Local Dude Takes On AutoCAD

Overheard at Seattlest HQ: "I can see how the guy might have a case, but it's pretty common knowledge in the industry that you don't fucking sell AutoCAD on your own -- at least not on obvious places like eBay."

That Seattlest was referring to Timothy Vernor, a local guy who filed suit against Autodesk because they used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to have eBay pull auctions where he was trying to sell used copies of AutoCAD, which resulted in eBay shutting down his account for a month. Vernor's asking for $10 million in punitive damages.

Lots of blogs who know a lot more than we do about copyright law, shrink-wrap contracts, first sale doctrine, and AutoCAD have things to say -- as do their commenters.

We'll quote a bit from Evan Yares, the most interesting one we found:

it's clear cut enough that Autodesk may be in trouble here.

Tim was offering items that were genuine, original, and came from Autodesk. He wasn't offering fake goods, or unauthorized copies. The box, the documentation, and the disks were all the real thing. I presume that he was not offering his own license to use the software (which would not have been authorized by Autodesk), but was just passing along whatever was in the box.

You might counter that Tim was violating the AutoCAD R14 license agreement by selling this package. But Tim wasn't subject to the license agreement. He'd bought the package from someone else. Since he didn't install it (I hope he didn't), there was never a contract formed between him and Autodesk.