Digital Goods Lawyer

More Than Just Software and MP3s

Digital Goods at a Glance

Providers of Digital Content

Whether music, live-streamed videos, eBooks, traditional software, apps, or blog articles – digital goods and content are part of our everyday lives. Unlike in the past, it is now mainly the private sector of the entertainment and consumer industries that is driving and accelerating this development. Whether we play games, read the news, or enjoy the latest comedy content online, digital products are always involved. These products are protected by legal rights that not only ensure creators can earn a living and maintain control over their work, but also define the rights and obligations of consumers.

Digital goods are no longer reserved for professional authors, film studios, or software developers. Due to ongoing digitalization – and especially the growth of the internet – almost anyone can now become a provider of digital content. Through personal blogs, individuals can publish opinions and creative work. With just a few clicks, entire smartphone apps can be assembled using modular development tools. Smartphones have transformed yesterday’s technology enthusiasts into today’s social media influencers. Professional cameras and dashcams enable almost anyone to create popular video channels on platforms such as YouTube. Those who achieve success often see it as an opportunity to turn their creativity into a profession and monetize their work.

However, many people overlook that monetization quickly raises important legal questions. Online success often appears so fast and simple that the legal realities behind digital businesses are sometimes ignored.

Software as a Digital Good

While digital content such as texts, images, or videos often requires relatively small investments, the development of software is still associated with considerable effort and resources – whether created by individual programmers or large development teams. Protecting these investments and the business models behind them almost always requires legal support.

In addition to licensing law and media law, issues related to patent law often arise. For young and creative developers, it can be difficult to fully understand these legal frameworks and their consequences in the global digital economy. Many groundbreaking innovations in the software and internet sector have not failed because of technical limitations, but because of inadequate legal protection or poorly structured legal frameworks.

Digital Secondary Market – Used Software as a Regular Economic Asset

Not long ago, the situation seemed clear: once software was purchased, it had no resale value because resale was not permitted. Today, this has changed. Many software manufacturers have abandoned their strong resistance to treating software as a one-time product. Instead, many now rely on cloud software and subscription-based models. However, large quantities of used software still exist on the market – whether this will remain the case in the future remains to be seen.
At present, the digital secondary market continues to grow steadily, offering consumers attractive prices for digital products while also creating new business opportunities for companies. As past court decisions have shown, however, the legally decisive “principle of exhaustion” is still applied differently depending on the type of digital goods involved. Used software – yes; used eBooks – no; used…? The future remains uncertain.

Areas of Legal Practice

• Legal advice and support for software companies and developers
• Software law and open-source licensing
• Copyright law and patent law
• Licensing law and agency agreements
• Internet law and media law