The long-running legal battle between ValueLicensing and Microsoft over the resale of software licenses has taken another turn following Microsoft’s attempt to make the case about copyright.

The litigation has rumbled since 2021, beginning with reseller ValueLicensing filing a suit alleging Microsoft had slipped clauses into customer contracts to restrict the resale of perpetual licenses in return for discounts. The effect, according to ValueLicensing, stifled the market. A sueball claiming £270 million in lost profits was lobbed Microsoft’s way.

Microsoft, naturally, denies the alleged wrongdoing and earlier this year bit back with an argument that reselling perpetual licenses was, in fact, infringing its copyright.

According to ValueLicensing, reselling a perpetual license is perfectly legal. The company is relying on a European ruling in the UsedSoft case, which found that used software licenses could be sold. Microsoft, on the other hand, asserted that Office is not covered by the Software Directive, but by the Copyright and Information Society Directive. The latter covers creative works, and because Office has resources like icons, fonts, and help files, Microsoft argues Office qualifies as a creative work.

In September, ValueLicensing boss Jonathan Horley said: “It’s a remarkable coincidence that their defense against ValueLicensing has changed so dramatically from being a defense of ‘we didn’t do it’ to a defense of ‘the market should never have existed.'”

During the Preliminary Issues trial before the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal in September, Justin Turner KC, the chairman, commented to ValueLicensing’s KC, Matthew Lavy: “As you point out, Microsoft only had this bright idea relatively recently. Someone in the legal team may or may not become a hero or heroine, we shall see.”

Horley added: “It was an important trial dealing with [the] way the pre-owned market for second-hand software licenses operated ever since the UsedSoft decision from the ECJ in 2012 and whether it was lawful. The judgment will be of interest to the Wolfson class action and many other pre-owned resellers across Europe.”

The Wolfson class action refers to a claim brought on behalf of UK customers regarding alleged abuses of market dominance and restrictive licensing practices by Microsoft. A loss could see Microsoft forced to make a multibillion-pound payout.

Microsoft also claimed that the practice of companies selling only a portion of their licenses was not permitted and that licenses purchased under volume licensing must be sold in their entirety. ValueLicensing disputed this.

However, the copyright question and its potential effects on reselling software as a whole were the stars of the show. Is Office an artistic work rather than a program? While the images on the Office toolbar might be an integral part of the software, Microsoft’s representatives pointed out that an Office installation also contained other copyrighted works, such as documentation. “It’s not Dickens,” said Jaani Riordan, on behalf of Microsoft, “but it’s a literary work. It’s original.”

It will be up to the Competition Appeal Tribunal to make a judgment on Microsoft’s latest argument. Finding in the tech giant’s favor risks blowing a hole in the pre-owned software market. Finding against could, however, end with Microsoft being on the hook for £270 million.

Windows 10 has officially reached its end-of-life status (EoL), meaning it will no longer receive crucial security updates, important improvements, or upgrades.

Despite the deadline being public knowledge for years, many endpoints worldwide are still running the OS, risking device takeover, data exfiltration, and a myriad of other threats that are bound to appear sooner or later.

Coinciding with the EoL date, two companies analysed the market to understand just how big the potential threat landscape is, and came back with astonishing results. Cloudhouse surveyed 135 finance IT leaders and found 60% still running “a large number” of servers and desktops with unsupported versions of Windows OS.

A new survey has revealed that a good number of people plan to continue using Windows 10 even after Microsoft officially ends support this month. Support for Windows 10 will stop on October 14, 2025, which means the operating system will no longer receive important security updates or fixes.

This transition even expected to lead to millions of obsolete devices and £1.8bn of e-waste in the UK alone. Despite this, a large number of users still aren’t planning to upgrade to Windows 11 or switch to another system.

With Windows 10 support set to expire on October 14, hundreds of repair shops, non-profits, and advocacy groups are urging Microsoft to extend free and automatic security updates instead of stranding hundreds of millions of PCs.

The letter, organised by consumer activist non-profit US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), was signed by 382 repair businesses and nonprofits worldwide, as well as 83 elected representatives, 19 librarians and school officials, and 49 consumer advocacy and environmental organisations. They’re all worried that they, and many other PC owners, stand to lose big if Microsoft follows through with its plans to end support for Windows 10 in less than two weeks.

