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28 

KIRTSAENG v. JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

which  the  point  now  at  issue  was  not  fully  debated”); 
Humphrey’s  Executor  v.  United  States,  295  U. S.  602, 
627–628  (1935)  (rejecting,  under  stare  decisis,  dicta,  “which 
may  be  followed  if  sufficiently  persuasive  but  which  are 
not controlling”).  And, given the bit part that our Quality 
King  statement  played  in  our  Quality  King  decision,  we 
believe the view of stare decisis set forth in these opinions
applies to the matter now before us. 

Second, Wiley and the dissent argue (to those who con­
sider  legislative  history)  that  the  Act’s  legislative  history 
supports their interpretation.  But the historical events to 
which  it  points  took  place  more  than  a  decade  before  the
enactment of the Act and, at best, are inconclusive. 

During  the  1960’s,  representatives  of  book,  record,  and 
film industries, meeting with the Register of Copyrights to
discuss copyright revision, complained about the difficulty
of  dividing  international  markets.    Copyright  Law  Revi­
sion  Discussion  and  Comments  on  Report  of  the  Register
of  Copyrights  on  the  General  Revision  of  the  U. S.  Copy­
right  Law,  88th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  pt.  2,  p.  212  (Comm.
Print 1963) (English editions of “particular” books “fin[d]” 
their  “way  into  this  country”);  id.,  at  213  (works  “pub­
li[shed] in a country where there is no copyright protection
of any sort” are put into “the free stream of commerce” and
“shipped  to  the  United  States”);  ibid.  (similar  concern  in 
respect to films).

The then-Register of Copyrights,  Abraham  Kaminstein,
found  these  examples  “very  troubl[ing].”  Ibid.    And  the  
Copyright  Office  released  a  draft  provision  that  it  said
“deals  with  the  matter  of  the  importation  for  distribution 
in  the  United  States  of  foreign  copies  that  were  made
under  proper  authority  but  that,  if  sold  in  the  United 
States, would be sold in contravention of the rights of the
copyright  owner  who  holds  the  exclusive  right  to  sell
copies in the United States.”  Id., pt. 4, at 203.  That draft 
version,  without  reference  to  §106,  simply  forbids  unau­