The mobile POS market is producing a number of look-alikes and knock-offs, but VeriFone may have gone beyond simple imitation.

GigaOM's sharp-eyed Ryan Kim found a surprising similarity between VeriFone's new SAIL mobile POS platform and Square. It looks like VeriFone's merchant user agreement for SAIL reused (i.e., "copied") large sections of Square's user agreement.

In a post on the matter, Kim said he notified VeriFone "that wholesale portions of its user agreement had been copied from Square." VeriFone eliminated the offending text and sent Kim the following statement:

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. While many legal documents tend to use and reuse industry-acceptable language, we took your feedback into consideration and have made revisions to the agreement so that there is no misunderstanding."

The entire post is well worth a read and includes comments from law firm Pillsbury on the legal issues involved.

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