European Court of Justice Ruling Upholds Right to Resell Downloaded Software

By Dennis Kuba
July 5, 2012

The European Court of Justice has ruled that customers have the right to resell software purchased even if the software was only downloaded rather than purchased on physical media.
The doctrine of copyright exhaustion (or the first sale doctrine in the United States) prevents rights holders from controlling used copies of their work.
However, software developers have made the case that exhaustion only applies to copies on physical media such as CDs and DVDs, not downloaded copies. Thus, they were able to make the case that they could prohibit reselling of downloaded copies.
The ruling means that in the EU, there is no difference between copies on physical media and downloaded copies. Both are eligible for reselling.
Still the European court issued some qualifiers. One, the original owner must make any copies they possess inoperable. Plus, they are not allowed to split the licenses for resell.
It is not clear how this ruling would apply to downloaded media such as films, TV shows, books and magazines.

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