by Joe Mullin - Oct 29 2012, 0:00am CET
On Monday, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that pits a major textbook publisher against Supap Kirtsaeng, a student-entrepreneur who built a small business importing and selling textbooks.
Like many Supreme Court cases, though, there's more than meets
the eye. It's not merely a question of whether the Thai-born
Kirtsaeng will have to cough up his profits as a copyright
infringer; the case is a long-awaited rematch between content
companies seeking to knock out the "first sale" doctrine on
goods made abroad (not to mention their many opponents). That
makes Wiley v. Kirtsaeng the highest-stakes
intellectual property case of the year, if not the decade. It's
not an exaggeration to say the outcome could affect the very
notion of property ownership in the United States. Since most
consumer electronics are manufactured outside the US and include
copyrighted software in it, a loss for Kirtsaeng would mean
copyright owners could tax, or even shut down, resales of
everything from books to DVDs to cellphones.
[...]
Continua qui:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/a-supreme-court-clash-could-cha=nge-what-ownership-means/