End User License Agreement

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This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany and Austria . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

An End User License Agreement , and End User License Agreement , abbreviated EULA (of English. End User License Agreement ), is a special license agreement which the use of software to regulate. Texts with an EULA are often displayed at the beginning of the software installation .

Situation in Germany

In Germany, EULAs for standard software are only part of the contract if they were agreed between the seller and purchaser of the software at the time of purchase. This assumes the possibility of knowledge when concluding the contract. License terms made available to the buyer after the purchase (for example during installation or as a printed insert in the packaging) are ineffective for the buyer. This also applies if the buyer clicks on "I accept the license agreement" or something similar during installation, because the software will otherwise refuse to install.

Even if the license conditions were agreed upon at the time of purchase (for example, when buying online, by means of a clearly visible display before the purchase or when buying in a shop, by clearly printing the full conditions on the packaging), their effectiveness may be limited. They then represent general terms and conditions, which are subject to content control by the general terms and conditions of the BGB .

Situation in Austria

Due to the similarity of the legal systems between Austria and Germany, the same generally applies in Austria as in Germany. This means that even in Austria users must be able to see any end-user license agreements before signing a contract.

If such a license is not expressly made available to the future user prior to the conclusion of the contract, it is a violation of so - called pre - contractual disclosure obligations ("culpa in contrahendo") . A breach of this pre-contractual duty to provide information makes a subsequent change to the contractual relationship, as represented by an end-user license agreement that is displayed after the purchase has been made, generally ineffective.

See also

literature

  • Frank A. Koch: Handbook software and database law. Springer, 2003, ISBN 3-540-00016-X .
  • Frank A. Koch: Computer contract law. 6., completely reworked. Edition. Haufe, 2002, ISBN 3-448-04813-5 .
  • Jochen Marly: Software license agreements. 4th, completely revised and exp. Edition. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-48785-8 .
  • Clemens Mayer-Wegelin: Buyer's Rights for Computer Games - Technical Copy Protection Measures and End User License Agreements. JurPC web doc. 28/2009
  • Claus-Dieter Müller-Hengstenberg: BVB / EVB IT computer software. 6., revised. and exp. Edition. Schmidt, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-503-07052-4 .
  • Jochen Schneider: Handbook of IT law. 3., extensively revised. and exp. Edition. Schmidt, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-504-56024-X .
  • Georg F. Schröder: software contracts. 2nd Edition. Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-48951-6 .
  • Bernd Tremml: Computer contracts for hardware and software. Planegg 1996, ISBN 3-8092-1155-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fred Andresen, Ulrich Bantle: Pitfalls in the End User License Agreement - I don't see you. In: Linux magazine. 03, 2007.
  2. ↑ Karsten Violka: Unleashed. In: c't. 03, 2006