Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf
Page Number: 37.0

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

33 

Opinion of the Court 

statute (perpetual downstream control) were “worse” than
those  of  Kirtsaeng’s  reading  (restriction  of  market  seg­
mentation).  Tr. of Oral Arg. 51.  And the dissent’s reliance 
on the Solicitor General’s position in Quality King is under- 
mined  by  his  agreement  in  that  case  with  our  reading 
of  §109(a).   Brief  for  United  States  as  Amicus  Curiae  in 
Quality King, O. T. 1996, No. 1470, p. 30 (“When . . . Con­
gress wishes to make the location of manufacture relevant 
to  Copyright  Act  protection,  it  does  so  expressly”);  ibid. 
(calling  it  “distinctly  unlikely”  that  Congress  would  have
provided an incentive for overseas manufacturing). 

Moreover, the exhaustion regime the dissent apparently
favors  would  provide  that  “the  sale  in  one  country  of  a
good” does not “exhaus[t] the intellectual-property owner’s 
right  to  control  the  distribution  of  that  good  elsewhere.” 
Post,  at  18–19.    But  our  holding  in  Quality  King  that 
§109(a)  is  a  defense  in  U. S.  courts  even  when  “the  first 
sale occurred abroad,” 523 U. S., at 145, n. 14, has already 
significantly eroded such a principle. 

IV 

For  these  reasons  we  conclude  that  the  considerations 
supporting  Kirtsaeng’s  nongeographical  interpretation  of
the  words  “lawfully  made  under  this  title”  are  the  more
persuasive.  The  judgment  of  the  Court  of  Appeals  is
reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings 
consistent with this opinion. 

It is so ordered.