Basically the license agreement says this software license belonged to him and only him, and he couldn’t sell it because they told him he couldn’t. It’s like a car dealership telling you, “OK, you bought this car from us, and you have to live with it, you cannot sell it to anyone else or you are going to be in violation of the law.” It’s pure crap, and this is a common sense decision.
My understanding is that he wasn’t even the original buyer, so how can the “non-transferable license” even bind him in the first place?
Your assessment and analogy are incorrect. A more accurate analogy would be:
You go to a car company and pay money for a use license (rental) of a vehicle. In that rental agreement, it specifically states that no ownership of the vehicle is transfered to you (i.e. you are not buying the software) and it further states that you may NOT alter (change the source code) or sell the vehicle to anyone else (as you do not own any part of the vehicle). Your agreement only allows you to USE the software, not OWN it. Read your software license very closely.
If you do not like those restrictions on the software license, then do not pay money to use the software and do not install it on you computer. That is why we have the open source movement. People are fed up with these “use licenses” and are pursuing other avenues.
As a software contract manager, I agree it is a 'crap' term, but he didn't have to purchase the software if he didn't like the terms of the agreement.
But you can't "burn" a clone of a car.
Borland Software used to use “Like A Book”.
You could re-sell it if the seller quit using it.
The difference is, you can't make a copy of your Prius and then sell the cloned one. You can easily copy software and then resell it.