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Legal Situation
Are these licenses legal for both companies and individuals?
Yes, we operate in compliance with the following European regulations: DIRECTIVE 2009/24/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 23 April 2009 on the legal protection of computer programs. Resale has been approved by case law interpreting this European directive.
The case law is as follows:
Court of Justice of the European Union PRESS RELEASE No. 94/12
Luxembourg, 3 July 2012 Judgment in Case C-128/11
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in favor of the commercialization of renewed or any type of software licenses. Consequently, once a software supplier or distributor sells a copy of any software program, they automatically lose their exclusive distribution rights, making it entirely legal for companies and individuals to resell licenses.
As the highest judicial authority in Europe, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) definitively clarified the legal status of trading used software programs with its ruling, declaring the fundamental legitimacy of this activity.
The Court’s judgment also applies to volume licenses and their division. This was confirmed by the Frankfurt Regional Court in a case between Adobe and usedSoft.
The Court of Justice also established that trading used software is permitted even for software distributed over the Internet. On 17 July 2013, the German Federal Court fully upheld the CJEU’s ruling regarding the corresponding legal issues.
In its reasoning, the 13 judges of the Upper Chamber unequivocally stated that the principle of exhaustion takes effect when a software program is sold for the first time. The Court also ruled that, in the case of licenses transmitted over the Internet, the buyer has the right to re-download the program from the producer’s server. "The exhaustion of the right of distribution also applies to the program copy in its improved and updated version provided by the copyright holder," according to the CJEU. With this, the Court’s resolution clearly went beyond the final conclusion of the Court of Justice Advocate General on 24 April 2012.
The CJEU’s judgment was issued at the request of the German Federal Court. In the past, software producers exploited the partial ambiguity of previous legal regulations to discriminate against trade and significantly intimidate customers. In principle, the resale of used computer programs was already legal before.
Now, the Court’s judgment establishes legal certainty in this regard throughout the European Union. It is, therefore, foreseeable that the trade of software by sub-distributors will now begin to grow significantly outside Germany (its "country of origin") in other EU countries. The company usedSoft is already active in Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, the Benelux countries, and Scandinavia.
VOLUME LICENSES ARE ALSO LEGAL, INCLUDING THEIR DIVISION.
The additional consequences of the Court’s judgment were indisputably confirmed by a subsequent ruling of the Frankfurt Regional Court in litigation between Adobe and usedSoft: the Frankfurt court established that the CJEU’s judgment also applies to volume license agreements and their division. An appeal filed by Adobe was fully dismissed by the German Federal Court on 11 December 2014 (Case No. I ZR 8/13). This definitively confirmed the regional court’s ruling.
A similar legal opinion favoring the trade of renewed software was also issued in Switzerland, as confirmed by this judgment.
Why are the licenses we sell so affordable?
Microsoft requires its Partners to sell their licenses at fixed prices and only products that are much more expensive than those of DigitalConnecta.
DigitalConnecta is independent of Microsoft, allowing us to follow a more flexible pricing policy and adapt to our customers' needs.
Additionally, we sell licenses in more than 20 countries, have no physical store, and do not handle physical shipping. All our licenses are digital and sent via email, enabling us to reduce costs and meet our customers' needs.
This is achieved through a rigorous procedure. The quality and originality remain the same, but this characteristic influences the price, allowing it to be more competitive, similar to the video game market for renewed licenses.
