Upholding the first sale doctrine

Posted Apr 2, 2013 11:44 UTC (Tue) by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
In reply to: Upholding the first sale doctrine by giraffedata
Parent article: Upholding the first sale doctrine

> 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.