Re: Effect of Assignments of IP on Prior Licenses

From: Paul Robinson <PAUL[_at_]tdr.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 1994 10:46:51 -0500 (EST)

From: Paul Robinson <PAUL[_at_]TDR.COM>
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA

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Mark Lemley <mlemley[_at_]msmail.law.utexas.edu>, writes:

> > Paul Robinson writes, among other things:
> >
> > The software company is selling right, title and ownership of
> > a piece of property, to wit, a software program. There are
> > two parts to this piece of property, the physical property
> > itself (the program, documentation, masters, source code, film
> > copies of the manuals for printing, etc) and the legal rights
> > as a result of copyright or trade secret depending on how the
> > product is sold.
>
> Sorry, Paul, in this case you have to blame the software
> vendors, not the lawyers. The reason your (perfectly logical)
> analysis of transfers of rights doesn't work is that many
> software vendors don't *want* their rights to be transferable.
> By prohibiting transfers in the license agreement, vendors can
> keep greater control over who gets their software (for
> example, they can keep it from being sold to competitors), can
> engage in price discrimination (ie. small companies pay a
> little, large companies pay a lot), and can expand the market
> for their programs (since the license trumps the provisions of
> the "first sale" doctrine in copyright law).

It may be my fault; I thought I made myself clear.

I was discussing a situation where a company owns a computer program, has licensed the right to sell the program to some distributor, then wants to to sell the *ownership* of the program to another company.

What you are referring to is when Paul Robinson (e.g. me, an individual) buys a copy of Quattro from Comp USA or direct from Borland. What *I* was referring to is when Word Perfect purchases the *ownership* of Quattro from Borland.

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Paul Robinson - Paul[_at_]TDR.COM
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Received on Fri Nov 11 1994 - 15:56:18 GMT