No, you don't own it: Court upholds End User License Agreements, threatens digital resale

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on a long-standing case involving used software on eBay, and it came to an important decision: if a company says you don't have the right to resell a program, you don't have that right.

Could this mean the end of the resale market for all digital content? Yup. But the court says it had no choice.

The case is Vernor v. Autodesk, in which Timothy Vernor made his living from selling items (including software) on eBay. Vernor had picked up some old copies of AutoCAD from an architect's office sale, complete with their serial numbers, and he put them up on eBay noting that they were not currently installed on any computer. Sounds legal, right? But there's a catch. Autodesk, the software's developer, forced all users to accept an agreement before using AutoCAD. This agreement made clear that AutoCAD was merely licensed, never sold, and that one's license was non-transferable. Further, a licensee could not rent, lease, or sell the software to anyone else; you couldn't even physically transfer the discs out of the Western Hemisphere (!). Finally, if you upgraded to a new version, the old version had to be destroyed.

Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director of Public Knowledge, said, "This ruling will have far-reaching consequences for consumers. It could conceivably shut down the market for used software and computer games. The court has blessed a system in which a publisher can use fine print to circumvent the traditional rules of first sale, maintaining control of distribution throughout the entire lifetime of the copy. Nothing good can come of a system like this. We look forward to this case being further appealed and to having this decision reversed."