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Autodesk's Release 14 software and licensing practices For these reasons, we vacate the district court's grant of summary judgment to Vernor and remand for further proceedings.Ī. Because Vernor did not purchase the Release 14 copies from an owner, he may not invoke the first sale doctrine, and he also may not assert an essential step defense on behalf of his customers.

We determine that Autodesk's direct customers are licensees of their copies of the software rather than owners, which has two ramifications. The district court issued the requested declaratory judgment, holding that Vernor's sales were lawful because of two of the Copyright Act's affirmative defenses that apply to owners of copies of copyrighted works, the first sale doctrine and the essential step defense.Īutodesk distributes Release 14 pursuant to a limited license agreement in which it reserves title to the software copies and imposes significant use and transfer restrictions on its customers. Vernor brought this declaratory judgment action against Autodesk to establish that these resales did not infringe Autodesk's copyright. Timothy Vernor purchased several used copies of Autodesk, Inc.'s AutoCAD Release 14 software (“Release 14”) from one of Autodesk's direct customers, and he resold the Release 14 copies on eBay. Matthew Williams of Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP, for amicus curiae Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.

Bain, Keith Kupferschmid, and Mark Bohannon, for amicus curiae Software & Information Industry Association. Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Sherwin Siy and John Bergmayer of Public Knowledge, for amicus curiae American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Consumer Federation of America, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and U.S. Eskow of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, for amicus curiae eBay Inc. Beck (argued) and Deepak Gupta of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, for plaintiff-appellee Timothy S. Harris of Morrison & Foerster LLP, for defendant-appellant Autodesk, Inc. Lawit of Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin P.C., and Michael A. Decided: September 10, 2010īefore WILLIAM C. United States Court of Appeals,Ninth Circuit.