“About 40 percent of PCs currently in use can’t upgrade to Windows 11, even if users want to,” the letter reads. “That means when Microsoft stops providing security updates for Windows 10, those computers will either be insecure and unsafe to keep using, or else turn into junk and get thrown out.”

Along with the business-led letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, PIRG said it also passed along a petition to Microsoft signed by more than 16,000 US citizens. French non-profit Stop Planned Obsolescence has also been circulating a petition to extend free Windows 10 security updates, which has been signed by more than 44,000 individuals.

Critics argue Microsoft’s Windows 11 push is worsening the world’s growing e-waste problem. As we’ve noted before, the supported upgrade path requires PCs to have Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 – a hardware-based security component found in many machines shipped over the past five years – along with other modern hardware. Unofficial bypasses exist, but they aren’t supported and may break in future updates.

In practice, that leaves a huge chunk of hardware behind – PIRG estimates around 400 million Windows 10 machines can’t meet Windows 11’s requirements. While Microsoft has patched certain TPM bypasses, many argue that such devices may never be officially upgradeable.

“Cutting off support from hundreds of millions of computers is uniquely harmful to consumers, the environment and public safety,” PIRG right to repair campaign director Nathan Proctor said in a statement. “Simply put, there have never been more computers cut off from support in one fell swoop.”

While support for Windows 10 officially ends in a couple of weeks, it won’t be completely going away – those who really want to keep the security updates flowing can sign with Microsoft to get a year of extended security updates for the price of $30, redemption of 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or opting to sync their PC’s settings to the cloud using Windows Backup.

Microsoft recently caved on providing free Windows 10 updates to European residents following complaints from consumer rights groups and threats to lodge a Digital Markets Act complaint.

Windows 11 continues to be a slow-seller – it took the OS four years to finally surpass Windows 10 as the leading version of the PC OS, and even then, it still doesn’t have a true majority. According to Statcounter, which measures market share of various platforms based on traffic to more than 1.5 million monitored web sites, Windows 11 holds 48.94 percent of the Windows market share, down from a high of 53 percent in July.

Curiously enough, Windows 7 has been experiencing a resurgence in popularity in the past few months, climbing from just two percent of the Windows market share in July to nearly 10 percent in September. No matter how you slice it, it seems like people really don’t want to upgrade to Windows 11.

Microsoft has found no link between the August 2025 KB5063878 security update and customer reports of failure and data corruption issues affecting solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs).

Microsoft first said last week that it was aware of users reporting SSD failures after installing this month’s Windows 11 24H2 security update.

In a subsequent service alert, Microsoft said that it was unable to reproduce the issue on up-to-date systems and began collecting user reports with additional details from those affected.

“After thorough investigation, Microsoft has found no connection between the August 2025 Windows security update and the types of hard drive failures reported on social media,” Microsoft said in an update to the service alert this week.

“As always, we continue to monitor feedback after the release of every Windows update, and will investigate any future reports.”

The company has also worked with storage device partners to reproduce the issue, but noted that neither telemetry nor internal testing has revealed an increase in disk failures or file corruption after installing this month’s Windows 11 24H2 security update.

Microsoft has confirmed that paying $30 to enrol a Windows 10 PC into the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program will also require a Microsoft Account to complete the transaction. The good news is that one ESU license will cover up to 10 devices signed into the same account, meaning you don’t need to pay $30 per device like originally thought. Strangely, this was not made clear in Microsoft’s original announcement.

This is both good and bad news. It’s good news as it means the $30 license is now much more reasonable, but bad news as it means you will still need to register a Microsoft Account to receive continued security updates beyond Windows 10’s end of support date of October 14, 2025.

Originally, it sounded like the Microsoft Account requirement only applied to the free enrolment option when signing up for the ESU program. This method involves syncing your PC settings with OneDrive in exchange for free access to updates. Users thought they might be able to avoid registering a Microsoft Account by paying the $30 fee.

But now, the company has confirmed that all enrolment options require a Microsoft Account, regardless of if you’re paying $30 or not. A Microsoft support document makes it abundantly clear:

“All enrolment options provide extended security updates through October 13, 2026. You will need to sign into your Microsoft account in order to enrol in ESU. You’ll be given these options to choose from when you enrol in the ESU program. You can use your existing ESU license on up to 10 devices.”

The enrolment options the above mentions are as follows: