Upholding the first sale doctrine

Posted Apr 2, 2013 2:58 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
In reply to: Upholding the first sale doctrine by wtanksleyjr
Parent article: Upholding the first sale doctrine

The answer is simple -- it's _illegally produced_ copies.

And that was the heart of the importer's case.

For the people who know a lot more about copyright than we do, the answer was not simple. Multiple learned judges came to the opposite answer, and were able to back it up with thousands of words of explanation. Other learned judges arrived at the same answer as you, but respected the alternative logic enough to take thousands of words to explain why their own logic beats it.

Though I didn't read the arguments, it is not hard for me to believe that Congress might have meant to exclude some legally produced copies from that paragraph. If Congress really meant something that simple, why didn't Congress just say it? Why write about a copy made "lawfully under this title" instead of just "lawfully"?

I haven't seen this particular phrasing before, but I have seen lots of statutes that talk about things done "under this section" that incontrovertibly refer to the things that are made legal by operation of that particular section, and not by anything else.

Upholding the first sale doctrine

Posted Apr 2, 2013 11:44 UTC (Tue) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (1 responses)

> Why write about a copy made "lawfully under this title" instead of just "lawfully"?

There is a principle in how to interpret the law that says (translated from my native Portuguese) "no comma is wasted in the law text". This principle, alone, is enough to justify interpreting "lawfully under this title" from "lawfully", where the latter should mean "under the effect of any law source" and the former, "under the effects described in this specific title only".

IANAL, TINLA, just a former paralegal.

Upholding the first sale doctrine

Posted Apr 2, 2013 16:25 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

I don't know an aphorism for it in US law, but the same concept exists. All words must be given meaning. It produces some results that are maddening for a mathematician, like: a lease contract says all payments under the lease must be paid by the 5th of the month. In another section, it says utility payments must be made by the 15th of the month. To a mathematician, these two statements are consistent and mean that utility payments must be made by the 5th of the month. But a judge would read the utility payments to be an exception, because otherwise the words about the 15th would be superfluous.