EU Court Says, Yes, You Can Resell Your Software, Even If The Software Company Says You Can't

''from the good-for-them dept

You may remember that a couple years ago, an appeals court in the US ruled that, when dealing with software, as long as the provider calls what it sells "a license" rather than a "sale" it can take away your first sale rights. As you hopefully know, first sale rights are what let you resell goods that have copyright-covered material in them -- such as books -- without asking for permission from the copyright holder. However, for reasons that still don't make any sense, the 9th Circuit seems to think that as long as something is purely digital, first sale no longer applies.'

www.techdirt.com...

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Jul 3rd 2012 12:44pm.'

righty-ho, here i go.

i came across this article whilst perusing various media sites. if you read the link, it will elaborate further on the EU (caps yuk!) ruling regarding the re-sale of software and what i would consider a slap in the face for all software companies intent on sustained profit margin by what i understand as rendering products obsolete once a primary sale has occured and restricting it's use to other users.

what are the future implications i ask?

consider the lastest batches of new cars furnished with operating systems/integrated software for example.
will these vehicles be a viable purchase once the initial customer has upgraded to a newer model?
will the new owner(s) be lumbered with extra frontloaded costs to operate the electronics suite or will the above ruling allow the new owner to receive updates without the system shutting them out?

it will be interesting to watch this develop, especially between the EU ruling and the USA 9th Circuit. will products purchased from the USA and used in Europe be under the same umbrella?

best wishes fakedirt.

Nice find FD

This is good if there's nothing hidden that we havent seen yet. Personaly I always felt it was wrong that when you pay £$100 for a peice of software you were only getting a license, basicaly that meant you didnt even own the CD/DVD.

Good points about the software in cars etc, just about every appliance we have in our homes today uses sofware.

Aren't we told to RECYCLE!

All the software companies will do is move to a more obvious rental type of agreement so that you never actually own it in the first place so it may be a 1 million year rental agreement but it aint yours to sell on

@voidhawk and maxatoria

thank you kindly.

i suspect the companies affected by this will be looking into rewording of eula and terms of use.

perhaps some will just ramp up prices to reflect what they may claim are revenue diminishing laws.

lol regarding the recycle. just wait till the second hand speaking fridge refuses to co-operate until it becomes your friend via credit card insertion and requests your nickname for that personal experience! (derived from the toaster on red dwarf btw!)

will there now be a stampede of lobbyists heading towards the nearest MEP's?

regards fakedirt.

www.techweekeurope.co.uk...


another linky looking at the spat between Oracle and German firm UsedSoft.
this described block software as purchased in bulk and possible difficulties of the vendor to carve up.
f.