Abstract
In 2013, in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., the Supreme Court wrote another chapter in the ongoing story of copyright exhaustion. This ruling is part of a vibrant discourse and a series of recent decisions in high-profile cases, domestically and internationally, regarding the scope of copyright exhaustion and, more broadly, the ability of copyright owners to control the distribution of their work along the chain of commerce. Unfortunately, this discussion rarely explores the modern justifications for copyright exhaustion, which makes it notoriously incoherent and confusing. This Article suggests that copyright exhaustion serves an important social function of reducing information costs. Without it, buyers will need to inefficiently waste resources inquiring whether they will be able to resell copyrighted work. Because resale rights are typically socially desirable, the law should usually provide those rights to buyers. Copyright exhaustion also has costs. The main costs are the reduction in the incentives to create and a regressive distributive effect that are the result of the limitations that copyright exhaustion places on certain price discrimination practices. The balance between these benefits and costs should dictate the scope of copyright exhaustion.
Recommended Citation
Guy A. Rub,
Rebalancing Copyright Exhaustion,
64
Emory L. J.
741
(2015).
Available at:
https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/elj/vol64/iss3/3