EBay power-seller, Jim Vernor has brought suit against AutoDesk for telling eBay to make him stop selling legal copies of their software. AutoDesk, the makers of AutoCAD (the hugely popular architectural software), apparently got his eBay account blocked from selling, causing him to temporarily loose his income.
The suit is asking for $7k in lost sales, $10mil in punitive damages, and legal fees. AutoDesk will be going before a civil court to finally test the limits of the First-sale doctrine.
While there have been a few similar suits in the past, this is the first that is requesting such large punitive damages, and this is the first one regarding a piece of software for which the license price is so high as AutoDesk charges (The 2008 AutoDesk design suite costs $10k/desk).
The result of this suit could have long-lasting ramifications in the software industry. If the judge rules in favor of AutoDesk, we could start to see more restrictive guidelines regarding the sales of software on sites like eBay and Amazon.
First-sale doctrine (accepted as an official part of US copyright law in 1908 by the US Supreme Court) states that the original purchaser of a copywritten work may not be restricted from reselling their copy of that work. For example: If you buy a textbook for school, the copyright holder may stop you from selling xeroxed copies of the book’s pages, but they may not stop you from reselling the book itself, when you are finished with it.
Software publishers have long felt that First-sale doctrine does not apply to software sales because software is not sold, it is ‘licensed’. In fact most software lists a restriction on resale in it’s EULA. Despite this, used software is bought and sold everyday in stores and online, with none of the copyright holders willing to litigate for fear that a judge will apply First-sale doctrine after all.
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