The Supreme Court will hear an important first-sale doctrine case (Supap Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons) in its next term.
Here's an excerpt from the case summary:
The question presented is how these [first-sale doctrine] provisions apply to a copy that was made and legally acquired abroad and then imported into the United States. Can such a foreign-made product never be resold within the United States without the copyright owner's permission, as the Second Circuit held in this case? Can such a foreign-made product sometimes be resold within the United States without permission, but only after the owner approves an earlier sale in this country, as the Ninth Circuit held in Costco? Or can such a product always be resold without permission within the United States, so long as the copyright owner authorized the first sale abroad, as the Third Circuit has indicated?
Read more about it at "First Sale Goes to the Supreme Court, Again" and "Supreme Court Will Hear Case over Foreign Textbooks Imported and Resold in U.S."
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