What’s the Tea?: First Sale and Purchase Overseas

In my initial post on the first sale doctrine, I focused on what the doctrine actually means. Take a look at that post if you’re unsure. Here, I’m instead going to look at the case I mentioned there: Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, which found that works sold legally outside of the US are still subject to the first sale doctrine once imported in the US. This is a Supreme Court Case, so as you know from my post on understanding court precedent the holding in this case is binding on all US courts.

The Ultimate Outcome

The Supreme Court held that the first sale doctrine applies to works legally purchased in another country and then brought into the US. This means those works can be sold, rented, publicly displayed, etc. Remember, though, that only applies to the specific copy. The work isn’t suddenly free to copy.

Why We Care in Fandom Spaces

This case was incredibly important for institutions like libraries or museums. These institutions often loan out or display works that were originally published or created outside of the country. Without first sale, they’d need permission for any work still under copyright…and that’s a lot. But it’s not just big cultural institutions where this matters. If you’re a fan of anything that isn’t from the US, no matter what it is, there may be times you want to buy a copy in the US that was imported…if first sale didn’t apply, you then couldn’t ever resell that copy, for example. Plus, the “publicly display the copy” gives some limited ability to events like conventions to display a lawful copy.

So, ultimately, it’s very important for the first sale doctrine to apply to copies lawfully purchased abroad. Without it, we’d have two different sets of rules depending on where the work comes from, and you technically wouldn’t even be able to legally lend a copy of, say, that manga you bought ini Japan to a friend!