In a blow to the software licensing paradigm and intellectual property rights everywhere, the European Court of Justice said that it was OK to resell a software license once you are done with it. The case involved Oracle and a European company UsedSoft, which had made a nice business of reselling the licenses. The story is reported here at Dow Jones by Vanessa Mock.
It really boggles the mind that such a court could redefine intellectual property rights in such a fundamental way. Furthermore, I could understand, though not accept, it if this action came from North Korea or China where pirating is an open secret. But to have the European Court of Justice come up with such a boner leaves me just shaking my head.
It’s almost as if medieval law was resurrected and rather than indenturing people to the land, it now indentures technology companies, and probably many others who provide licenses rather than products, to slavery.
This might be a boon to the subscription economy. In that model there is no doubt about who owns the software and the terms of use.
So, does Oracle in this case have an obligation to continue providing updates to the new owner of record? This is a story that will continue to evolve.
(Cross-posted @ Beagle Research, LLC.)
This article does not seem to have understood the point and ramifications of this court ruling. It does not concern reselling of subscription (rented) licences – it concerns ‘perpetual’ software licence assets – there is a clear distinction between the two types of software licences . This ruling follows a ‘law’ that has been in place for 1000’s of years: if you pay for a product such software licence asset (not renting), you own it. You do not own the copyright and so as long as you are not making duplicate copies or breaking the product down and selling it off as your own works, you are perfectly entitled to sell that software licence to a second buyer. What’s medieval in that?