Tag Archives: License Agreements

New leading cases on the destiny of sub-licenses when the main license is terminated

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Are sub-licenses affected when the main license they are derived from ceases to exist? Last week, the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) issued two decisions dealing with this question and answered with an unequivocal “No”. No written opinion has been published yet (this usually takes a while) so that we have only the official German press release to rely on. But this press release reveals already a few pretty interesting and important things. Continue reading →

License Termination: Thoughts on Scorpio v. Willis and a Pirates Proposal

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Recently, the news broke that Village People songwriter Victor Willis (for those who don’t know who he is just one word: YMCA!) had won an important case (see here and here) on the issue of US copyright termination rights (sec. 203 of the Copyright Act). I’ve wanted to write about this topic ever since, but well, there was so much going on in the IP/IT world lately, and, whoops, four weeks have passed like nothing. Anyway, I just came across a proposal of the German Pirates involving the introduction of a license termination mechanism similar to the US approach and thought I’d just shoot out a few observations and thoughts. Continue reading →

More on exhaustion

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Just after finishing our recent post on the exhaustion doctrine (ECJ “Usedsoft”), I came across two other news reports touching upon the same issues. The first concerned an ongoing dispute between Microsoft and a German used license trading company . The second pointed to an (unintentionally comical) decision of the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart (Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart). Continue reading →

Termination of a Perpetual Software License under German Law

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I have just (goes to show how much time I really have to scan the law journals for relevant stuff) stumbled upon a very interesting decision by the District Court of Cologne published in the February edition of Germany’s famed “C&R” (i.e. “Computer & Recht” = “Computer & Law”) regarding the terminability of perpetual software licenses under German law for material breaches of contract. As per the District Court of Cologne the answer is: Sure you can! Which is a bit surprising, really. Continue reading →