EU law does not disallow a computer being sold with preinstalled software, according to a European Court of Justice ruling in Case C-310/15 issued on 7 September.
This answer was given to a preliminary ruling question from the French appeals court following a dispute between Vincent Deroo-Blanquart and the Sony company. Deroo-Blanquart complained that he had been forced to buy a laptop equipped with pre-installed software (Microsoft Windows Vista operating system and various applications) and demanded to be reimbursed for the part of the cost of the computer that covered this software, which he did not want to use. Despite Sony’s offer to reimburse the full purchase price if he returned the computer, Deroo-Blanquart decided to go to court and demand nearly €3,000 of damages from the Japanese multinational. The Court of Justice ruling is two-pronged: on the one hand, whether the sale of a computer with preinstalled software without any other alternative creates an uneven playing field, and on the other hand, whether the absence of any price for each of the installed items of software is "misleading".
The judges made use of EU Directive 2005/29/EC, which prohibits unfair commercial practices that distort the economic behaviour of consumers and that are contrary to the requirements of professional diligence, including, in particular, misleading commercial practices and aggressive commercial practices. In its comments, however, the Court agreed with Sony. In terms of the first aspects, it said that the sale of computers with preinstalled software does not counteract the professional diligence requirements and does not distort the economic behaviour of consumers, in that Deroo-Blanquart was properly informed about the laptop’s characteristics before buying it and it was possible to cancel the sale after he had bought it.
On the second question, the Court said that the absence of price indications for each item of software cannot be seen as a deceptive commercial practice since it would not prevent the consumer from taking an informed commercial decision and neither was it likely to lead the consumer to make a commercial decision he or she would not otherwise have taken. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)