Unlike physical music CDs, Judge Richard Sullivan ruled that the "first sale doctrine" did not apply.
This is now known as the first-sale doctrine and generally applies to U.S.-made products.
Historically, the first sale doctrine has provided strong rights to owners of legitimately purchased copyrighted works.
If Omega is correct, Greenstein said, then companies could simply shift production overseas to avoid the first-sale doctrine.
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Sony are looking to do an end run around the first sale doctrine.
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The U.S. government also tried, and failed, to convince the court to apply a narrower definition to the first-sale doctrine.
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But in the digital world, where duplication is much easier, the first sale doctrine was not appropriate, the judge said.
The Supreme Court, in a 4:4 decision, refused to overturn a Ninth Circuit decision limiting the first-sale doctrine to U.S.-produced goods.
Firms including eBay, Costco and secondhand stores are clearly supporting Kirtsaeng and hope the first-sale doctrine is applied to all goods internationally.
Does the first sale doctrine provide the right to resell the work?
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Costco cited the first sale doctrine, which says copyright holders are only entitled to such protection on the first sale of a work.
At issue here, among other things, is the first sale doctrine.
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Because the first sale doctrine affirmatively protects owners of lawfully purchased works by limiting the ability of a copyright holder to impede their downstream actions.
Therefore, Re-Digi claims that its service is the digital equivalent of a second-hand record store, and that the sales are allowed under the First Sale Doctrine.
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No one is putting odds on which decision will be reached, but it seems logical that the first-sale doctrine should apply to both domestic and foreign items.
Critics of the Ninth Circuit decision say it also gives U.S. companies an incentive to move production overseas to avoid the reach of the first sale doctrine.
Kirtsaeng has invoked the first sale doctrine in his defense.
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Among other defenses, ReDigi tried to rely on the first-sale doctrine, which provides that once a copyrighted work is sold, that work can be distributed through resale.
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He also raised questions about potential changes in the First Sale doctrine, which basically allows for the renting of purchased DVDs without any recourse by the original content producer.
The first sale doctrine has served nicely over the past century to balance the interests of copyright holders with the reasonable expectation of buyers for control over what they bought.
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The first-sale doctrine, which the Court upheld in its decision, is a principle that the legal purchaser of a copyright-protected item may dispose of that property anyway he or she sees fit.
Along with CCIA, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, Ebay, Redbox, Overstock.com and others have joined ORI in a collective effort to secure legislative protections for the first sale doctrine.
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As a newly minted lawyer representing VCR makers in the early 1980s, I stumbled upon the first-sale doctrine in a proposed bill in Congress legalizing the VCR (which had been found illegal by a federal court of appeals).
Almost 30 years ago, the Consumer Electronics Association fought and won a similar battle to preserve the first-sale doctrine from legislation that would have choked off the market for movie rental and would have impeded the development of innovative devices.
But buried at the end was a provision which would have changed the first-sale doctrine so Americans would not be permitted to rent movies from video stores like Blockbuster without the permission of movie studios, who said they would grant such permission only at greatly inflated prices.
In the Costco decision, the Ninth Circuit agreed with prior Supreme Court decisions that the first-sale doctrine applies to works manufactured in the U.S. But the Omega watches in question were made in Switzerland, far outside the reach of U.S. copyright law, and sold to authorized dealers in Latin America.
In Tuesday's 70-minute arguments, several justices disputed the claims of Bowman's lawyer that the so-called "exhaustion" doctrine of patent law limits the control the patent holder can exert after the first authorized sale of the item.
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