AutoCAD 2011 EULA Changes

For AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk made relatively few changes in the EULA. They fixed the grammar error that was introduced in AutoCAD 2010, but they didn’t make any changes to the convoluted “License Grant” wording that was also added in AutoCAD 2010.

There are a handful of minor tweaks here and there, but the only substantial change is some newly added text in section 9.1 that is intended to make sure that AutoCAD licenses can’t be liquidated during bankruptcy proceedings:

In the context of any bankruptcy proceeding, You acknowledge and agree that this Agreement is and shall be treated as an executory contract of the type described by Section 365(c)(1) of Title 11 of the United States Code and may not be assigned without Autodesk’s prior written consent, which may be withheld in Autodesk’s sole and absolute discretion.

Just for fun, I made a chart that shows how the AutoCAD US/Canada EULA has grown since AutoCAD 2000. The EULA grew 150% from 12139 non-space characters in AutoCAD 2000 to 30235 non-space characters in AutoCAD 2011. For what it’s worth, the size of acad.exe grew 75% in the same timeframe.

AutoCAD 2011 EULA Growth Chart

2 thoughts on “AutoCAD 2011 EULA Changes”

  1. The latest change seems risky and desperate of Autodesk to do that. Especially since this runs very close to Verner vs Autodesk, in which Autodesk lost. The “first sale” doctrine is not *that* different in spirit than liquidation during bankruptcy. It seems obvious to me that many tech vendors are just taking the approach of “do it and wait for someone to challenge it”.

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