A case in favour of the 'reselling' of digital downloads of Valve's software has been dismissed from a German court. A complaint was filed by Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (or VZBV), a German consumer group, in regards to Valve's End User License Agreement which means that end users cannot resell the games they've bought.

This case comes after a ruling made by the Court of Justice of the European Union way back in July of 2012 saying that end users should have the right to re-sell digital downloads and that this should not be prohibited by a company's end user agreement. This arose from the Oracle v UsedSoft case which you can read more about here. Basically, the court ruled that, as with physical media, copyright holders 'exhaust' their exclusive right to content once a sale is made, meaning end users should be able to resell digital content that they have previously bought.

Despite this ruling being made, German courts do not feel that the principle of 'exhaustion' is applicable to games distributed digitally. In the age of illegal downloading one can understand why some copyright holders would be wary of supporting the reselling of digital media. That said it's odd that this German court ruled contrarily to another ruling made by the Court of Justice of the European Union.

As always, what do you make of this German court ruling? I may be a Pixel Judge but I'm definitely not a lawyer, so feel free to let us know your thoughts in the comments below.