The criminalization of ALL Americans continues unabated.

Since banning resale would benefit corporations, as people would be forced to buy new products instead of used, I expect this will have 4 guaranteed votes banning resale from the Republicans on the court.

The very same people that complain and rant about 'government interference' in the free market are the ones DEMANDING the government protect them from 'unfair' competition. Their very livelihoods depend on taxpayers footing the bill for copyright and trade protection that cost billions, but since it butters their bread it is A-OK with them. Without government 'interference' their business model would be completely kaput as there is no way their business model would function if they had to foot the bill for that kind of protection on their own.

They might have a thing over CUSTOMS allowing imports if they appear to be for resale outside the permitted area. IF that is a legally binding request.

However, if resale is allowed freely in defiance of regions, this is actually suckage for other countries. These guys get steep discounts in drugs, books, equipment, goods of all types, over US pricing. If they are legally able to just turn around and resell to the US, killing their US-sale cash cow, then the companies would ask themselves if taking an item that costs $10 to make, sells for $200 in the USA, but also sells for $15 in China only to find China ordered 3x more than they could possibly USE and are killing the US sales, that maybe they should start bringing up the China price to $150 or all the way to $200.

Bottom line being that these countries may have to pay US prices, and they can't, so basically they're cut off.

ZAZ: Here is the question the court has agreed to answer:How do Section 602(a)(1) of the Copyright Act, which prohibits the importation of a work without the authority of the copyright's owner, and Section 109(a) of the Copyright Act, which allows the owner of a copy "lawfully made under this title" to sell or otherwise dispose of the copy without the copyright owner's permission, apply to a copy that was made and legally acquired abroad and then imported into the United States?So stop worrying about your made-in-China lead lollipops. This only affects items acquired overseas.

This, kind of. Wikipedia says it succinctly: "The issue comes down to whether §602(a) creates an affirmative right to bar all unauthorized importation, or does the first-sale doctrine limit the reach of §602(a), thus permitting the resale of at least some lawfully made imported copies."

What nobody on this thread has brought up is the important part: This is a case of statutory interpretation, not constitutionality. HealthCare and Citizens United were cases deciding the constitutionality of certain statutes. This case, on the other hand, involves interpreting an already constitutionally valid statute which, on the face of it, seems to outlaw the importation of foreign, copyrighted goods.

If the court upholds the lower court, they are not reversing precedent because the first-sale doctrine is a statutory right (17 USC §109(a)). The Constitution doesn't guarantee you any sort of copyright protection, only that Congress has the power to regulate it. If the statute plainly says that you can't sell imported, foreign copyrighted goods, then the Supreme Court can't decided that the statute does allow you to sell those goods. All Congress needs to do is amend the Copyright Act with two lines of text.

Ok, so I don't own anything. That's cool, that tells me that whatever I have that they own that might be broken...they need to fix.

FIX YOUR BROKEN shiat!

What? No, not your problem? Ok, then fark you. It's mine and therefore I can resell it.

The case stems from Supap Kirtsaeng's college experience. A native of Thailand, Kirtsaeng came to the U.S. in 1997 to study at Cornell University. When he discovered that his textbooks, produced by Wiley, were substantially cheaper to buy in Thailand than they were in Ithaca, N.Y., he rallied his Thai relatives to buy the books and ship them to him in the U.S.

I guess this is a bit of a "threadjack" but on topic of the article.

You would think we would want to encopurage students in the U.S. to get a good education and go to college. It benefits our entire nation. So why do companies feel it is OK to fleece the Amercian student ot of every penny possible making it harder to get an education?

When the common person finds a way to game the system to their advantage like this or ordering drugs from Canada, the "job creators" get all in a tizzy about it and do what they can to stop it. When the "job creators" do it at the "common person's" expense, we're just supposed to grab aour ankles and take it.

This is the SCOTUS that gave is "Citizens United" so I wouldn't putit past them to uphold this.

Pants full of macaroni!!: The criminalization of ALL Americans continues unabated.

I'm sort of hoping to see the court do this.

250 years has been a fine run for a good constitution, maybe I'm old enough to not mind seeing a little refreshing of the tree of liberty.

/visions of being cast as the Randy Quaid role in ID4.

dahmers love zombie: I believe, upon reflection, that this decision would, if upheld, screw over too many rich people. Thus, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito will oppose it, and at least one other justice will remain sane enough to do so as well.

