The Florida Senate

282.5002  Definitions.--For the purposes of this act, the following terms have the following meanings:

(1)  BUSINESS.--The term "business" means a person or an entity engaged in providing goods or services in this state, but the term excludes any governmental agency or any agency of the legislative or judicial branch of state government.

(2)  DATE DATA.--The term "date data" means data that contain dates or that contain both dates and times.

(3)  DIRECT ECONOMIC DAMAGES.--The term "direct economic damages" includes only economic compensatory damages that follow both immediately and necessarily from the failure of the information technology products of a business or governmental agency to be year 2000 compliant. The term excludes special damages, incidental damages, and exemplary or punitive damages.

(4)  GOVERNMENTAL AGENCY.--The term "governmental agency" includes any agency of the executive branch of state government or any political subdivision of the state as defined in s. 1.01 or any agency of such a political subdivision. For purposes of this section, the term also includes any public or private university school of medicine that is part of a public or private university supported in whole or in part by state funds and that has an affiliation with a local government or state instrumentality under which the medical school's computer systems, or diagnostic or therapeutic equipment dependent upon date logic, are used to provide clinical patient care services to the public.

(5)  INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PRODUCT.--

(a)  The term "information technology product" includes software, firmware, microcode, hardware, and equipment containing embedded chips or microprocessors that create, read, write, calculate, compare, sequence, or otherwise operate on date data.

(b)  The "information technology products" of a business or governmental agency are those that are owned, leased, or licensed by or under the exclusive control of the business or governmental agency and are used by it in providing its goods or services.

(6)  YEAR 2000 COMPLIANT.--An information technology product is "year 2000 compliant" if the product, when used in accordance with its associated documentation or recommended user intervention, is capable of correctly processing, providing, and receiving date data, and will do so for all dates occurring between February 28, 1996, and March 1, 2000, when all other information technology products that are used with the product properly exchange date data with it. An information technology product does not fail to be year 2000 compliant merely because it contains a defect that is unrelated to the manner in which the product processes, provides, or receives date data and that only incidentally causes the product to fail to properly process, provide, or receive date data.

History.--s. 2, ch. 99-230.