software licence and past use of pirated software

name of your state? outside USA.
Hi
A client of mine ( and a friend) is a developer who has used pirated development tools to write software., then he sold the software he wrote to some customers (not the dev tools!).
After he became aware of the piracy/licencing issues, he went and bought original copies of the dev tool for himself and each of his team members.
now he is concerend about his current state:
- would the money he received from selling his program before buying the licenses for the developer tool be legal now?
- would his customers,who bought his product be running legal software?
- now that he has the original software, would it be legal to continue selling the product to new customers?
thanks for your time
Sammy

blue_entropy said:

name of your state? outside USA.
Hi
A client of mine ( and a friend) is a developer who has used pirated development tools to write software., then he sold the software he wrote to some customers (not the dev tools!).
After he became aware of the piracy/licencing issues, he went and bought original copies of the dev tool for himself and each of his team members.
now he is concerend about his current state:
- would the money he received from selling his program before buying the licenses for the developer tool be legal now?

**A: no.
**********
- would his customers,who bought his product be running legal software?

**A: no.
*********
- now that he has the original software, would it be legal to continue selling the product to new customers?

**A: no.
********
thanks for your time
Sammy

Click to expand...

**A: yes.

I respectfully disagree with HG on this one.

"- would the money he received from selling his program before buying the licenses for the developer tool be legal now?"
*** Assuming that the money is legal tender, it is perfectly legal. However, your question really is, IS his sale of a product developed with pirated software legal?? And the answer to that is yes. Though his conduct of using unlicensed software was improper, the product he produced is not 'tainted' by his improper use.

"would his customers,who bought his product be running legal software?"
*** Yes. See above.

"now that he has the original software, would it be legal to continue selling the product to new customers?"
*** Again, yes.

I am assuming that what you are describing is someone like using an unlicensed copy of Access to build a database template, then elling the template to another. The sale of the template is not illegal.

And it is made even less of an issue by their subsequent legal purchase of the software.

Using your analogy, a person who purchases a set of house plans, developed by an architect with an unlicensed copy of AutoCad, would be in violation of the laws for simply purchasing, owning or using the plans. Sorry, doesn't happen that way.

Hi HomeGuru , and thanks for your reply, would you please
provide more information on why you think it's not legal? I'd like
to hear about it from you.

JETX ,your access analogy is 100% correct,( it's a visual basic program).
as a side question, you said
>Though his conduct of using unlicensed software was improper
you mean the conduct of *writing* the program, not selling it.
would the act of buying the original copy fix that?
thanks, and great signature by the way

"Though his conduct of using unlicensed software was improper you mean the conduct of *writing* the program, not selling it."
*** No. I mean the process of his owning and using unlicensed software. And yes, purchasing sufficient copies does remove his copyright violation.

And while I agree (90%) with Jet, Visual Basic requires runtimes that are licensed at various levels depending on the version of the software purchased.

Therefore, The answer would depend on what the specific application involved in the way of licensed runtimes, modules and addins and if these were included in the licensed product.

"The answer would depend on what the specific application involved in the way of licensed runtimes, modules and addins and if these were included in the licensed product."
*** I disagree. Those issues MAY have been relevant if the created product included them, but we (on this forum) do not know if they did or not. And even if they did, the subsequent purchase of the licensed product does not void the 'legality' of the previous product.

In any case, this is all an argument in futility. There is simply no one (Microsoft included) who would even consider filing a complaint on a product that was produced under a previously, but now, licensed product.

Well Pfaffing, the licenced version that was bought allows the distribution of the developed application and the vb runtime with it so I guess this point is resolved.
while doing a search , I came across this:
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/licensing_and_compliance/tools_and_resources/faq.aspx
it's Microsoft piracy faq, my interpretation of their first paragraph is :" if you owned illgal software, go buy original copies and continue working".
This further supports Jetx's point, making the issue more of a theoritical discussion than fear of legal action from MS or otherwise.