The US Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a case involving copyright protection for works produced outside the United States and then resold on the US market. The top US court accepted the case involving a student from Thailand who, to finance his US studies, sold on eBay books his family owned in Thailand.
The student, Supap Kirtsaeng, thought he was acting within the law but publisher John Wiley & Sons sued and won $600,000 in damages in a federal court for copyright violations. An appellate court upheld the judgement and Kirtsaeng then appealed to the US Supreme Court. His lawyer contends that it was it was legal for him to sell international editions of books in the United States as long as he legally purchased them abroad.
The publisher contends that overturning the case would weaken copyright protection, in a case that has implications for so-called gray market goods made for markets outside the United States and then sold on US soil. In a similar case in 2011, the highest US court rejected an appeal by musicians, teachers and film distributors seeking to expand US copyright protection to works that are now in the public domain.
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