I'll take this as you don't see Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito quite the same way I do. If it screwed everyone over but made corporations more money, Scalia and Thomas will vote for it and twist logic to defend it. Alito and Roberts aren't quite that bad, but both also never found a corporate right that should be denied if an individual's right was being screwed. To sum up: though this is a bizarre thing, I would not at all be surprise if our dear right wing judge contingent said all in on limiting sales to rightsholders alone, and the hell with whomever else. Its kind of what they do. Corporate rights are to be defended, people rights are to be cut into any time its possible.

That sound you hear in the distance is a million pawn shop owners, thrift store operators, and antiques pickers organizing into a powerful lobby force.

You need to have money to make money. If you're poor and find a way to make money we will make it illegal.

Considering this would destroy the entire used book/movie/game industry, I'd have to say that this shiat will not stand.

The case stems from Supap Kirtsaeng's college experience. A native of Thailand, Kirtsaeng came to the U.S. in 1997 to study at Cornell University. When he discovered that his textbooks, produced by Wiley, were substantially cheaper to buy in Thailand than they were in Ithaca, N.Y., he rallied his Thai relatives to buy the books and ship them to him in the U.S.

While it's a completely separate issue, what is being overlooked is that most U.S. textbooks are sold overseas for 50% to 75% less than the U.S. MSRP.

Many countries want to use our textbooks, but they cannot afford the U.S. price. So what the publisher does, is print the textbook in black & white, uses a cheaper paper stock, and only uses soft covers. The content is 100% the same. If you put the same page from the U.S. version next to the international version, they'd be identical except that the international version is in black & white.

I'm a grad student and recently discovered this; I have saved a fortune buying the international version of textbooks that I need for class.

The obvious point, is that the textbook industry has the power to easily slash the cost of textbooks. Talk about something that demands government regulation.

Gepetto: All Congress needs to do is amend the Copyright Act with two lines of text.

Then I would humbly suggest that folks contact their Congresscritters and tell them to do just that. Better to do so now, before the Supreme Court can be paid by every copyright owner with outsourcing on the mind to destroy over a century of statutory right, than later, when every Toyota owner loses half the value of their car to a "reseller's fee" when they sell the damn thing to some teenager.

"Are you sure this is ISBN: 3540368396?? You want $400, right?"

True story:

Friend of mine who ran an ebay business (quite successfully) bought a few cases of cool Sennheiser headphones in bulk on sale, legitimately, in the US. When trying to sell them on Ebay for a markup but still under Sennheiser's current prices, Sennheiser threatened to sue him and forced Ebay to cancel all transactions. And that's not even with this potential ruling.

Not being able to afford to go up against Sennheiser, he had to eat thousands of dollars of inventory.

When they outlaw selling used belongings, only outlaws will sell used belongings.

There will just be a much greater percentage of outlaws, that's all.

Silly Jesus: Who resells stuff? I've never resold anything. If I don't need it anymore I throw it away or give it away.

/poor people problems

Not just poor people there, bucko.

Have you ever had to sell your house as part of a move? Wouldn't it be a PITA if you had to get the permission of the original contractor or architect before you could sell, or what if they would only let you sell it back to them. . .at whatever price they chose to buy it at?

Have you ever traded in a car when buying a new one? Imagine if you had to have permission from the maker of the car, or if they decided you could only trade it in to them, for whatever they decided to offer for it.

What if you collected rare and valuable things? Valuable baseball cards from the 1930's are still in copyright. Imagine having a card worth thousands of dollars. . .but you can't legally sell it because you have to track down the copyright holder because the original company has been bought out, merged, sold, dissolved and otherwise changed so many times over the decades. . .and what if they say no to the sale? What if they will only let you sell it back to them, at the price of their choosing, or else you can't sell it to anybody?

If you owned an original Picasso, you'd need to talk to Claude Picasso, Pablos son and the administrator of the Picasso Estate, to sell the painting legally. Again, he could say no, or he could say you could only sell it to him.

It's not just poor people, this could hurt the rich too. 

/Everybodies problem

heavymetal: You would think we would want to encopurage students in the U.S. to get a good education and go to college. It benefits our entire nation. So why do companies feel it is OK to fleece the Amercian student ot of every penny possible making it harder to get an education?

They aren't going after the students, per say... they are just a means to an end and a casualty of the situation. They are going after the scholarship, grant and subsidy money to which a student has access. That a student may endure financial hardship or suffer in academic performance is inconsequential to the greater goal.

Fark. Is this shiat for real?

Coming soon from the mind of Scalia: Transfer of any currency or items between individuals is illegal without expressed written consent from a major corporation. Violation of this law will result in immediate forfeiture of all possessions and 10 years prison labor in the state-run Burger Kings.

Grand_Moff_Joseph: Benjimin_Dover: Grand_Moff_Joseph: dahmers love zombie: Grand_Moff_Joseph: Considering that 9/10 items on store shelves in America (including virtually 100% of electronic/technology related products) are made outside the USA, customers here would be unable to resell nearly everything they ever buy.

Hey...wouldn't that boost the economy? I mean, apart from every flea market, auction house, and eBay?

Well, that would put every single independent used car lot out of business overnight, as they'd never have any cars to sell.

This applies to copyrighted items. Cars aren't copyrighted.

If SCOTUS lets this by, cars will be copyrighted by Christmas time, trust me.

It applies to Copyrighted items PURCHASED overseas, imported to the US and re-sold.

Goddamn...you people need to read some shiat...

Nobody is going to be raiding your yard-sale or hauling you off to jail for putting your mountain bike on Craigslist.

Oznog: They might have a thing over CUSTOMS allowing imports if they appear to be for resale outside the permitted area. IF that is a legally binding request.

However, if resale is allowed freely in defiance of regions, this is actually suckage for other countries. These guys get steep discounts in drugs, books, equipment, goods of all types, over US pricing. If they are legally able to just turn around and resell to the US, killing their US-sale cash cow, then the companies would ask themselves if taking an item that costs $10 to make, sells for $200 in the USA, but also sells for $15 in China only to find China ordered 3x more than they could possibly USE and are killing the US sales, that maybe they should start bringing up the China price to $150 or all the way to $200.

Bottom line being that these countries may have to pay US prices, and they can't, so basically they're cut off.

no

The US is a population of 300 million, the rest of the world is more than 6 billion, even if they never sold another book in the US they'd still make more money selling the book for 20 bucks a copy every where else.

The reason the price in these countries is 20 bucks is because that's the global market rate - ie the price they can charge before people pirate it and the gov looks the other way. In the US and other western nations the Gov is more likely to be favourable to campaign donations so you get laws to isolate from the global market rate and allow them to charge 200 bucks for a 10 dollar book.

uhm... Inherited items would not be covered by this, as if you inherit you are not the purchaser.
non watch Jewelry is not covered by copyrights.

but the cheap tobacco would be stopped, so it has that going for it.

10/10

Epic trolling.

Grand_Moff_Joseph: dahmers love zombie: This would be unbelievable if upheld. Can you imagine a Honda dealership? "Yeah, we'll give you $2,000 trade-in value for your 2010 Accord.". "WTF?" "OK, don't take our offer -- you're not allowed to sell it at all now".

Actually, that may depend on where the car was built. Honda may be a Japanese company, but the car was manufactured here. So, if it's manufactured here, I can sell it again, right?

Of course, Honda will then claim that it was somehow NOT made here, but in Japan. Taken to its logical extreme, Honda would be operating here, but claiming that they are not for business purposes. And at that point, one has to ask whether they should be taxed as a domestic firm or not.

You do understand that Honda dealerships are not owned by Honda and are owned by independent dealers who make money on used car sales. Honda has a vested interest in people selling their used cars back to the dealership to purchase new cars...

"Wiley, which admitted that it charged less for books sold abroad than it did in the U.S., sued him for copyright infringement."

I've got this fabulous idea... Ya know, instead of biatching about this now, why don't we sell things overseas for the same farking price as you do in the USA? Problem solved in this particular case!

When are people finally going to get pissed off? And just as always, you will sit there on your 'puters and let the corporations and lawyers fark you in your ass with their 12" cock of authority. Then as long as you get your subsidies, welfare, and "entitlements" you basically shut the fark up and ask for more cock. You will buy what they say, and eat what they tell you.

When will this end? Freedom is in the toilet, we get raped before flying, and authority figures are throwing normal citizens around like we no longer have rights. And they get away with it. The TSA steals your money and computers RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. They media and government encourages your neighbors to fear you and have you spy on each other. When was the last time you moved somewhere and all your new neighbors came over with cookies to meet the "new folks"?

When are people finally going to speak up? En Masse? Why is everyone just letting this shiat happen?

And finally, make sure to be a good American and make sure to keep voting for "politicians" instead of people that have the actual skills and understanding to even try to fix this mess we are all in. Listen to all the wonderful speeches and debates that were wrote and coreographed by their wonderful highly specialized staff. One of which is sure to have public psychology skills. Skills that work on YOU.

