UPDATED 13:29 EDT / JULY 04 2012

News Analysis: Oracle Ruling Opens Up Monopolistic Practices By Software Vendors

Ray Wang at Consellation Research shares his analysis on the Oracle vs UsedSoft.

The surprise July 3rd, 2012 judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union for UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp rules that “An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licenses allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet”.


The recent ruling on the rights of used software mirrors other rulings in cases such as SusenSoftware v SAP and UsedSoft v Microsoft.

link to ruling is here http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-07/cp120094en.pdf

Analysis of the ruling shows that:
Exhaustion Rule is now the rule of the land. While the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) on July 6th, 2000 upheld this legal foundation, many vendors have continued to challenge the case. In this instance the BGH sent the case to the Court of Justice to interpret the UsedSoft v Oracle International Corp case. The court deliberated and finally ruled that “The exclusive right of distribution of a copy of a computer program covered by such a license is exhausted on its first sale”.

Read More at Ray’s Bloghttp://www.constellationrg.com/blog/2012/07/news-analysis-usedsoft-vs-oracle-ruling-opens-monopolistic-practices-software-vendors


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