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Page Number: 22

18 

KIRTSAENG v. JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

portance  of  leaving  buyers  of  goods  free  to  compete  with 
each  other  when  reselling  or  otherwise  disposing  of  those 
goods.  American law too has generally thought that com­
petition,  including  freedom  to  resell,  can  work  to  the  ad­
vantage of the consumer.  See, e.g., Leegin Creative Leather 
Products,  Inc.  v.  PSKS,  Inc.,  551  U. S.  877,  886  (2007) 
(restraints  with  “manifestly  anticompetitive  effects”  are 
per se  illegal;  others  are  subject  to  the  rule  of  reason 
(internal  quotation  marks  omitted));  1  P.  Areeda  &  H.
Hovenkamp,  Antitrust  Law  ¶100,  p. 4  (3d  ed.  2006) 
(“[T]he principal objective of antitrust policy is to maximize 
consumer  welfare  by  encouraging 
firms  to  behave 
competitively”).

The  “first  sale”  doctrine  also  frees  courts  from  the  ad­
ministrative  burden  of  trying  to  enforce  restrictions  upon 
difficult-to-trace, readily movable goods.  And it avoids the 
selective enforcement inherent in any such effort.  Thus, it 
is not surprising that for at least a century the “first sale”
doctrine  has  played  an  important  role  in  American  copy­
right law.  See Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U. S. 339 
(1908); Copyright Act of 1909, §41, 35 Stat. 1084.  See also 
Copyright  Law  Revision,  Further  Discussions  and  Com­
ments  on  Preliminary  Draft  for  Revised  U. S.  Copyright 
Law,  88th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pt.  4,  p.  212  (Comm.  Print 
1964) (Irwin Karp of Authors’ League of America express­
ing  concern  for  “the  very  basic  concept  of  copyright  law 
that,  once  you’ve  sold  a  copy  legally,  you  can’t  restrict  its
resale”).

The  common-law  doctrine  makes  no  geographical  dis­
tinctions;  nor  can  we  find  any  in  Bobbs-Merrill  (where
this  Court  first  applied  the  “first  sale”  doctrine)  or  in
§109(a)’s predecessor provision, which Congress enacted a year
later.  See  supra,  at  12.  Rather,  as  the  Solicitor  General 
acknowledges,  “a  straightforward  application  of  Bobbs-
Merrill”  would  not  preclude  the  “first  sale”  defense  from 
applying  to  authorized  copies  made  overseas.    Brief  for