Algunos problemas del agotamiento de los derechos de propiedad intelectual respecto de las licencias de software

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.