CAD software should be treated as any other commodity. You pay your money,you get your product. CAD software companies like to tie you in so that your pay your money but product still belongs to us, you only buy license. Its wrong! I bet their case wouldn't stand a chance in a court of law. No wonder guys obtain cracked versions of CAD and CAD vendors have only themselves to blame. $4500 min to buy a product you dont own. $500 would be a fair price and illegal sofware would be wiped out. Source
Correct that license cannot be sold alone but can be sold along with the company. We did that for ProE. For bringing back the maintenance, you will need to pay for the years that your stop the maintenance. Since the maintenance is about 1/4 of the software price. It is basically like buying a new one if the software is too old. However, sometime we can strike a good deal with the CAD company. Like Tim estimated, may be half the price will do. Source
The selling of a seat/seats as part of the corporate assets is also permitted with Autodesk products but only as part the transfer of ownership in the company/corporation and its assets. Source
I had Solidworks student edition (yes I actually bought some software whilst a student) and I was told by the rep it would work forever. Yes it would if you never got a new computer, but after 18months I could no longer install it on my new machine and after loads of angry emails to Solidworks support they still wouldn't activate it even though I'd paid for it and it was 3 years old or so. This is totally not on if you've paid for a bit of software. I think Autodesk do the same thing after 4 years.
