How Oracle's 14-year-old legal loss is forcing Microsoft to UK Supreme Court
Microsoft is appealing to the UK Supreme Court in a £270 million legal battle against reseller ValueLicensing regarding the resale of perpetual software licenses. The case centers on whether Microsoft can restrict the secondary market for its software, with previous rulings favoring the reseller based on the 'UsedSoft' precedent.
Why it matters
This case has significant implications for the secondary software market and corporate control over digital assets after the initial point of sale.
In 2012, Oracle went to the European Court of Justice to stop people reselling its software licences second-hand. It lost. That judgment, known as UsedSoft, settled a simple idea: once you sell someone a perpetual software licence, you cannot control what they do with it afterwards. Fourteen years on, that ruling is proving to be Microsoft's biggest problem in a London courtroom.Microsoft has now lost twice in a £270 million case brought by UK reseller ValueLicensing, and it is asking the Supreme Court for permission to try again. The Competition Appeal Tribunal ruled in 2025 that reselling and subdividing Microsoft's on-premise licences did not infringe its copyright. Microsoft appealed. On July 7, it lost that too.
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