Supreme Court Lets Utilization Rights Stand

Moof writes "The United States Supreme Court refused to hear a case between a programmer and his former employer. What makes this news is the fact that the court is letting stand the rulings of the lower courts: Essentially if someone owns a physical copy of software, then they are allowed to modify the code as part of their regular use, no matter what other agreements are in place."

Comments

Re:Definition of the ruling

[Todd Knarr]

Actually that would be wrong. California never adopted the UCITA, so absent any other agreement the transaction's governed by the Uniform Commercial Code. I never signed any agreement to only license the software before the sale, so an over-the-counter sale occurred per the UCC. I own the copy I bought under those rules. I'd also note that the appeals court considered the same logic you're using and explicitly rejected it in their ruling when they discussed whether formal title was needed or not.