By: Sharon Urias, Esq.
A sigh of relief was heard last week by millions of Americans who sell used items on internet sites such as eBay or Amazon, and also at garage sales, church raffles or flea markets when the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Supap Kirtsaeng.
Kirtsaeng is a young man from Thailand who is attending college in the United States. Kirtsaeng, who was shocked by the price tag of academic textbooks when he came to this country to attend college, asked his parents to search for textbooks he needed at bookstores in Thailand and then send him the books.
Kirtsaeng soon created a lucrative business selling the much less expensive textbooks to fellow students, a business that was so successful he was able to pay his way through college.
Unfortunately for Kirtsaeng, one of the publishers of the textbooks he sold, John Wiley & Sons, sued him in federal court in New York for copyright infringement. A New York jury ordered him to pay $600,000 in damages, and later a federal appeals court upheld the jury’s verdict.
However, last week Kirtsaeng triumphed when the Supreme Court disagreed with the appeals court decision and ruled copyrighted items made overseas are covered by a federal law that states when a person buys such an item, he is free to turn around and sell it.
There is a law known as the ‘first sale doctrine’ and the Supreme Court’s ruling was based upon this law. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, “Reliance upon the ‘first sale doctrine’ is deeply embedded in the practices of those, such as booksellers, libraries, museums, and retailers, who have long relied upon its protection.” Justice Breyer added that a contrary ruling would “prevent the resale of, say, a car, without the permission of the holder of each piece of copyrighted automobile software.”
The Software & Information Industry Association said in a statement that it is “strongly disappointed” by the court’s ruling, and this ruling may result in “consumers and students abroad” seeing either “dramatic price increases” or losing their “access to valuable U.S. resources created specifically for them.”
