Supreme Court To Consider First Sale of Imports 259
Posted
by
kdawson
from the copyright-because-i-say-so dept.
from the copyright-because-i-say-so dept.
Animaether passes along a legal tale that "doesn't involve the kind of cutting-edge issues that copyright lawyers usually grapple with in the digital age [and] sounds like the kind of lawsuit that should have been resolved 200 years ago," yet still "is very much a product of the Internet-driven global economy." "Can copyright owners assert rights over imported goods that have already been sold once? That is the issue before the Supreme Court in Costco Wholesale Corp v. Omega, S.A. (backstory here). What's at stake is the ability of resellers to offer legitimate, non-pirated versions of copyrighted goods, manufactured in foreign nations, to US consumers at prices that undercut those charged by the copyright holders."
Re:Copyright weirdness (Score:3, Informative)
wrong, copyright 200 years ago applied to the information, the data, in a book. You could in 1790 copy a book by hand, sell the copy you made,and be in violation of copyright law.
Re:Copyright weirdness (Score:5, Informative)
wrong, copyright 200 years ago applied to the information, the data, in a book. You could in 1790 copy a book by hand, sell the copy you made,and be in violation of copyright law.
Citation needed! And I'll provide. You want the Copyright Act of 1790, which was created to "securing authors the 'sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending' the copies of their 'maps, charts, and books' for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14 year term should the copyright holder still be alive."
So you could make a handwritten copy for personal use and not be in violation of copyright law. You could also re-sell anything protected by copyright law that you lawfully purchased without any strings. Neither is true today, which is what this case is all about.
Re:How does copyright come into play here? (Score:3, Informative)
Already against the law in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
"Grey Market" (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know why it's a copyright issue, since it's a physical item, but usually we call such legitimate imports "grey market" goods. They're not officially for sale ("white market") nor are they illegal to sell ("black market"), but they're legally sold goods for distribution elsewhere that's re-imported for local sale.
Happens all the time even with IP materials like books, CDs and DVDs. Hell, Amazon and Walmart are probably the biggest "offenders" - I can buy two CDs, one locally and one from Amazon (or Walmart) and the local one is from the Canadian distributor, while the one I got from Amazon (or Walmart) comes from the US.
Ditto books - sometimes the US-Canadian book pricing is so out of whack, it's cheaper to get it from Amazon.com than Amazon.ca even with shipping charges.
Camera manufacturers used to be the biggest PITA regarding grey market goods - if you imported a camera, they would insist that warranties and such were only honored in the purchasing country - buy it in the US, service is done in the US, other countries would not touch it. Oh yeah, and the return shipping, to that address in the country.
Thankfully, for most products this doesn't happen (it's not strictly illegal, but it's a great way to piss off customers) anymore - I figure most companies gave up trying to track serial numbers and points of origin, and lets them move inventory around as needed by demand.
Of course, importation of such products is perfectly legal.
Re:Why does this even need to be discussed? (Score:1, Informative)
Yea because the only reason that there is medical research is because the US Market is unregulated.
Re:Why does this even need to be discussed? (Score:1, Informative)
So why should the U.S. be burdened with expensive drug research? There's nothing about us that makes research on drugs special except that we give money away to companies that then charge us because they used our money to find a cure to our sickness. While I might not fault a "Third-world" country for not investing in research, surely a country like Canada has the resources to join in. This should make price controls impractical and actually aide Big Pharma.
Re:Sorry, but copyright does control imports (Score:1, Informative)
Except that importing a legally sold good is not the reproduction or public performance of the item. The importer is not in fact reproducing the work or making a public performance of the work - how are they violating the copyright? (and do remember that the item in question is a legitimate copy, produced by the copyright holder)
Re:Rediculous interpretation of law (Score:3, Informative)
So, if I live in England, legally buy an Omega watch there, then legally immigrate to the US, it is now a copyright violation to resell that watch on eBay?!? This flies in the face of common sense!
See USC TITLE 17 > CHAPTER 6 > 602 (a) (3) (B) [cornell.edu]. That is not an infringement.
