Supreme Court Partner Quoted on First-Sale Doctrine Case

This article, about a copyright case heard before the U.S. Supreme Court involving the sale of imported textbooks on eBay, quotes Supreme Court and appellate partner Josh Rosenkranz.

Mr. Rosenkranz, a lawyer for the plaintiff in this case, argued that happenstance of where a record was made should not alter the rights of the person who buys it. Otherwise, he said, "the result is that a teacher can go and buy a Beethoven record and play it to her class if it was made in the United States. But if she flips one past it to the next Beethoven record that happens to have been made in Asia, she can't play that for her class."

Worse, the ability to retain control of copyrighted works made abroad provides manufacturers with a powerful incentive to ship jobs overseas, he said.