I have a big stack of Microsoft OEM software install CDs, manuals and COAs - things like NT Workstation, Office 97, etc. The machines with which these were originally purchased are now landfill and in no way is the software, or any upgraded descendant of it still in use.
There still seems to be a market for it (although prices aren’t high); can I legally sell the software?
I’m in the UK.
Here in the US some companies allow it, but to ‘legally’ do it, you must contact the owner of the intellectual property and first, see if it is allowed, and second use their form which transfers the ownership of the software to the new buyer (ownership is not the right word, since you never owned the software, just permission to use it in a specific way). I think you normally have to pay the software company a ‘transfer fee’ as well.
I looked into this once concerning some industrial software. The original hardware/software package cost 35-50K and the transfer fee I would have had to pay to sell it to another buyer was 3K, IIRC.
-rainy
Industrial software aside, anything you buy off the shelf is absolutely sellable. Read the license. You can terminate it. Then you’re not bound by the “license” and the first sale rule applies. The next person, then, is bound by it. If this issue is because it’s OEM software, well, Dell or Mom-n-Pop or whoever had the contract with Microsoft – not you. You’re absolutely free to sell.
Even if it’s against a license, it’s still perfectly legal. You’d have a civil liability for breach of contract in rainy’s case.
Of course, if it’s the sort of software that requires a continuous relationship with the vendor, you’d have to pay the transfer fee if you bought it from somebody else anyway, or the company wouldn’t recognize you as a legitimate owner and wouldn’t give you the support or hardware key updates or whatever it is that they use to make sure that people using their software have paid – and continue to pay – for it.
Obviously that’s a special case and doesn’t apply to normal OEM software like Corel WordPerfect Suite or Microsoft Office or Windows or whatever…
Here’s the lowdown on Microsoft’s stand on selling OEM software. It should accompany the Hardware it was purchased with. Also, since the OEM software was purchased by a “manufacturer” with the understanding that they were buying the software to include with their product, Microsoft was not supplying suppport for the software. All support for the OEm software is the responsibility of the “manufacturer” or reseller.
So in a worst case, you sell this to someone without the HW because you no longer have it, and they can’t get support. Mainly because the hardware that would generate the support is not there.
In addition, if this software is one of the activation enabled products (windows XP, Office XP, etc) you need to have the OEM key to unlock it upon install. If you do not have that key, you cannot activate it and the software will stop working after a period of time. Again, since Microsoft does not supply support for this OEM software, if the customer needed a replacement key, they need to talk to the manufacutrer not Microsoft.