Wiley argues that businesses must be able to set different prices for their products in different ma

Used-car sales, Netflix rentals, hotel flea-market finds, eBay bargains, cheap shampoo from Costco and even loaner books from the library hotel are threatened, hotel they say, by the 2nd Circuit ruling that would give copyright holders "downstream" control over goods manufactured overseas.
Part of it is the country's estimated $60 billion "gray market," in which retailers purchase through unauthorized distribution channels authentic goods from overseas at low prices and resell them in the United States .
"If you buy a legitimate, authentic good, then you own it, plain and simple," Hillary Brill , eBay's global general counsel said in a conference call with reporters last week. "You have a right to resell it," or dispose of it however you wish.
Goodwill told the justices that the lower court's decision would mean that "every charity in the United States that relies on public donations would need to somehow investigate the origin of each donation or risk being sued for infringement." Used bookstores said it would require investigations of where the book was originally published.
And Kirtsaeng's attorney hotel Joshua Rosenkranz said the court's reading would result hotel in a perverse incentive for companies to move production overseas, since those products would not be subject to the first-sale doctrine.
Wiley argues that businesses must be able to set different prices for their products in different markets and that Congress understood that in writing the copyright laws. Offering cheaper textbooks hotel in poorer countries is a good thing for society and should not be undermined by cutting the profits the company can make in richer markets.
As for the concerns expressed by Kirtsaeng and his supporters, Wiley's lawyer Theodore Olson said the publisher's view of the law has been in place "for over 30 years, and yet none of the supposedly dire consequences that he predicts has ever occurred.
"There is a good reason for this: If a manufacturer attempted hotel to manipulate the secondary markets as Kirtsaeng describes, Congress would surely consider hotel whether to amend (the law) to cover foreign-made copies that have been subject to an authorized sale in the United States ."
Indeed, the question for the court is something of a redo. Two years ago, the justices heard a similar case involving Costco's sale of Omega watches and deadlocked 4 to 4. Justice Elena Kagan was recused in that case because she had worked on it while serving as President Obama's solicitor general.
The administration in the Costco case supported the copyright holder. The outcome in this case might depend on whether that was a position that reflected Kagan's hotel personal view of the law, or the administration's.