Re:How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling ju...
by DanBC on Monday October 29, 2012 @05:46AM
(#4711614)
Levis has jeans made abroad. They send these jeans to various regions for sale through a distribution network. Levis claims to be able to control where shops can wholesale buy jeans from.
> Manufacturers or their licensees often seek to enforce trademark or other intellectual-property rights against the grey market. Such rights may be exercised against the import, sale and/or advertisement of grey imports. In 2002, Levi Strauss, after a 4-year legal fight, prevented UK supermarket Tesco from selling grey market jeans. However, such rights can be limited. Examples of such limitations include the first-sale doctrine in the United States [...]
That's sort of what's happening here - a publisher is using some form of rights protection law to prevent someone importing many copies of a product from one region and selling them in another region.
That feels to me anti-competitive, but it's pretty well established that region-locking is acceptable.
In the UK you'd be able to buy a textbook from overseas for your own personal use. The problem is that it's hard for someone else to set up a business to do the importing.
There's a UK case about Tesco and Levi jeans.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market)
> Manufacturers or their licensees often seek to enforce trademark or other intellectual-property rights against the grey market. Such rights may be exercised against the import, sale and/or advertisement of grey imports. In 2002, Levi Strauss, after a 4-year legal fight, prevented UK supermarket Tesco from selling grey market jeans. However, such rights can be limited. Examples of such limitations include the first-sale doctrine in the United States [...]
That's sort of what's happening here - a publisher is using some form of rights protection law to prevent someone importing many copies of a product from one region and selling them in another region.
That feels to me anti-competitive, but it's pretty well established that region-locking is acceptable.
In the UK you'd be able to buy a textbook from overseas for your own personal use. The problem is that it's hard for someone else to set up a business to do the importing.