Journal of Intellectual Property Law
Abstract
For well over a century consumers have long enjoyed the ability to resell, gift, lend, or otherwise transfer their legally purchased copyrighted media. First established in common law and later codified into the Copyright Act of 1976 the first sale doctrine granted the right of transfer to consumers. In 2013, a district court held that the first sale doctrine does not let consumers transfer digital media through file sharing. Instead, a consumer must sell the object the media was downloaded onto. This decision effectively gutted the first sale doctrine’s application to digital media. Further reducing the reach of the first sale doctrine are limited license agreements that consumers sign for nearly all media they purchase. Companies purport to license media to consumers instead of selling it. Because the first sale doctrine does not cover licenses, these license agreements serve as another way to limit consumer rights. This Note analyzes where the district court went wrong and how to address the limited license problem. Lastly, it poses what a digital media market would look like if the first sale did cover digital media.
Recommended Citation
Ethan Thomas,
The First Sale Doctrine for the Digital Age,
32
J. Intell. Prop. L.
100
(2025).
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/jipl/vol32/iss2/6