The District Court of Paris has issued a ruling saying that French owners of digital games on Steam are permitted to resell them under EU law. Next Inpact reports (as translated by GamesIndustry.biz sister-site Rock Paper Shotgun) that the court ruled in favor of the French consumer interest group Union fédérale des consommateurs, the Federal Union of Consumers on a number of clauses including the issue of digital resales.
The Federal Union of Consumers has been pursuing Valve for several years now over numerous issues in the Steam Subscriber Agreement. This particular ruling by the French court looks at Valve's claim that consumers do not actually purchase a digital product when they buy a game -- rather, they purchase a subscription to access and use content and services on Steam. The court's ruling classifies these sales as digital licenses rather than subscriptions, thus allowing them to be resold in the same way that physical games have been resellable.
Per the court, the prohibition against digital resales violates EU laws that maintain "the free movement of goods within the Union." All goods sold within the EU must be able to be resold without permission from the person who originally sold them.