This was posted by a HUMAN that still believes in the original, honest American Dream he experienced when he was young. A time when the country was still UNITED because we actually were, and not TOLD TO BE by the media because it is the next "thing". A HUMAN that cries when he sees what the world's governments and corporations have done. A HUMAN that is well educated enough to know our environment is truly farkED and nothing will be done.

And it all seems to spawn to a single relation:

Money vs. What is right. It is not often when those two overlap.

ghostofreasonpast: That sound you hear in the distance is a million pawn shop owners, thrift store operators, and antiques pickers organizing into a powerful lobby force.

Don't forget the (legitimate) ebay and other online resellers. By which I mean not the scammers, so pretty much everyone else.

cman: There aint no way in hell SCOTUS would overturn the 1908 precedent. That would cause extreme chaos within our country and its economic system. SCOTUS wouldn't dare to do something that drastic

Also, GOOD LUCK trying to enforce it. There are literally hundreds of garage and yard sales every week, just in Orange County. How many nationwide. Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

Oh, wait, this would be a PERFECT job for an expanded TSA.

Because terrorists.

Welcome to Fark?

Ya'll need to read s'more before you get all 'internet mad' at stuff.

BafflerMeal: True story:

Friend of mine who ran an ebay business (quite successfully) bought a few cases of cool Sennheiser headphones in bulk on sale, legitimately, in the US. When trying to sell them on Ebay for a markup but still under Sennheiser's current prices, Sennheiser threatened to sue him and forced Ebay to cancel all transactions. And that's not even with this potential ruling.

Not being able to afford to go up against Sennheiser, he had to eat thousands of dollars of inventory.

Orly?

He had no way of selling them within the same range as other Sennheiser dealers? Just had to throw 'em away and chalk up the loss?

Curious.

/Shenanigans.

Yet, we don't have the right to take their job. I don't know (but there are a lot of smart Farkers on here) is there anyway to get a SC Justice off their job? (probably not of the right-wing would be rallying around it yearly)

ZAZ: Here is the question the court has agreed to answer:How do Section 602(a)(1) of the Copyright Act, which prohibits the importation of a work without the authority of the copyright's owner, and Section 109(a) of the Copyright Act, which allows the owner of a copy "lawfully made under this title" to sell or otherwise dispose of the copy without the copyright owner's permission, apply to a copy that was made and legally acquired abroad and then imported into the United States?So stop worrying about your made-in-China lead lollipops. This only affects items acquired overseas.

Thank you very much for bringing an informed perspective to the conversation. You are truly a resource.

buzzcut73: Benjimin_Dover:
This applies to copyrighted items. Cars aren't copyrighted.

But the logo on the car is subject to copyright. Perhaps the unique letter and number combination on the VIN plate...

The simple counter to that is the logo wasn't bought or sold. The car was and the receipt would be proof. Nothing mentioned on my receipt when I bought my cars. The logo was attached to the car and can remain the property of the copyright holder. The logo is just along for the ride.

thornhill: The case stems from Supap Kirtsaeng's college experience. A native of Thailand, Kirtsaeng came to the U.S. in 1997 to study at Cornell University. When he discovered that his textbooks, produced by Wiley, were substantially cheaper to buy in Thailand than they were in Ithaca, N.Y., he rallied his Thai relatives to buy the books and ship them to him in the U.S.

While it's a completely separate issue, what is being overlooked is that most U.S. textbooks are sold overseas for 50% to 75% less than the U.S. MSRP.

Many countries want to use our textbooks, but they cannot afford the U.S. price. So what the publisher does, is print the textbook in black & white, uses a cheaper paper stock, and only uses soft covers. The content is 100% the same. If you put the same page from the U.S. version next to the international version, they'd be identical except that the international version is in black & white.

I'm a grad student and recently discovered this; I have saved a fortune buying the international version of textbooks that I need for class.

The obvious point, is that the textbook industry has the power to easily slash the cost of textbooks. Talk about something that demands government regulation.

Engineering textbooks can be slightly iffy at times because US textbooks will jump between the use of metric and English units while international versions are pure metric. Or course what I've started seeing a lot at my college is people will buy old versions of the text book (can be gotten for dirt cheap, used as reference material) and just take photos of the needed questions out of a new book with their iphones and such.

Black markets ALREADY exist and it's legal to sell shiat now.

The more copyright lawyers push, the more laws free men will have to break to be free.

Cyclometh: But when you buy something from a store, it's already not the first sale. Target bought this iPad I'm using to type this ofrom Apple. Unless you buy right from the manufaturer it's not a first sale.

Would Apple need to get permission from The makers of parts for their products to sell them to consumers?

It's been mentioned above, but this is stuff protected by copyright, not just anything made overseas and purchased. Right of First Sale means that if you write a book, record a song, or make another work protected by copyright and I buy a copy (first sale), I can then lend my copy to people, sell my original copy, or do a few other things with it (the list escapes me) without infringing on your copyright. I can't make a bunch of copies and sell them for profit, because your copyright protects you and First Sale doesn't extend that protection to me.

Grand_Moff_Joseph: Actually, that may depend on where the car was built. Honda may be a Japanese company, but the car was manufactured here. So, if it's manufactured here, I can sell it again, right?

Not if they declared it as something intended to be marketed only in a 10' radius of the dealer where you bought it. That's the insanity that upholding this could unleash.

Cyclometh: But when you buy something from a store, it's already not the first sale. Target bought this iPad I'm using to type this ofrom Apple. Unless you buy right from the manufaturer it's not a first sale.

Would Apple need to get permission from The makers of parts for their products to sell them to consumers?

whoa.

Americans must pay premium prices for higher education. Otherwise the poor would have a better chance to compete with the rich for jobs.

cedarpark:

/Unless textbooks have suddenly got batshait expensive.

Where you been? 1975 I paid $120 for "Radioisotope Methodology" by Chase and Rabinowitz.

ElLoco: heavymetal: You would think we would want to encopurage students in the U.S. to get a good education and go to college. It benefits our entire nation. So why do companies feel it is OK to fleece the Amercian student ot of every penny possible making it harder to get an education?

They aren't going after the students, per say... they are just a means to an end and a casualty of the situation. They are going after the scholarship, grant and subsidy money to which a student has access. That a student may endure financial hardship or suffer in academic performance is inconsequential to the greater goal.

I getyour sarcasm and tha is the point. Scholarship students, the really smart ones, and the ones with rich parents are fine. Stuff like this screws over the "borderline" college student. Smart enough to pass and get a job in the field, but not smart enough for a scholarship and not from a wealthy enough family to have their way paid.

Call me wierd, but we should make college easier to access and not harder.

dustman81: cman: There aint no way in hell SCOTUS would overturn the 1908 precedent. That would cause extreme chaos within our country and its economic system. SCOTUS wouldn't dare to do something that drastic

Even, if they did, which is unlikely, I don't see how it could be enforced. Not to mention companies like eBay and Craigslist would be destroyed.

Not just them; every flea market, yard sale and consignment store in the nation would be put out of business, not to mention every single pawn shop as well, if SCOTUS agreed with the appellate court.

Also, this is similar in abstract to buying cheaper US pharmaceuticals outside the states and bringing them back in. Same drug. Much cheaper. The US has made all kind of noise about stopping that. Don't expect this to be any different.

narkor: The solution to this is not to allow textbooks to be sold cheaper in other countries. Sell them at the same RRP and if they can't afford that, they can *always write their own textbooks*. I'm sure they are smart enough to do it. Make it all "open source" - that way none of the authors profit.

No, the solution is to stop publishers from charging 200-300% more for a book than a similar, non-course-bound book would cost. Case in point, I had to buy a coding textbook for my Visual Basic class that was like $110 new, I got a used one for about $75 at the campus store. A similar VB book on Amazon is between $15-$35. Explain that to me without paraphrasing 'well the publisher can't sell as many because it's not a commonly used book'. Hell, the Microsoft 576 page book is only $25. Meanwhile all that cash difference is NOT going to my professor, but a faceless publisher, or in the case of the used book, the college bookstore that ripped off the last owner when he traded it in. And in my case at least, this is condoned by the state U system.

I'm not saying force mandatory, set prices by any means, but at least make them compete with the other publishers out there.

Recycling would probably be affected too/

You know, this would kill Good Will, Salvation Army, and other charities (some that really do good work) too.

BMFPitt: In August 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court's ruling that anything that was manufactured overseas is not subject to the first-sale principle. Only American-made products or "copies manufactured domestically" were.

What was their reasoning for pulling that out of their ass?


They are trying to find a way to stop grey imports even though there is no legal way to stop them at all in your relatively true free-marker economy. There is a vast effort at trying to redefine the law, this is just a mechanism for that. There isn't really any 'reasoning' other than the desired result

ZAZ: If the article is accurate, the court could duck the issue by looking to the place of first sale rather than the place of manufacture. Buy textbooks in Thailand, you're a smuggler. Go to Best Buy in New York and buy a camera made in China, you own it.

