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Expected Impact of Supreme Court First-Sale Ruling

By Lisa Shuchman

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, 133 S. Ct. 1351 (2013), that a legally obtained copyrighted work can be imported into the United States and resold without permission from the copyright owner, even if it was manufactured and sold overseas, has broad legal ramifications going forward, intellectual property attorneys say. Industries that rely on copyright protection, such as book publishers, film and television companies, and software publishers, will begin operating differently.

The 6-3 decision was prompted by the case involving Supap Kirtsaeng, a Thai student who imported lower-priced textbooks from Thailand and resold them in the United States to help pay for his studies at Cornell University and the University of Southern California. Textbook publisher John Wiley & Sons sued, saying Kirtsaeng's unauthorized importation and sale of its books amounted to copyright infringement, and that the 'first-sale' doctrine ' under which people who buy something may resell it without permission ' does not apply because the books were produced overseas for sale overseas. 'This was the publishing industry's understanding of the law for at least three decades,' says Anderson Duff, an attorney with Wolf Greenfield. 'Everyone is pretty stunned.'

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