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Old 02-18-2010, 12:23 PM   #143
DawnFalcon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon View Post
Actually, it does matter in US law. A number of other cases (missing the references right now, darn it!) have extended Autodesk to cover exactly this issue. In US law this very similarity to Amazon's other sales...
"The court cannot characterize Autodesk's decision to let its licensees retain possession of the software forever as something other than a transfer of ownership, despite numerous restrictions on that ownership."

And that's half the point. If there are restrictions on the owner which can generate a breach of licence, then that breach - even if not in itself actionable or even permissible - is also a copyright violation and thus de-facto actionable. The other half is that a supplementary post-sale licence agreement was agreed to by MDY industries, and it was that - and not the sale of the disk to them - on which they were judged.

It may well be that the precedent set in Blizzard vs MDY Industries is overturned - and I believe it's not well regarded - but in the meantime it does create a considerable issue.
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