PG Note: This was published in 2013. PG chose to post this because he suspects that Artificial Intelligence is going to raise some First Sale issues at some time in the future.
From Brookings:
On March 19, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, a landmark copyright case examining the reach of the “first sale” doctrine. Under that doctrine, the owner of a copy of a work that was “lawfully made” in accordance with U.S. copyright law “is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose” of it. For instance, if you purchase a lawfully produced music CD or movie DVD in the United States, you are free to later sell it at a garage sale, donate it to a library or loan it to a friend.
But what about goods made and sold overseas and then imported for resale? After all, there is another provision of copyright law that prohibits the importation into the United States, without the authority of the copyright owner, of copies of a work “acquired outside the United States.”
These two potentially contradictory features of copyright law were tested by Supap Kirtsaeng, who built a business around importing textbooks that had been lawfully made and sold overseas and then reselling them at a profit in the United States. After publisher John Wiley & Sons filed suit against Kirtsaeng in 2008, a federal district court found that his actions infringed Wiley’s copyrights, and the Second Circuit affirmed. However, the Supreme Court reversed these decisions on March 19, holding that the first sale doctrine “applies to copies of a copyrighted work lawfully made abroad.” The ruling will make it very difficult for sellers of physical goods like music CDs to price the same products differently in different markets.
Link to the rest at Brookings