Court Rules on Geographical Interpretation of Owners’ Rights
The Supreme Court has ruled on a landmark case concerning the re-sale of textbooks in the U.S., which affects the “first sale” of books. The first sale doctrine in the U.S. Copyright Act allows people to resell the copyrighted works they’ve bought. In the case Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, SCOTUS ruled that “if you bought it, you own it,” regardless of the country it was bought in.
The case was filed by textbook publisher Wiley, who claimed that the first sale doctrine only applied to works published in the U.S. The defendant, Supap Kirtsaeng, was ” infringing its copyright by purchasing books at a reduced rate in his native Thailand and selling them below list price in the States.”
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SCOTUS rejected Wiley’s claim, stating that the first sale doctrine has no “geographical interpretation,” and applies to works bought anywhere in or outside the U.S. What’s considered is whether the “copyright owner authorized the manufacture of the copy.”
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Related texts: Thailand Trademark Act
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Flickr photo courtesy of Enokson
