Publishers Win Copyright Infringement Suit
By Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 11/19/2008 7:29:00 AM
A U.S. District Court has ruled in favor of four college educational publishers, ruling that two foreign online booksellers are guilty of copyright infringement for illegally importing into the U.S. textbook editions that were produced only for distribution in overseas markets. Judge Sidney H. Stein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District fo New York awarded the four publishers—McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson Education, Inc., John Wiley & Sons Inc. and Cengage Learning—$125,000 in damages, and permanently enjoined Jun Liao and Zhengshu Go, the two online booksellers, from further infringing actions on the plaintiffs' copyrights.In the written opinion, Judge Stein rejected the defendants' claim that sales of the textbooks in the U.S. were protected by the “first sale” doctrine, which holds that the purchaser of a legal copy of a book can sell it or give it away without the copyright holder’s permission. Stein noted that the doctrine applies only to lawfully acquired copies: “The resale in the United States of copies manufactured outside the United States is not protected under the terms of the statute.”
