I hope I'm quite clear with the question in the title.
A good example is Adobe software.

Would it be legal and feasible to buy old unwanted software for the purpose of purchasing an upgrade pack to save money for commercial use?

Cheers.

Yes it is legal. As long as the original owner is not using this software version in an original or upgraded configuration (ie. they have not upgraded it themselves).

I'd do it!

Be careful though cause Adobe has just made sure you can only go back 3 versions now when upgrading to CS3 stuff.

Shit - I would have thought Adobe would be jumping over the moon given the amount of torrent stuff going on. Quite legal.

Actually, depending on the EULA this may not be true. Some preclude reselling of the license, and others put stipulations on who can actually sell it (often limiting it to a single transfer). That said, in the absence of restrictive registration systems there isn't a great deal they can do to enforce this.

Thanks for all the feedback so far. I'm planning to upgrade from an Adobe Creative Suite Premium Mac to Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard.

Does anyone have any experience in upgrading software this way esp with Adobe software.

It is perfectly legal (I checked becasue I recently sold CS1)

You can buy any 2nd hand CS version (edu or regular) and use it to upgrade to the full version as long as the version you are buying isn't an upgrade itself (i.e. it has to be the full version).

Bartron

I'm actually currently a student so I'm eligible to buy a student version of CS3. It's great to know that I have the option to pay a bit more for an upgrade to a commercial version of CS3 when I graduate.

Can anyone who does reselling software confirm this? Just to be safe.

That is exactly how I got my first version of Final Cut Studio - in fact, my copy of Studio 2 is an upgrade from the same second hand copy of Final Cut Pro 2 - bought for that explicit purpose. Bless the upgrade!

I always thought you couldn't upgrade educational versions.

I don't believe u can upgrade academic versions... but yeah everything else is legal.

Oh yes you can! http://www.adobe.com/education/purchasing/faq.html

Thanks Bartron!

I'll find the document (it was on Adobe's site).

Basically it says:
If you buy EDU software as a student (e.g. photoshop) you can use that software, even comercially (i.e. you can sell images created in an EDU copy). When you are no longer a student you can continue to use the software as you had previouslly....net result is the only difference between edu and regular is the price and who can buy it.

You can use EDU license to buy a regular product upgrade, e.g. edu CS1 -> CS3 upgrade.

regular or edu, the license can be on-sold as long as all media and software keys etc are included and the seller discontinues use of the software.

The end result of all this is that an edu copu of CS1 can be purchased cheaply and used to purchase cs3 upgrade of the same product.

I read all this on Adobe's site...I'll find the document if anyone is really keen to see it but I'm not making this shit up.

Bartron

edit: beaten to it by LifeIsCheap

You can't with apple though?