The Library Copyright Alliance, EFF, and others have filed amicus curiae briefs in Costco v. Omega, an important first sale doctrine case before the Supreme Court. The first sale doctrine is used to support libraries legal right to lend books and other materials.

Here's an excerpt from the Library Copyright Alliance brief:

By restricting the application of Section 109(a) to copies manufactured in the United States, the Ninth Circuit’s decision threatens the ability of libraries to continue to lend materials in their collections. Over 200 million books in U.S. libraries have foreign publishers. Moreover, many books published by U.S. publishers were actually manufactured by printers in other countries. Although some books indicate on their copyright page where they were printed, many do not. Libraries, therefore, have no way of knowing whether these books comply with the Ninth Circuit’s rule. Without the certainty of the protection of the first sale doctrine, librarians will have to confront the difficult policy decision of whether to continue to circulate these materials in their collections in the face of potential copyright infringement liability. For future acquisitions, libraries would be able to adjust to the Ninth Circuit’s narrowing of Section 109(a) only by bearing the significant cost of obtaining a "lending license" whenever they acquired a copy that was not clearly manufactured in the United States.

Read more about it at "Supreme Court Should Uphold the First Sale Doctrine."

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 11th, 2010 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Copyright. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.