[LIBRARYDIR] Have you seen this?

[Thomas, Kirsti]

There’s an element of copyright law referred to as “first sale doctrine” which says that lawfully made copies of books can be resold in the US (no matter where they were produced) without permission from the publisher.

There was even a 2013 Supreme Court case about this very thing-- Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Wikipedia has a good summary of the case and the decision:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtsaeng_v._John_Wiley_%26_Sons,_Inc.

The Supreme Court decision hasn’t prevented publishers from trying to claim the first sale doctrine doesn’t apply to textbooks. Publishers will claim a lot of things.

It will be ok!

Kirsti S. Thomas
Library Technical Services Manager
Seattle Colleges
kirsti.thomas at seattlecolleges.edu<mailto:kirsti.thomas at seattlecolleges.edu>



From: LIBRARYDIR <librarydir-bounces at lists.ctc.edu> On Behalf Of Susan Schreiner via LIBRARYDIR
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 13:44
To: librarydir at lists.ctc.edu
Cc: Susan Schreiner <susan.schreiner at ghc.edu>
Subject: [LIBRARYDIR] Have you seen this?

Good Afternoon Collective Library Wisdom!

I’ve come across something I’ve never seen before, but I’ve also never processed new materials so it may be common. We ordered a book off Amazon, and after receiving it saw the following message on the cover (as written, caps and all):

“This edition is licensed for sale only in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Circulation of this edition outside of these countries is UNAUTHORIZED AND STRICTLY PROHIBITED.”

I will preface this by saying this was not immediately going into the collection, I am using it to prepare a grant request and a course on financial education. (Personal financial planning book.) But is this legal? Can a publisher ever say where their books can be circulated by libraries if the library owns a hard copy of the item? Or does it fall under US law where if we own the hard copy we can lend it out as much as we want? Publisher is Cengage and it’s a 2014 copyright/version. This edition is no longer available on Amazon, but neither my library assistant or I saw anything before ordering that would express these limitations.

Any advice/thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Susan

Susan A. Schreiner
Associate Dean for Library, eLearning, and Learning Support Services
Grays Harbor College
Aberdeen, WA 98520

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