A Study on First Sale Doctrine in the Digital Era: Comparative Study of the U.S. and the E.U.

The Supreme Court first articulated the first sale doctrine and the issue of copyright exhaustion in the 1908 case Bobbs-Merrill v. Strauss. In 1909, Congress revised the Copyright Act to codify the 1908 Bobbs-Merrill decision on copyright exhaustion. In 1976 the language was changed to its current version in 17 U.S.C. §109(a), which reads: “Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.” But first sale doctrine is designed for the material world. In the digital era, users worldwide enjoy digital goods such as e-books, music, movies on a daily basis. So if users want to resell their digital goods, they will meet a lot of obstacles. First, in this thesis, I try to point out one critical issue about first sale doctrine in the digital era, it is so-called ‘change sale to license’, which concerns that users are often prohibited from using digital goods as they expect. Second, I also discuss the concerns of copyright infringement in the digital transmission. Finally, in this thesis, I try to discuss how to let exhaustion doctrine apply in the digital era and try to think ‘digital first sale doctrine’. I focus on not only U.S. copyright law, but also briefly examine analogous copyright laws in the European Union. Besides, I also collect many leading cases such as Vernor case in U.S. and UsedSoft case in E.U., post-UsedSoft case especially.