Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf
Page Number: 23

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

19 

Opinion of the Court 

United  States  27.  And  we  can  find  no  language,  context,
purpose,  or  history  that  would  rebut  a  “straightforward 
application” of that doctrine here.

The  dissent  argues  that  another  principle  of  statutory 
interpretation  works  against  our  reading,  and  points  out
that  elsewhere  in  the  statute  Congress  used  different 
words  to  express  something  like  the  non-geographical 
reading we adopt.  Post, at 8–9 (quoting §602(a)(2) (prohib­
iting the importation of copies “the making of which either
constituted  an  infringement  of  copyright,  or  which  would
have  constituted  an  infringement  of  copyright  if  this  title
had  been  applicable”  (emphasis  deleted))).  Hence,  Con­
gress,  the  dissent  believes,  must  have  meant  §109(a)’s
different  language  to  mean  something  different  (such  as
the  dissent’s  own  geographical  interpretation  of  §109(a)).
We are not aware, however, of any canon of interpretation
that forbids interpreting different  words used in different
parts of the same statute to mean roughly the same thing. 
Regardless,  were  there  such  a  canon,  the  dissent’s  inter­
pretation of §109(a) would also violate it.  That is because 
Congress  elsewhere  in  the  1976  Act  included  the  words 
“manufactured  in  the  United  States  or  Canada,”  90  Stat. 
2588,  which  express  just  about  the  same  geographical 
thought that the dissent reads into §109(a)’s very different 
language. 

D 

Associations  of  libraries,  used-book  dealers,  technology 
companies,  consumer-goods  retailers,  and  museums  point 
to  various  ways  in  which  a  geographical  interpretation 
would  fail  to  further  basic  constitutional  copyright  objec­
tives,  in  particular  “promot[ing]  the  Progress  of  Science 
and useful Arts.”  U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 8.

The  American  Library  Association  tells  us  that  library 
collections  contain  at  least  200  million  books  published 
abroad  (presumably,  many  were  first  published  in  one  of