> Regarding the CDs I can say flat out for sure the intellectual property
> owner can shut down any sales and get pretty nasty along with it.
Not normally.
> Case
> in point a CD plant goes belly up and somebody buys a pallet of CDs.
> Turns out in the pallet of misc there are several hundred Apple Dealer
> Service CDs with diagnostic software and fully installable OS for all
> recent machines. Shortly after some bozo bought one and tried to
> register it with Apple, the Apple Lawyers were all over the poor guy
> selling them.
If they were made under contract to Apple, they are Apple property and
shouldn't have been sold at the liquidation. So they may legally be
stolen property. This is a general problem, not a copyright issue.
This is MUCH different from the more common case where the publisher
scraps a pallet of finished goods, or a distributor or dealer does.
In such a case, the publisher may attempt to suppress sales, but has
no legal ground to do so.
If the publisher is smart about how they scrap stuff, they can
contractually require the buyer to destroy the material. In that case,
if the buyer resells the CDs, the buyer (but not the end user) is liable
for damages.
> Auctions make for some weird issues. Leased equipment gets sold, all
> sorts of snafu.
Which is why leasing companies that are smart affix labels to leased
equipment saying things like "Subject to a security interest in favor
of and/or owned by <name of leasing company> <address> <phone number>"
(seen on one of our laser printers at work). However, there are many
leasing companies that don't do this, which is mind-boggling.
Received on Tue Feb 11 2003 - 13:28:00 GMT