“In July 2008 caused the OLG Munich (OLG, AZ. 6 U 2759/07) for surprised disapproval for many IT professionals and specialist lawyers: Herzogenrath, July 17, 2013 – in a final decision the trade in used software to be inadmissible was declared a revision, principally excluded: the legal position is clear and unambiguous and requires neither a confirmation by the Court of justice by the Federal Supreme Court”. The legal situation was clarified by the law of copyright, so that further discussions and negotiations are superfluous. Five years and two instances of court later the ECJ has explained how to deal to have used software. That is the case at European level was negotiating, shows how important the topic of software for the modern economy is seen”, as Axel Susen, Managing Director of Anand.
Entire industries will no longer work without software. The rights of the users would need to be adapted to this importance of software.” The background is that our Copyright law comes from a time where goods were mostly in physical form. Since there are nowadays more and more goods only in digital form, the rights here need to be reconsidered. Since 2005, the US software group Oracle competes with a German dealer for used software on the settlement and the right to trade in used software licences. The ECJ in its judgment stated that the principle applies not only when the exhaustion of the distribution right, if the copyright holder sold the copies of his software on a disk (CD or DVD), but even if he spread it by download from his website. In his explanations of the ECJ establishes rules for the sale of software. Provides the software manufacturer such as a copy of his customers, and he includes a license agreement, through which the customer will receive the perpetual right to use this copy, this copy to the customer and exhausted that he sold so at the same time against payment of a fee exclusive distribution right.