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Supreme Court To Decide Whether Or Not You Own What You Own
Jafafa Hots writes "The Supreme Court is set to decide, in the case of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, whether or not First Sale Doctrine applies to products made with parts sourced from outside the United States. If the Supreme Court upholds an appellate ruling, it would mean that the IP holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it. Your old used CDs, cell phone, books, or that Ford truck with foreign parts? It may not be yours to sell unless you get explicit permission and presumably pay royalties. 'It would be absurd to say anything manufactured abroad can't be bought or sold here,' said Marvin Ammori, a First Amendment lawyer and Schwartz Fellow at the New American Foundation who specializes in technology issues."
Please remember, if the ruling is uphold, it works only for the imaginary parts of the product (e.g. trademarks, copyrights, patents) and not the physical ones. As long as you don't have patented screws or copyrighted sheet metal in the object you sell, the sale might be ok.
The case is regarding items manufacturered in foreign countries and intended for sale in those countries. NOT items manufactured in foreign countries intended for sale in the United States. At issue is having someone buy things cheaper overseas and resell them cheaper here in the US than the manufacturers intended US price.
That's still horrible - but not nearly as bad as the article summary would have you believe.
The guy who's being brought to trial seems to have imported enough textbooks to earn $1.2 million. That means this isn't really a case about reselling your car, but about whether private citizens can buy a bunch of stuff abroad and re-sell it here for profit because it's cheaper abroad.
You can track the legislation here:
So having read the article, it doesn't say the same thing as the summary. To be fair, I haven't read any of the court paperwork, so the publisher could indeed be claiming that you cannot sell something with foreign parts.
This case, however, stems from a student buying textbooks at lower cost overseas and then selling them in the US on eBay.
I'm not saying it's good, right or proper that the publisher wishes to restrict these sales. I simply want to highlight that it's a very different proposition saying you cannot resell in the US a complete product purchased in a developing market where the manufacturer sells at a lower cost as opposed to being unable to sell anything that contains a foreign part.
I believe the situation the publisher supports is already the case in Europe, where Levi Strauss won a battle against supermarkets who were importing grey market denims and selling them at a lower cost than licensed distributors could buy the jeans in the UK.
What matters is where the authorized "first sale" occurred, not where it was manufactured.
So if a book publisher has books printed outside the US, then imports them and sells them retail for the first time in the US, you can freely resell it because the first sale occurred within the US.
What is being disputed in this court case is whether you can resell a copyrighted item in the US if the first sale occurred outside the US.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Some student from Thailand imported the EEE books from Thailand, sold them on E-Bay and made 1.2 million dollars. He is claiming immunity under First Sale doctrine. The EEE contract with the Asian publishers prohibit them from selling it to the lucrative western markets. But once the book has been bought in those markets, can they be imported and sold in USA? The appellate court ruled it can't be brought in sold.
I am not a lawyer, but I expect the Supreme Court to rule more narrowly. "When a copyright/intellectual property right originating from USA, is licensed to foreigners under some restrictive license, the foreigners can not use first sale doctrine and third parties/subsidiaries to circumvent the license restrictions". That is the kind of ruling I expect. That is, not all foreign made objects would be exempted from first sale doctrine. Those items made abroad under restrictive licenses from ip-holders in USA alone would be exempted. But I am not sure they will rule this way. I am an engineer most comfortable calculating intersections between triangles and tetrahedrons. I find them very easy compared to US laws.
One interesting tit bit was that, when I came to USA as a student with F-1 Visa, I was scared by the EEE books I was bringing in. I used some 75% of my baggage allowance with books. I knew how serious copyright law was in USA. I knew my books are cheaper in India. I was worried the immigration officer would reject my visa and send me back! Seriously. I was worried about everything from the turmeric powder in my hand baggage to the loose staple on the sealed I-20 form issued by the university attached to my passport! Once inside the USA, I was just relieved. I never even thought for a moment to buy millions dollars worth of EEE books and selling them cheap in the USA. There have been hundreds of thousands of students from Asia who knew the price differentials. None of us thought of exploiting it by arbitrage, because we knew it was "wrong". This creep from Thailand did just that. If the courts do not rule narrowly and uphold first sale doctrine for these EEE books, the publishers will simply stop licensing EEE books under cheap terms. Millions of Asian students will be affected.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Hunting weapons are still weapons... Every time you kill a deer with a bow you are using is as a weapon. The fact that bows are almost never used against people doesn't change the meaning of weapon.
The linked Marketwatch article is complete BS. Clearly the author had no idea what they were talking about, and just took one sentence and expanded it into massive hyperbole. Here are some choice examples from the article:
Put simply, though Apple Inc. AAPL -0.15% has the copyright on the iPhone
I don't think so. They have patents, not copyrights.
It could be your personal electronic devices or the family jewels that have been passed down from your great-grandparents who immigrated from Spain.
No, those things also cannot be copyrighted.
It could also become a weighty issue for auto trade-ins and resales, considering about 40% of most U.S.-made cars carry technology and parts that were made overseas.
Also nothing to do with copyright.
He himself once bought an antique desk from a Supreme Court justice.
Yet another example.
It sounds like the author just made stuff up as they went along. Here are some better articles:
SCOTUS! eBay! Cert and Other Sundries
Summary of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. at the Supreme Court's own blog
This will be a boon to US "companies" ... You know the "designed in California" "built in China" guys....
This is about books... So the company wants its USA copyright to apply everywhere, but sell the same book for $20 outside the US and for $100 inside the US. Basically they want "shrink wrap" license on books similar to region coding on DVDs.