Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons

Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons (2013) was a U.S. Supreme Court case about copyright law and international sales. Jonathan Kirtsaeng, a student, bought affordable foreign editions of textbooks and sold them in the U.S. at a profit. Wiley argued this violated their copyright. The Court ruled that once a copyrighted work is lawfully sold abroad, the copyright holder's rights are exhausted, meaning others can resell those copies in the U.S. without permission. This decision clarified that copyright owners don't have control over the resale of lawful international copies, affecting how intellectual property rights are enforced across borders.