Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf
Page Number: 60

Cite as:  568 U. S. ____ (2013) 

19 

GINSBURG, J., dissenting 

sensus  on  whether  the  sale  in  one  country  of  a  good  in- 
corporating  protected  intellectual  property  exhausts  the
intellectual property owner’s right to control the distribu­
tion  of  that  good  elsewhere.  Indeed,  the  members  of  the 
World  Trade  Organization,  “agreeing  to  disagree,”14  pro­
vided  in  Article  6  of  the  Agreement  on  Trade-Related
Aspects  of  Intellectual  Property  Rights  (TRIPS),  Apr.  15, 
1994, 33 I. L. M. 1197, 1200, that “nothing in this Agree­
ment shall be used to address the issue of . . . exhaustion.” 
See Chiappetta 346 (observing that exhaustion of intellec­
tual property rights was “hotly debated” during the TRIPS
negotiations  and  that  Article  6  “reflects  [the  negotiators’] 
ultimate  inability  to  agree”  on  a  single  international 
standard).  Similar  language  appears  in  other  treaties  to
which the United States is a party.  See World Intellectual 
Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty, Art. 6(2),
Dec. 20, 1996, S. Treaty Doc. No. 105–17, p. 7 (“Nothing in
this Treaty shall affect the freedom of Contracting Parties 
to  determine  the  conditions,  if  any,  under  which  the  ex­
haustion of the right [to control distribution of copies of a 
copyrighted  work]  applies  after  the  first  sale  or  other 
transfer of ownership of the original or a copy of the work 
with  the  authorization  of  the  author.”);  WIPO  Perfor­
mances  and  Phonograms  Treaty,  Art.  8(2),  Dec.  20,  1996, 
S.  Treaty  Doc.  No.  105–17,  p.  28  (containing  language 
nearly  identical  to  Article  6(2)  of  the  WIPO  Copyright
Treaty).

In  the  absence  of  agreement  at  the  international  level,
each country has been left to choose for itself the exhaus­
tion  framework  it  will  follow.    One  option  is  a  national­
exhaustion regime, under which a copyright owner’s right 

—————— 

14 Chiappetta,  The  Desirability  of  Agreeing  to  Disagree:  The  WTO, 
TRIPS,  International  IPR  Exhaustion  and  a  Few  Other  Things,  21
Mich.  J.  Int’l  L.  333,  340  (2000)  (hereinafter  Chiappetta)  (internal
quotation marks omitted).