In recent years, second hand trading of software has experienced substantial growth and the legal issues involved in such transactions have also caught the eyes of the players in the industry. Generally, the legality of software resale is decided by whether the distribution rights of the copyright owners are exhausted upon the transaction. However, it is difficult to decide when a transaction should be regarded as "licensing" and when the transaction should be deemed as a "sale". As the number of software resale cases brought before the courts increases, the courts’ understanding of the nature of software trading develops. Various jurisdictions have formed their own approach on differentiating an act of sale from that of licensing.

Common copyrighted products such as books or CDs can be resold because most countries adapt the "doctrine of exhaustion of distribution rights" in their copyright law, namely once a copyright owner publicly distributes his/her original work or the copies of such work by way of "sale" or "gifting", the distribution right will be deemed exhausted and the owner may not reclaim such right.

 

Xu Jing, Partner and Zhao Ye, Associate, IP Litigation

 

 

Theoretically, the exhaustion of rights is equally applicable to software, which is a form of work. In practice, however, problems arise when the software is "licensed" to public users, since the "doctrine of exhaustion of rights" only applies to the distribution methods of "sale" or "gifting". Under such circumstances, software licensing will not trigger the exhaustion of distribution rights. However, the sale of software will inevitably involve licensing and is usually subject to software licensing agreements. Therefore, the key factor which determines whether the exhaustion of distribution rights occurs depends on when a sale of software constitutes "sale" and when it constitutes "license"; this factor also determines whether a resale of software constitutes copyright infringement. Different jurisdictions have developed their own approach towards this issue.

In the United States, for example, ProCD Corp. v. Zerdenberg, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit established three criteria on how to distinguish a sale activity from licensing:

1. Purchasers of mass-market software pay a single purchase price rather than a series of royalties;

2. The software publisher does not retain title to the "product" as a security interest; and

3. The rights of the licensee to the software copy are perpetual, like the rights of a purchaser pursuant to a sale

China has developed its own criteria for the applicability of the doctrine of exhaustion of rights with a reference to the theories and laws of other jurisdictions. Under Chinese criteria, the rights are exhausted if the software is distributed by way of transfer of ownership, otherwise, it should be deemed as "license" only.  On May 14, 2008, the Shanghai High People’s Court rendered the final decision in respect of copyright infringement on Shanghai Shanjun Industrial Ltd., Zheng Feng v. Shanghai Jiliang Software Technology Ltd. In this case, a third party legally acquired a set of copyrighted software by Shanghai Jiliang Software Technology Ltd. ("Jiliang") and resold it to Shanghai Shanjun Industrial Ltd. ("Shanjun"). Shanjun later resold the software to another company, which is also a third party to the case. Jiliang sued Shanjun for copyright infringement.

The court held that "the copyright owner enjoys the right to distribute the original work or copies of such work by transferring proprietary rights to the public. However, once the copyrighted work or the copies are initially sold or gifted to the public under the license of the copyright owner, the copyright owner will no longer enjoy the right to control further resale of the work or its copies. In other words, the party that legally acquired the ownership of the original copyrighted work or its copies may resell or gift such work or copies or provide them to other parties without seeking further license from the copyright owner.”

The above analysis of the Court of the Second Instance has great significance for software related copyright matters in China. It not only defines the doctrine of exhaustion of distribution rights for the first time in China, but also confirms that the application of the doctrine should be determined by whether the distribution involves the change of the ownership of software. Instead of following the traditional method of merely distinguishing "sale" from ‘license", the Court instead uses a more pragmatic approach.