Supreme Court To Consider First Sale of Imports

Animaether passes along a legal tale that "doesn't involve the kind of cutting-edge issues that copyright lawyers usually grapple with in the digital age [and] sounds like the kind of lawsuit that should have been resolved 200 years ago," yet still "is very much a product of the Internet-driven global economy." "Can copyright owners assert rights over imported goods that have already been sold once? That is the issue before the Supreme Court in Costco Wholesale Corp v. Omega, S.A. (backstory here). What's at stake is the ability of resellers to offer legitimate, non-pirated versions of copyrighted goods, manufactured in foreign nations, to US consumers at prices that undercut those charged by the copyright holders."

Comments

Re:Why does this even need to be discussed?

[tomkost]

Yes, it is a foregone conclusion, but not in the way you probably are thinking. You see, the rights of corporations must be protected at all costs. They can not be restricted by silly concepts like the sovereignty of nations, fair use, personal property rights, or any other fundamental concept of our legal systems. Don't worry, the Supreme Court will help them achieve their profits at any cost. I sure hope I'm wrong, but let's watch and see.

Re:Copyright weirdness

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's even nastier than that, in some cases, because some "real and tangible" property is now complex enough to enforce(against all but extremely sophisticated individuals) its own rules about use.

CSS is pitifully weak; but it was perhaps the first demonstration of this concept that gained huge market traction. Thanks to CSS licensing requirements, adding technologically enforced region coding became trivial.

As the cost of computing power continues to fall, and the number of devices that have embedded firmware and/or unique serial numbers continues to increase, there is virtually no area of "real property" over which the DMCA and copyright law will not eventually exert de facto control.

Re:How does copyright come into play here?

[Attila Dimedici]

If I understand the backstory article correctly, Omega registered a copyright on its logo in order to fall under this exception to the First Sale Doctrine. I believe Costco made a mistake in not challenging the copyright. The Omega logo does not appear to me to be something that is copyrightable. I don't know if they can change their tactics at this point, but if they can, they should. The Omega logo is not distinct from hundreds of other expressions of Omega that have been used for years. When I did a search of "Omega logo" I found a computer company that uses almost exactly the same logo except with the word "Systems" added. Additionally I saw several other similar logos that I did not bother to follow to see what company they were for (but it wasn'tthe watch company).

Re:Global economy baby !

[HTH NE1]

Imagine: Omega watches which sync up with the radio signal from an atomic clock, but refuse to configure themselves for any timezones other than those for which it was authorized for sale.

Of course, they'd lose the lucrative international traveler market. Or they'll have temporary time zone support, but if you stay too long in a foreign timezone it will reset or disable itself.

And then comes the question: what if I, as an (American) international traveler, buy one of their manufactured-in-Switzerland watches cheaply in an authorized country, travel back to the US, and then decide I don't like it (or need the money) and want to sell the watch on eBay? Apparently they want to bar me from selling the watch because it wasn't authorized for sale in the US.

Will they have their goons patrolling the US looking for people wearing imported watches and harass them to show their receipts showing they personally purchased the watch overseas or give up who sold them the watch under threat of prosecution? "Product's papers, please?"