Legal situation

Legal situation

“An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet”.

The trade of used computer software was ruled as a legal act by the highest Court of Justice in the European Union, the European Court of Justice. This will end the questions and discussions about whether or not trading used software – be it as files or data disks – is illegal.

This decision was fully agreed on by the Federal Court of Justice of Germany – the highest court of ordinary jurisdiction on July 17th, 2013.

For the full press release of the European Court of Justice please go here (http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-07/cp120094en.pdf).