Abstract
The first sale doctrine in relation to software license agreements generates the same problems that may arise in other contracts that deals other copyrighted works; today, the doctrine discusses which dispositions enable the exhaustion of rights, what rights are exhausted by this figure, or even how to interpreted licenses agreements. All these questions are equally applicable to software, as they are to musical or literary works. However, this paper, which is the result of a presentation made by the author at the University of Chile, discuss in particular two issues relevant to the software license agreements; these are the interpretation of these contracts and the nature of the digital downloads. The two problems identified here confronted with the first sale doctrine to conclude the must needed review to the interpretation criteria used in these contracts, as well as to demonstrate the need to re-categorize the so-called digital copies, now as “tangible digital goods”.This journal is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights.
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