Oracle Corporation : EU Court Deals Blow to Oracle by Allowing Resale of Used Software Licenses
07/03/2012| 10:16am US/Eastern
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By Vanessa Mock
BRUSSELS--A European Untion court dealt a blow to Oracle Corp. (ORCL) Tuesday by allowing software licenses to be resold, even if the package has been downloaded directly from the Internet.
Oracle had launched proceedings against UsedSoft, a German company that markets used software licenses acquired from customers of the U.S. software company.
In its judgment, the European Court of Justice sided with UsedSoft, saying it wasn't breaking license agreements. "The exclusive right of distribution of a copy of a computer program covered by such a [used] license is exhausted on its first sale," it said.
The court also said the trade in used software also applied to software that had been downloaded from the Internet, not just to hard copies on a physical medium, such as a CD or DVD.
The Luxembourg-based court said the rights holder exhausted his exclusive distribution right when "he makes available to his customer a copy...and concludes, in return form payment of a fee, a license agreement granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period." This also applied to the copy of the computer program "sold as corrected and updated by the copyright holder."
UsedSoft has built a business around reselling used software packages or legally obtained license keys for them.
However, the court stressed that whoever sold on original software and their licenses was obliged to erase every copy on their own computers and wasn't allowed to keep a copy after resale.
Write to Vanessa Mock at vanessa.mock@dowjones.com
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