Not according to the email I got (because I'm a seller) from ebay. I've been following this for a while and I've seen it elsewhere that it would basically apply to all goods made outside the US.

Ebay, Amazon, Gamestop, Halfprice Books, clothing thrift stores, and I'm sure lots lots more businesses would either lose a big chunk of their operating revenue (Gamestop literally makes most of their profits from used games, NOT new ones). Amazon would lose a huge amount of fee revenue from sellers, and I'm guessing Ebay would go out of business in just a few short years as 80%+ of their listings were banned.

If SCOTUS is stupid enough to allow this, I'm going to be extremely grateful I didn't bank more on Ebay as a career. I already am, but in one fell swoop they can destroy the livelihoods/second job of thousands of people.

For even more fun, if they do hold that first sale doctrine doesn't apply libraries would potentially be unable to lend a large portion of their collection.

Link

Wasn't there a nice unanimous SCOTUS decision in 1988 stating that the copyright holder cannot stop people from re-importing items that the copyright holder authorized?

I think it was Quality King vs. L'anza.

The odd thing is that the US government is supporting the publisher, and wants the court of appeals decision to be affirmed.

Textbooks are an extortion racket.

Deman: When they outlaw selling used belongings, only outlaws will sell used belongings.

There will just be a much greater percentage of outlaws, that's all.

Ebay will become an offshore tax haven.

If history is any guide this will split 4-4 with Kagan being the deciding vote, As mentioned see swatch vs costco that was 4-4 with kagan staying out of it. At a guess she will vote to uphold first doctrine, but its hard to say. Strictly reading the law...it seems to me they need to vote against it, so im curious how the other 4 managed to get to common sense instead of the law.

In the end if it goes poorly congress will have to take it up. And large companies most likely will lobby against it, and only use it as a weapon very slowly. Kinda like how you boil a frog.

All this would do is massively expand the black market.

AssAsInAssassin: Wow, that's Farked up. At first, I could barely believe an appellate court would side with a foreign interest over an American citizen, in defiance of the well-established case law regarding Fair Use. By what US law does a foreign corporation get its own special anti-constitutional privileges?

Then I remembered the last 20 years or so, and went "Ohhhh... Right."

/Should have been a follow-up tag. Saw the original story back when.

It's not a foreign corporation. Which is why I'm puzzled at the ruling that "first sale" doesn't apply. The only thing foreign about it is where it was sold.
As for companies "overcharging" Americans - every company prices their products differently for different markets. When you make 10 times as much money, stuff costs 10 times as much. Stuff that is too expensive to sell at lower prices elsewhere don't get sold elsewhere. Businesses are about making money.

Posible that good could come from this if SCOTUS finds for plaintiff: War on drugs ends because more money in chasing down dangerously criminal resellers.

bojon: From the amicus briefs, MPAA and RIAA along with some publishers are the ones who stand to be impacted because they sell product cheaper in other countries.

And the traditional way to prevent this is import duties, which are going away due to free trade agreements. Watch the corporations say that free trade should only apply to them and not average Joe and the Supreme Court might agree.

So if a house has a component that was made in china... be it a door hinge, floor paneling or electrical socket, can the foreign patent holder prevent you from selling your home?

I believe that the correct legal terminlogy is "fark 'em".

THIS is truly a SCOTUS Derp test, if there EVER was one!





Can't wait to see if they pass.

That thing you bought...you don't own that!

Who has to give permission, especially in cases of things made from component parts? Let's say I buy a custom-built computer from a local store. The case, motherboard, hard drive, memory, CPU, ect. are all different brands and makers.If I want to resell the computer, do I have to get permission from that store, or from each company that made component parts? What happens if that store closes?

It's like the "grandma's furniture" problem noted in TFA: who the heck would you go to even for permission? A house full of furniture bought in the 1940's and 1950's, who the heck knows where that furniture was bought, if those places even exist, and who would even own the "copyright" on that furniture to allow for resale?

What about houses? Do you get permission from the contractor that built it? The architect that designed it?

Basically it would ban eBay, Craigslist, every single used car lot in the country, every flea market/peddler's mall, yard sales, all clothing consignment/secondhand stores (goodbye Goodwill/Salvation Army stores), and pawn shops.

Yeah, that would be mayhem.

Yeah, this isn't going anywhere.

Bucky Katt: Another chance for the court to rule in favor of corporations against ordinary people. How nice.

This.