European court allows selling “used programs”

The European Union Court issued a press release following a review of the process of Oracle International Corp. against the German company with the talking title UsedSoft GmbH . The latter was engaged in the resale of Oracle client-server software, licenses for which were purchased from Oracle customers. The American developer wanted to stop this practice.

After reviewing the case, a European Union court ruled that the author of the software cannot prevent the resale of software licenses, even if the text of the license agreement explicitly prohibits such resale.

“The exclusive right to distribute a copy of a computer program that is covered by this license disappears after the first sale,” said the court decision.

Initially, the Oracle case against UsedSoft was considered in a German court of first instance, then came to the Supreme Court of Germany, and eventually was transferred to the court of the European Union, which accepted the final verdict.
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The court specifically emphasized that the directive covers not only software that is sold on physical media (CD, DVD), but also software that is downloaded from the website. It applies to any software that is sold with a license that gives the buyer the right to use this software for an unlimited time.

Court decision in the case of UsedSoft v. Oracle