Scholarship Repository @ University of Massachusetts School of Law
Abstract
This Article investigates the impact of the Kirtsaeng decision. After discussing the first sale doctrine, this Article presents the issues around implementing a worldwide first sale doctrine. International treaties attempt to ensure that authors can benefit from their work by affording them similar protections in different jurisdictions. But a worldwide first sale exhaustion limits the ability of copyright holders to profit from their work because it allows the author to compete with its own work that had been priced differently in different jurisdictions. Finally, this Article tests whether, in the United States, the price of textbooks has been affected by the Kirtsaeng decision and finds that the price of textbooks increased between 2001 and 2018 but not more rapidly or slowly after the decision. In other words, the decision may not have had any effect (yet)
