Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf
Page Number: 66.0

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

25 

GINSBURG, J., dissenting 

Merrill  decision.  At  that  time,  no  statutory  provision
expressly  codified  the  first  sale  doctrine.    Instead,  copy­
right law merely provided that copyright owners had “the 
sole liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing, completing, 
copying,  executing,  finishing,  and  vending”  their  works.
Copyright Act of 1891, §1, 26 Stat. 1107. 

In  Bobbs-Merrill,  the  Court  addressed  the  scope  of  the
statutory  right  to  “ven[d].”    In  granting  that  right,  the
Court  held,  Congress  did  not  intend  to  permit  copyright
owners  “to  fasten  . . .  a  restriction  upon  the  subsequent
alienation  of  the  subject-matter  of  copyright  after  the
owner  had  parted  with  the  title  to  one  who  had  acquired 
full dominion over it and had given a satisfactory price for
it.”  210  U. S.,  at  349–350.    “[O]ne  who  has  sold  a  copy­
righted  article  . . .  without  restriction,”  the  Court  ex­
plained, “has parted with all right to control the sale of it.” 
Id., at 350.  Thus, “[t]he purchaser of a book, once sold by
authority of the owner of the copyright, may sell it again,
although he could not publish a new edition of it.”  Ibid. 

Under  the  logic  of  Bobbs-Merrill,  the  sale  of  a  foreign­
manufactured  copy  in  the  United  States  carried  out  with
the  copyright  owner’s  authorization  would  exhaust  the 
copyright  owner’s  right  to  “vend”  that  copy.    The  copy
could  thenceforth  be  resold,  lent  out,  or  otherwise  redis­
tributed without further authorization from the copyright 
owner.  Although §106(3) uses the word “distribute” rather 
than “vend,” there is no reason to think Congress intended 
the word “distribute” to bear a meaning different from the 
construction  the  Court  gave  to  the  word  “vend”  in  Bobbs-
Merrill.  See  ibid.  (emphasizing  that  the  question  before 
the  Court  was  “purely  [one]  of  statutory  construction”).19 
—————— 

19 It appears that the Copyright Act of 1976 omitted the word “vend”
and  introduced  the  word  “distribute”  to  avoid  the  “redundan[cy]” 
present in pre-1976 law.  Copyright Law Revision: Report of the Regis­
ter  of  Copyrights  on  the  General  Revision  of  the  U. S.  Copyright  Law,
87th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  21  (H. R.  Judiciary  Comm.  Print  1961)  (noting