Re:Sorry, but copyright does control imports (Score:3, Informative)
A foreign import isn't reproduced under that monopoly grant and is thus illegal to import or sell in the US. Black letter law guys. The fact that in small quantities (and marked up over the closest local version as in the typical import album) the rights holders don't mind, but they still possess an absolute legal monopoly on reproduction of copies for sale inside the US so if they do decide they don't like an import they have the right to forbid it.
Too bad that isn't how they ruled in QUALITY KING DISTRIBUTORS, INC. v. L’ANZARESEARCH INT’L [cornell.edu].
Re:Why does this even need to be discussed? (Score:3, Informative)
This still doesn't justify the US paying crazy drug prices to subsidize the price controlled prices in other countries.
Yes, medical research is expensive but that doesn't mean that we should pay for cheep drugs for Canadians. I'm also not totally convinced that applying the same rules here would actually cause the entire biotech industry to grind to a halt. It would certainly have an impact but the idea that drug companies would just close up all R&D forever is not very believable. Eventually they would have nothing left to sell at any price.
Re:Copyright weirdness (Score:3, Informative)
You can't go to some third world pesthole, print up a bunch of books and then import them into the US.
Read the backstory properly [theiplawblog.com]. You are way off the mark here. What this is about is basically this (Using roughly your example):
CompanyA prints books. They do so in the US and also in thirdWorldPesthole.
CompanyB sells books in the US bought from CompanyA.
CompanyB finds CompanyC that buys the books from CompanyA that are printed in thirdWorldPesthole, and CompanyB buys these books from CompanyC and also sells them in the US.
Becuase CompanyA sells the books much cheaper in thirdWorldPesthole, CompanyA now takes CompanyB to court because it says it controls the product US, no matter where it came from - even a legal sale such as this.
This is where CompanyB (the seller) argues this with first sale doctrine. It bought the books legally. It has the legal right to do what it wants with them - such as selling them cheaper than the US printed books sell for.
Thanks for flying Fluffeh airways, always happy to take you back on course with the thread.
Re:How does copyright come into play here? (Score:3, Informative)
It is not the Omega logo that is being questioned. Omega has a symbol on the back of the watch that has nothing to do with the Greek letter. It is a symbol that was designed to allow the company to enforce the copyright law. From the article:
Costco lawyers at Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck & Untereiner write in their brief that in 2003, Omega began to stamp its Seamaster watches with a small globe design, less than 5 millimeters across, "for the express purpose of invoking the Copyright Act to restrict the resale of its products."
Re:Why does this even need to be discussed? (Score:3, Informative)
You think medical research is expensive? Check out what it costs to market a drug. Seriously. Drug companies spend far more marketing drugs than developing them.
Re:How does copyright come into play here? (Score:5, Informative)
The artwork Omega is enforcing a copyright on is that pattern of circles with an omega in it, just to the right of the pronounced Omega logo and above the "825" in the linked picture. That little doodle is about 0.5 centimeters in diameter, and apparently Omega is arguing that when you buy an Omega Seamaster, you are buying an authorized reproduction of that triumph of human artistic endeavor for the agreed-upon price of two thousand dollars. Omega just happens to be so generous as to frame your purchase with a diving watch.
Re:Why does this even need to be discussed? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Free market, right? (Score:1, Informative)
I don't think you understand what the free market is. A free market it not a scenario where I can do whatever I want and take whatever I want from anyone. A free market, taken to its extreme, is not 'totally unregulated.' That's called chaos.
A free market is where two people willingly exchange things with each other - whether it be a service, a product, time, money, etc.
A free market requires property rights, or else you can't promise to give something to someone for their money.
A free market requires contract enforcement, otherwise an agreement to trade is meaningless.
While a free market does not require currency (bartering can be used), it makes things much easier.
And all of these require the rule of law that is enforced by government.
A free market is not asking what basketball would be without any rules. A free market would be asking what basketball would be like if anytime people wanted to play, they could agree on their own 'house rules' at the beginning of the game. You still need a referee, and you still need rules, but so long as your team and the other team agree that a basket from the half court line counts as 4 points, it's ok. That's the free market.