In this timely book, copyright scholar Péter Mezei offers a comprehensive examination of copyright exhaustion, including its historical development, theoretical framework, practical application, and policy considerations. He compares the substantive norms and case law for the first-sale doctrine in the United States and in the European Union, covering both analogue and digital applications in detail, and in doing so questions the common rejection of exhaustion in the resale of digital subject matter such as computer programs, sound recordings, audiovisual works, and e-books. Instead, he proposes a digital first-sale doctrine that would offer legal consistency to copyright law and a technologically feasible framework for content producers and consumers. This book should be read by anyone interested in how copyright law continues to evolve in conjunction with the digital world.
Author(s): Péter Mezei
Series: Cambridge Intellectual Property And Information Law
Edition: 1
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 226
Tags: Fair Use (Copyright): United States; Fair Use (Copyright): European Union Countries
Cover
Half title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Theory of Copyright Exhaustion
1.1 Balance in Copyright Law
1.2 The Conceptual Elements of Exhaustion
1.3 Policy Considerations of Exhaustion
1.4 The Doctrine of Exhaustion under International Copyright Law
1.4.1 TRIPS Agreement (1994)
1.4.2 The WIPO Internet Treaties (1996)
1.5 National, Regional, and International Exhaustion
2 The Doctrine of Exhaustion in the Copyright Law of the European Union
2.1 The Origins of the Doctrine of Exhaustion in the Founding Member States
2.2 The First Phase of ECJ Case Law in the 1970s and 1980s
2.3 The Green Paper 1988
2.4 Vertical Harmonization (1991-1996) and Special Rules on Exhaustion
2.5 Horizontal Harmonization (2001) and General Rules on Exhaustion
2.6 The Limitations of the Doctrine of Exhaustion
2.6.1 Limited Parallel Importation: The Doctrine of Regional Exhaustion
2.6.2 The Droit de Suite
3 The First-Sale Doctrine in the Copyright Law of the US
3.1 The Origins of the First-Sale Doctrine
3.2 The Development of the First-Sale Doctrine until 1976
3.3 The Challenges of the First-Sale Doctrine after 1976 and the Amendments of the USCA
3.3.1 Record Rental Amendment Act
3.3.2 Computer Software Rental Amendment Act
3.3.3 Video Rentals and the Lack of Amendments
3.4 The Limitations of the First-Sale Doctrine
3.4.1 Prohibition of Parallel Importation versus First-Sale Doctrine
3.4.2 Sporadic Droit de Suit
4 Digital Exhaustion in the European Union and the US
4.1 Case Law on Digital Exhaustion
4.1.1 Resale of Computer Programs
4.1.2 The Digital Resale of Sound Recordings: The ReDigi Case
4.1.3 Resale of Audiobooks and E-Books
4.1.4 Resale of Audiovisual Works
4.2 A Critical Analysis of the Case Law on Digital Exhaustion
4.2.1 License versus Sale
4.2.2 Distribution versus Making Available to the Public
4.2.3 The New Copy Theory versus Migration of Files and Forward-and-Delete Technologies
4.2.4 Different Subject Matters, Lex Specialis, and the Theory of Functional Equivalence
4.3 En route to Digital Exhaustion?
4.3.1 Isn’t It Only Hype?
4.3.2 Traditional Positivism: A Dead End?
4.3.3 Constructive Realism: The Economic, Social, and Technological Effects of the Digital Exhaustion Doctrine
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
