Your software has an objection
LawMeme comments: "An unfortunate result of software licensing: when you sell your business, you may not have anything to sell."
An object lesson in the perils of software licensing agreements. Kmart is trying to sell the assets of its Bluelight.com unit, which happens to include some Microsoft software. Now, Micrsoft wants to block the resale of that software, claiming that it amounts to a form of piracy.
"The licenses that debtors (Kmart) have of Microsoft's products are licenses of copyrighted materials and, therefore, may not be assumed or assigned with Microsoft's consent," Microsoft said in its objection, filed last week.
Okay, so, let's say I buy a car. It includes, besides the design of the vehicle, a lot of electronics and computational capacity from... oh, let's just use Motorola, as an example. When I decide to sell the car five years later, does Motorola have the right to block that sale because it includes code it created? No. Why then, would Microsoft have a reasonable claim on a legal copy of software at the time it is sold as part of a larger asset sale?
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at October 29, 2002 04:32 PM | TrackBack