eBay Seller Sues Autodesk for $10 Million

Miasik.Net writes "A lawsuit has been filed in Federal Court (US District Court for the Western Washington District C07-1189 JLR) that alleges Autodesk, Inc maker of the industry standard AutoCAD software and their attorney Andrew S. Mackay have devised an illegal scheme to have used copies of their software removed from the eBay site using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Finally someone decided that non-transferable licenses must be stopped." While proving $10 million in damages might prove difficult, the reasoning behind the case is pretty sound.

Comments

The question

[DTemp]

Which is it:

1) Does the seller have the "burden of proof" to prove that he uninstalled his copy and is not violating his license or

2) Is the seller to be given the "benefit of the doubt" and assumed to have uninstalled his copy, unless information is found to indicate otherwise?

note: I am probably using legal terms like "burden of proof" incorrectly. but you get my question.

Re:New business model

[jmorris42]

> There was even a clause in there about selling used software - they stated that you were allowed to do it,
> but it had to be for a specified amount, and they got a fee out of it.

Not really, sound pretty fair. You see, you ARE allowed to resell software and AutoDesk is going to get smacked in court but support and upgrades aren't part of the First Sale Doctrine. By your vendor specifying a procedure and fee to transfer ownership of the license along with the title to the copyrighted work it means the buyer gets upgrades, bug fixes and the same level of tech suport you have now. If the fee is reasonable it would be very fair, especially when dealing with specialized software that needs support.