Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
Egg_Shen ·
October 9, 2012 at 12:42am
Apparently, there is case pending before the Supreme Court that could over turn the "right of first sale" for all goods that hold a US copyright, but are manufactured outside the US, which at this point is just about everything.
Here are a couple of links for those who are interested in more details:
Marketwatch: Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril
Volokh Conspiracy: Some Baffling Copyright Law
The case at hand, Kirtsaeng v John Wiley, revolves around text books, but I see no reason it would not apply to cars, clothes or anything else.
I have not seen any discussion about this topic on the site, so I am hoping that some of our more lawyerly folks will weigh in. Is this just a tempest in a teapot or is as bad as it seems?
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Comments:
Apr '12
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
No idea if it would apply or not, but I've been expecting a crack down on yard sales for ages-- since the first bakesale-and-lemonaid-stand outrages.
Aug '11
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
What I hear you saying is I'd better sell my old Wiley Law books on Amazon, ASAP, before I can't anymore.
Dec '10
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
Copyright on cars or clothing? As far as I know, copyrights are strictly for intellectual property.
Jun '12
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
This would put eBay out of business.
Apr '11
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
Inventions in the operation of the engine, software running the car, or mechanical devices that go into your car would be covered. Heck do you know how this whole frackus started.
The defendant discovered that the text books he was buying in the US for hundreds of dollars could be bought more cheaply back in his native country. So he had his family back there buy the books and ship them and then he sold them here for profit. The book publisher was not amused at this mans ingeniousness. So they sued.
Text books have to be the biggest racket in our nation. I hope they loose...
Feb '12
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
True. Clothing is generally protected by trademark, not copyright.
If upheld, how long do we think it would take before this precedent is extended into trademark law?
Apr '11
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
Thanks for posting this! I was actually considering writing a post about that same MarketWatch article; glad I checked the member feed beforehand.
Is the article inaccurate? Hyperbolic? If it's accurate, I find the whole thing very disturbing-- in terms of government intrusion and economic upheaval, this is something that has the potential to be as destructive as Obamacare. (at the risk of sounding hyperbolic myself;-)
The article suggests this has implications for not only eBay and Craglist, but Used Car sales and even foreign manufacturing.
“[It’s] a non-free-market capitalistic idea for something that’s pretty fundamental to our modern economy,” [Marvin] Ammori commented.
How does something like this get as far as the Supreme Court?
I'll echo that request for input... I'm hoping some our our crack legal minds here can shed some light on this.
Edited on October 8, 2012 at 11:36pmAug '11
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
"At some point I think you've made enough money."
Apr '11
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
Yes I also would love to hear input on this. I have heard people stating this could put the DVD resale busienss out or market and possibly even the rental market.......I mean I am a bibliophile and my greatest joy is rummaging through a used bookstore for a good deal. Is this going to be at stake too?
Apr '11
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
Frankly why should any one be surprised at a companies attempt to abuse the copyright system. When the government creates monopolies they encourage rent seeking behavior. Ultimately the consumers pay the price by being offered less choices and having to bare higher prices.
Jun '12
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
Relative to textbooks, the dollar difference is surprising, when my daughters were in college, we bought them a full US license and new book for each class, many well over $200.00 each, for some classes, where my daughters wanted me to provide help on request, I bought international editions for myself. Typical, $229.00 US edition, $45.00 international edition.
Now, again typically international versions much lower quality, poor paper, poor binding, and much less use of color, but text and problem sets identical. Sometimes, (but usually didn't know until receipt of text) quality was identical for much less. This is one example where US citizens are already paying hidden international taxes, every time we buy a book. In many foreign countries there are governmental price controls on the textbooks, so companies forced to sell at low price, then raise price to whatever market will bear in US (Very high, BECAUSE of Federal Education support), many people can cover books in school grants, loans and then deduct part of costs, so US taxpayers are subsidizing not only US students, but foreign ones as well.
May '11
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
So Kirtsaeng made over $1 million selling college text books on e-bay. It is more profitable for Wiley to spend a couple of million on a Supreme Court case and retain their monopoly than to actually lower prices in the U.S.
I have friends who have had family buy new cars in Puerto Rico and ship them for pickup Miami at a great savings. (Many thousands of dollars.) Puerto Rico is considered 3rd World and has huge tax and price advantages. Same principle.
May '11
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
Is this not the same as buying drugs from Canada?
Aug '10
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
But there is intellectual property in a car or a garment.
One is not allowed to manufacture and sell an identical car with an identical logo, after all. Similar yes, but not identical.
So, if you're re-selling a company's car, then according to the logic of this lawsuit you are selling the company's intellectual property without the company's permission.
Similarly, one is allowed to manufacture a garment that is similar to another company's garment, but one cannot put the original company's logo on it. So, following the logic of the suit, re-selling the company's actual garment means selling that company's intellectual property without the company's permission.
Aug '10
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
There's still a DVD rental market?
Mar '12
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
You don't own that!
Aug '10
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
Pilli
I have friends who have had family buy new cars in Puerto Rico and ship them for pickup Miami at a great savings. (Many thousands of dollars.) Puerto Rico is considered 3rd World and has huge tax and price advantages. Same principle.
Up here in the Great White North it is illegal to buy a car from a country other than Canada or the USA, unless that car was specifically built for the Canadian or US market (like a car built in Mexico to Canadian regulatory specs).
If the car is purchased in the US, or was designed to US regulatory specs, the owner must modify the car to Canadian regulatory specs.
Here's the really stupid part. Say the car was built in Europe to European regulatory specs. Even if one modifies the car to Canadian specs it's still illegal, for some reason.
So, a Lamborghini built for the US market can be imported into Canada and modified, but a Lamborghini built for the Italian market cannot.
And don't even THINK of importing a car that nobody sells in the US market. We can't have Canadians importing cheap Ladas or Tatas, now can we?
May '11
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
It is largely a tempest in a teapot.
Basically the same, although involving copyright instead of patent.
It does not bar you from reselling stuff legitimately bought in the US (including foreign-manufactured goods brought in to the US on behalf of the copyright owner).
Edited on October 9, 2012 at 2:29amJul '12
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
That's what I was thinking.
It's not always nefarious.
Drug company A invests a gazillion dollars in Research&Design to develop a drug and get it past the FDA.
They sell it in rich nations for high prices.
They know poor people in poor nations will be unable to afford the drug at rich nation pricing and will die, so they set the prices lower in those nations.
People in rich nations buy and resell from poor nation to rich nation at a markup.
I see a dilemma, and I'm not sure what the solution is.
It is a bit different for drugs since there are authorized sellers/distributors involved. Bypassing the systems put in place for safety results in orders to shady distributors who advertise via spam.
Edited on October 9, 2012 at 2:01amDec '11
Re: Is Your Garage Sale About to Be Illegal?
But what if an illegal immigrant held a garage sale? Then what? And what if said undocumented worker was also a journalist?
Cats lying with dogs? Apocalypse?