First Sale Doctrine in regards to software

[Tale]

I'm largely posting this because it was a topic of discussion within the Mass Effect for PC thread (now closed). It made it seem that a few others might be interested.

 

Slashdot summary: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=...08/05/22/195233

"The US District Court in Seattle has rejected Autodesk's myriad arguments regarding its software licenses and found in favor of eBay seller Timothy S. Vernor. The ruling started by ruling that Vernor was within his rights to resell copies of AutoCAD Release 14 he got in an auction. Once the court settled the legitimacy of reselling, it used that ruling as a lens to dismiss all of Autodesk's various claims. More than once the court described Autodesk's arguments as 'specious' and 'conflicted.'"

 

Now the original story: http://aecnews.com/news/2008/05/21/3414.aspx

 

I had actually mentioned in the previous thread that I didn't know if this had happened or not. But apparently here's an instance of a company getting someone's ebay listing pulled being sued (though it's more of a case of him being allowed to sue so far than him winning the suit).

 

Edit: I'm not clear on what exactly is going on here. There appears to be some contention among a few commenters over whether this is him actually winning the suit or the court agreeing that he has a valid argument to sue. the AEC news link has a summary claiming that he "is entitled to protection from Autodesk based on the

Edited May 22, 2008 by Tale

[Tale]

http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/05/f...-in-vernor.html

 

This seems an interesting related read from Senior Copyright Counsel for Google.

[Enoch]

Ah, Civil Procedure...

 

This court denied a motion by Autodesk for a Summary Judgment. A party asking for Summary Judgment is essentially saying that even if everything that the other side alleges factually is true, he would still lose the case. Thus, the court should just declare the moving side the winner before we all waste time on a trial. By denying the SJ motion, the court is saying that it isn't impossible for Mr. Vernor to eventually prevail on the merits.

 

 

Edit: On the other hand, in a case like this where the facts are not in dispute much, that summary judgment motion might have been Autodesk's best chance at preventing Vernor from winning outright. By giving credence to Vernor's legal argument, this could be a pretty strong sign that Vernor is going to win the case, and that the only major issue to be decided at trial is the amount of damages to be awarded. There still could be other factual questions or ancillary legal issues at play, though.

Edited May 22, 2008 by Enoch

[Laozi]

this thread has me on edge

[Krookie]

someone hold me

 

 

oh and then explain whats going on

[Humodour]

Yeah, I saw this on Slashdot earlier. It's hard to tell exactly what the outcome is, but it's always good to at least see people having a go against bigger powers instead of cowering away in the face of a potential lawsuit.