In Kirtsaeng, John Wiley & Sons provided Thai publishers with licenses to produce copies of Wiley’s textbooks for sale in Thailand. Thereafter, Mr. Kirtsaeng asked contacts to purchase the textbooks cheaply in Thailand and send them to him in the U.S., where he was studying at Cornell and USC. Mr. Kirtsaeng then sold the textbooks at a markup, reimbursed his contacts for their purchases, and kept the profit. The sale of the textbooks was used primarily to subsidize the costs associated with his education. All told, he made roughly $100,000 in profit from the sales.
Naturally, Wiley sued Mr. Kirtsaeng for copyright infringement after discovering the nature (and volume) of his activities, and won a $600,000 statutory judgment from a district court. The judgment was later affirmed by the Second Circuit.