — it is almost always a contractual one, demanded by clients and agencies before they will let you onto a project. And if you employ staff, employers' liability insurance is a legal requirement under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, with only narrow exceptions; that is separate from the media and IP cover discussed here but part of the same overall programme.

A note for contractors on status and tax

Independent IT contractors sometimes ask whether holding the right insurance affects their employment status for tax. It does not. IR35 — the off-payroll working rules — is a tax matter about whether you are, in substance, working like an employee. Carrying professional indemnity, cyber or IP cover is sensible for many reasons and is often contractually required, but it does not change or determine your IR35 position. For status itself, speak to a qualified accountant or tax adviser; insurance and tax status are different questions with different specialists.

Whether you want a self-serve indication or a proper conversation about where your IP exposure actually sits, you can start a quote here or ask to speak to one of our technology specialists directly. We would rather find the gap now than after a solicitor's letter has landed.

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). This article is general information, not advice on a specific policy or a recommendation to buy any product.