At issue in this case is a practice of buying cheaper foreign editions of college textbooks, then reselling them to students in the U.S. This is done under the first sale doctrine, but some copyright owners insist that federal law does not allow it.
Supap Kirtsaeng came to the U.S. from Thailand to attend college. He decided he could offset the costs of his education as a textbook dealer. His family would buy foreign editions of textbooks in Thailand and send them to him. He re-sold them to students and made a small profit.
The books sold by Kirtsaeng were published by John Wiley & Sons through an Asian subsidiary . Wiley sued him in federal court in New York, and Kirtsaeng sought to rely on the first sale doctrine. A federal judge rejected the claim, concluding that the doctrine does not apply to goods made in a foreign country. The jury found Kirtsaeng liable for infringing copyright on eight books, and found that it was an intentional violation of Wiley’s copyright. Wiley was awarded $75,000 in damages for each book, for a total of $600,000; even though Kirtsaeng only sold $37,000 worth of Wiley textbooks. The Second Circuit Court upheld the award, agreeing that the doctrine does not apply to a foreign-made product.
Three Circuit Courts have heard cases regarding the first sale doctrine, and each court has made a different ruling. The Second Circuit declaring that foreign-made works can never be resold in the U.S. without the copyright owner’s consent, the Ninth Circuit ruling that such a foreign-made product sometimes can be sold in the U.S. without permission, but only after the owner has approved an earlier sale inside the U.S., and the Third Circuit deciding that such a product can always be re-sold without permission, so long as the copyright owner had authorized the first sale that occurred overseas.
A brief filed by the American Library Association states: “By restricting the application of Section 109(a) to copies manufactured in the United States, the Second Circuit’s decision threatens the ability of libraries to continue to lend materials in their collections. ”
A brief filed by Goodwill Industries International, Inc. states: “In essence, the Second Circuit’s decision destroys first sale protection for all copyrighted works manufactured abroad [and] allows copyright holders to control the price of a foreign-produced copyrighted work no matter how many times it is resold. ”
While I do not necessarily support copyright in its current form, I do believe that the creator of content should have a say over the first sale and ONLY the first sale! Almost everything I publish, is done so under a Creative Commons License along with “copyheart.” I allow my content to be distributed by anyone under the condition that I be credited as the author/creator of the content.
I would like to see the Supreme Court make the right decision in this case, overturn the Second Circuit ruling and affirm the 1998 Quality King decision from the Ninth Circuit Court, “The whole point of the first sale doctrine is that once the copyright owner places a copyrighted item in the stream of commerce by selling it, he has exhausted his exclusive statutory right to control its distribution.”