Court Says First Sale Doctrine Doesn't Apply To Licensed Software

An anonymous reader wrote to tell us a federal appeals court ruled today that the first sale doctrine is "unavailable to those who are only licensed to use their copies of copyrighted works." This reverses a 2008 decision from the Autodesk case, in which a man was selling used copies of AutoCAD that were not currently installed on any computers. Autodesk objected to the sales because their license agreement did not permit the transfer of ownership. Today's ruling (PDF) upholds Autodesk's claims: "We hold today that a software user is a licensee rather than an owner of a copy where the copyright owner (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions. Applying our holding to Autodesk’s [software license agreement], we conclude that CTA was a licensee rather than an owner of copies of Release 14 and thus was not entitled to invoke the first sale doctrine or the essential step defense. "

Comments

Re:Whatever happened to copyright?

[NeutronCowboy]

This is not about copyright. This is about contracts, which can apply to any good or service. The only question is what kind of contracts can be enforced through EULAs. Turns out, quite a wide range.

You know what will fix this problem in a hurry? People reading the EULA, rejecting it, and petitioning the publisher for a refund. If Activision would have to field to field about a million refund requests for SC2, I bet you that EULAs would get fixed in a jiffy. But since everyone just clicks Accept, nothing will change.