Under federal contract law in the United States any legal document must be disclosed prior to payment. EULAs are not able to be enforced due to this as the EULA is not disclosed prior to sale, it would be possible to work through a loophole if you were able to get a full refund of purchase once you disagree to the license but again this is not the case as no store or software manufacturer will refund the price paid once the software is opened. As this is the case and the EULA remains locked in the CD/DVD media and is only revealed during the installation process it is not legally binding.

Consider this, if a construction company were being paid to create a home for your family and then after it was built and your money paid they handed you a contract forbidding you from altering, tampering, or giving your key to anyone not considered the purchaser you would laugh and walk away from them. The only difference in software EULAs and this scenario is that one item is tangible and the other is not, contract law applies equally to both.

This was confirmed with the M$ legal team and my OEM copy of a Office XP SBE (the software in question at the time) was activated without any more struggle. Knowing the law of the land can often save you a headache or two, and being able to bring that knowledge to bear on a law professional when you yourself do not have a law degree much less the ability to practice law is wonderful when you are proven right and can back the pro into a corner they cannot escape from.

Under federal contract law in the United States any legal document must be disclosed prior to payment. EULAs are not able to be enforced due to this as the EULA is not disclosed prior to sale, it would be possible to work through a loophole if you were able to get a full refund of purchase once you disagree to the license but again this is not the case as no store or software manufacturer will refund the price paid once the software is opened. As this is the case and the EULA remains locked in the CD/DVD media and is only revealed during the installation process it is not legally binding.

Consider this, if a construction company were being paid to create a home for your family and then after it was built and your money paid they handed you a contract forbidding you from altering, tampering, or giving your key to anyone not considered the purchaser you would laugh and walk away from them. The only difference in software EULAs and this scenario is that one item is tangible and the other is not, contract law applies equally to both.

This was confirmed with the M$ legal team and my OEM copy of a Office XP SBE (the software in question at the time) was activated without any more struggle. Knowing the law of the land can often save you a headache or two, and being able to bring that knowledge to bear on a law professional when you yourself do not have a law degree much less the ability to practice law is wonderful when you are proven right and can back the pro into a corner they cannot escape from.

It was a System Builder's license with an OEM product key. The most restrictive thing about the license as I read it was that it had to be purchased/provided with a new computer including a HD/SSD, CPU, MB, PSU, etc. That and the already known bit where the System Builder had to provide tech support. I believe that the license is probably non-transferable to another computer. Some of the wording made is sound like it wanted you to create a ghost image CD once activated so it never had to be installed from media again. So there may be issues with activating another clean install; who knows. More likely activating that license key on a computer with a different hardware configuration would be more troublesome and would require a phone call, if at all possible.

Stephen