intellectual-property software eula
Copying Software to a New Computer
<p>I sold a printer I manufactured and software (that I developed on top of an open source project) that runs the printer to a customer, who reached out and said their mainboard (its a motherboard in the printer with windows 10 installed and has my software and source code copied onto it) has gone bad. They are not under warranty and refused to pay for a new board from me. They then copied all of my source code and software onto another computer and are running their printer and my software off of that, to bypass buying a board from me.</p>
<p>Do I have any legal recourse? Is it legal for them to copy my software and source files onto another computer to run their printer?</p>
<p>They are also talking about making third party accessories for my printers, and altering code to enable to use of third party accessories.</p>
<p>I did not provide any licensing or EULA with the printer or software.</p>

<p>When you &quot;sell software&quot; to a person, you almost certainly &quot;sell a license&quot;, and not the software in the entire abstract sense (I assume this is not a &quot;work for hire&quot;). If you do not have a written-out license, then the course have to figure out what the license actually was for. Or, in this case, what the entire sales contract was for. From what you're said here, the money was for both a physical printer and a software license.</p>
<p>What you probably wish you had said in an explicit EULA for the software is that &quot;this software can only be installed on specific pieces of hardware X and Y&quot;, which forces them to buy a new copy if they change hardware. When they you probably wish you had said in an explicit EULA for the software is that &quot;this software can be installed on only printer and one motherboard at a time&quot;. Given the circumstances of the sale, the courts will not find that there was no license at all. With no further facts in evidence, it is unlikely that the courts would find that the agreement was to one hardware-bound installation, insofar as that is not at all a common license condition. Of course, there may be more relevant facts here than you have mentioned.</p>
<p>I don't understand what is involved in making third party accessories for your printers, and altering code to enable to use of third party accessories. Altering licensed code is typically forbidden by usual licenses, OTOH you can't forbid a person to modify open source code, so it depends on what exactly they are proposing to modify.</p>
