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Student Beats Microsoft Legally By Himself
This story broke about 6 months ago, but is very entertaining if you
didn't catch it the first time around. David Zamos is a student at Kent
State who found himself in a very strange predicament about a year ago.
When he purchased a sealed box version of Windows XP from his school's
book store to upgrade his laptop, then later decided he'd rather not
have to format and lose all his work, he tried returning the operating
system. The book store would not accept the return, so he tried
Microsoft. They also would not accept it. So, he decided that since he
had no use for it and it had never been used, he would sell it on eBay.
Queue the Microsoft lawyers.
The predictable happened; Zamos was sued by Microsoft, claiming (and I kid you not), that Zamos' sale on eBay cost Microsoft hundreds of thousands of dollars in "irreparable damage." They demanded that Zamos hand over his eBay profits ($143.50) and also pay for Microsoft's legal expenses.
To read about how Zamos single-handedly won his case without hiring outside counsel, check out this article from Cleveland Scene.
Thankfully it appears that after a few highly visible gaffs like this (anyone remember Mike Rowe Soft?), and some public prodding from people like Robert Scoble, Microsoft has taken another look at the way they handle this type of situation.
[via digg]
Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsWeaselSep 9th 2005 10:04PM
Brilliant! These are the kinds of people that are helping us all without us ever asking for it. My hat is off to you Zamos, because you stand up for what is right, a value that is rare and to be treasured. Good job!
-Weasel
emanuelSep 11th 2005 3:48PM
Seems to me after reading the story that what he did was kind of wrong though, but..
Buying the product with an academic license, very low price, and then selling it a higher price to anyone. Think it's the only restriction there is, when buying the cheaper academic license, that you're not allowed to sell it or give it a way. Hmm. At least that's the rules for visual studio bought with academic license.
But he could as he said claim that he didn't now the rules. And I think it's kind of unfair for him to be sued for so much money because of a mistake. Although, he had the chance to get the facts straight when he was denied to sell the software the first time.. hmm.. A well.
Strong guy anyway, to put up a fight! =) And win!
Joost SchuurSep 11th 2005 5:29PM
Isn't this story pushing the scope of DownloadSquad a little too much?
As much as I enjoy the story, I'd expect to see this on Boing Boing, and not a site dedicated to software downloads.