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Do I Own the Software in my Model 3?

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Did I purchase the software when I purchased the car? If so, shouldn't I legally be able to transfer FSD from my Model 3 to a new Model Y? I know that Tesla doesn't offer this service, nor anyone else that I know of, but if someone could figure out how, wouldn't it be legal? Or does Tesla retain ownership of the software? When Chevrolet sells a Corvette, the owner can pull the motor out and put it in any car that he can fit it into, and no-one questions his right to do this. Is software intrinsically different?
 
Did I purchase the software when I purchased the car? If so, shouldn't I legally be able to transfer FSD from my Model 3 to a new Model Y? I know that Tesla doesn't offer this service, nor anyone else that I know of, but if someone could figure out how, wouldn't it be legal? Or does Tesla retain ownership of the software? When Chevrolet sells a Corvette, the owner can pull the motor out and put it in any car that he can fit it into, and no-one questions his right to do this. Is software intrinsically different?

No.
N/A.
It wouldn't.
No.
 
Generally speaking, you really never “own” software, just like you don’t own music that you purchase. You are really purchasing a license to use it, and the true owner can set up the licensing terms any way they like, with restrictions like non-transferability. First sale doctrine potentially goes right out the window. The law sees the creative arrangement of ones and zeroes differently than it does a tangible asset like a traditional (“dumb”) car. With cars becoming more like computers than like simple machines, the lines are becoming increasingly blurred.

It gets even more complicated when multiple parties are involved. Think about this: I bought two inexpensive Blue-ray players (one from Sony and one from Samsung) that had Netflix and YouTube apps. This made them a cheap way to turn older, dumb TVs into smart TVs. Then one day (about 2 years after purchase) I turned them on and they updated themselves over the internet without my permission and removed the Netflix and YouTube apps, rendering them almost useless to me. My recourse: none - the apps were licensed directly by the 3rd parties with terms that allowed them to revoke their apps if my hardware became obsolete. So in this day and age, even when you buy a tangible asset like a Blue-ray player, the vendor or 3rd-party partners can render your asset useless (essentially brick it) at their whim based on the small-print of the EULA. I can’t even be assured that I can keep the software on a device that came with it and made it suitable to the purpose for which I bought it.
 
Not so fast, has anyone read the software license agreement?
Beta software and all.
Page 204.

Screen Shot 2020-08-30 at 11.53.34 AM.png
 
Unless you purchase the source code, or write it yourself, no one owns any software. A license to use the software is what you purchase. Even if it's Open Source, so there's no actual purchase involved, it's still a license with terms of use.
 
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This is where the (not-yet-available) pay-as-you-go model may benefit you. You pay to rent the feature on whatever car you currently own. Musk promises it will cost you more to do it that way, but if you only intend to keep the car for 2 years, FSD becomes pretty expensive as a one-time purchase item. That’s $333/month if you buy it every 2 years when you trade up. My guess is it will be cheaper than that per month when they start the pay-as-you-go product.
 
Did I purchase the software when I purchased the car? If so, shouldn't I legally be able to transfer FSD from my Model 3 to a new Model Y? I know that Tesla doesn't offer this service, nor anyone else that I know of, but if someone could figure out how, wouldn't it be legal? Or does Tesla retain ownership of the software? When Chevrolet sells a Corvette, the owner can pull the motor out and put it in any car that he can fit it into, and no-one questions his right to do this. Is software intrinsically different?
Interesting conversation you bring up.

Many will tell you that your money only buys you the hardware and that the software is included but only as a use license case.

In short: No, FSD doesn’t transfer like traditional software when you upgrade equipment.
 
Tesla should do something about FSD transfers. At least discount it. It encourages people to NOT upgrade hardware. I might trade up every 2 years if they transferred it. Without transfer I might trade up every 4.



Until they can produce more cars than they have a backlog of buyers for they have no reason to care how often you want to upgrade- it's not like that's causing new Teslas to sit around unsold.
 
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The license is what you own. So what the license says rules. Except nontransferability. For the license to have value it must be transferable. Bunch of bankruptcy courts have said so, specifically with regard to imbedded software like Tesla's. If the license was not transferable you would not be able to sell the car because it has no value other than scrap without the software. You may not be entitled to any upgrades but you do have the right to use what was installed when sold.

I'm not a lawyer but after 24 years in IT, software licenses were a big deal wherever I worked. I went through several iterations of corporate policies of what was legal and what was not regarding software and licenses.
 
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The license is what you own. So what the license says rules. Except nontransferability. For the license to have value it must be transferable

This is absolutely not correct in any broad sense.

There's a number of ways in which a license can be written to not be legally transferable.

See the ruling in Vernor v Autodesk for example where the court found the attempt to re-sell the software was not permitted.


Summary of ruling said:
The court ruled that pursuant to the license agreement, the architectural firm was a licensee, not an "owner of a particular copy" of the AutoCad packages and was not entitled to resell its copies to Vernor under § 109(a)'s first sale doctrine. Vernor did not receive title to the copies from the firm and accordingly could not pass ownership on to others. Thus, Vernor could not invoke the first sale doctrine. Nor could Vernor assert an essential step defense on behalf of his customers. The sales by both the firm and Vernor infringed Autodesk's exclusive right to distribute copies of its work under 17 U.S.C.S. § 106(3). Because Vernor was not an owner, his customers were also not owners of the AutoCad packages



YMMV by jurisdiction of course (especially in in EU)


. Bunch of bankruptcy courts have said so, specifically with regard to imbedded software like Tesla's.

Would be curious if you have any specific case citations?
 
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