The Second Circuit held that the first-sale doctrine codified in 17 U.S.C. § 109(a), which applies only to copies “lawfully made under this title,” is inapplicable to copies made under the laws of foreign countries. Petitioners claim that there is a circuit split on this issue, but they have not identified any court of appeals that has ever applied the first-sale doctrine to foreign-made copies where, as here, the copyright holder has not authorized their sale in the United States. And while Petitioners insist that the Ninth Circuit would apply the first-sale doctrine to foreign copies given such authorization, purportedly unlike the Second Circuit below, the Ninth Circuit has specifically reserved the question whether that approach is still good law in the circuit; in any event, the decision below does not implicate this supposed disagreement because it is undisputed that Respondents did not authorize the domestic sale of any for-eign manufactured textbooks.
The Second Circuit’s approach is consistent, moreover, with the text of the statute, this Court’s decision in Quality King Distributors, Inc. v. L’anza Research International, U.S. 135 (1998), and the purposes of the Copyright Act. The statutory phrase “lawfully made under this title” is best read as referring only to copies made where the Copyright Act is applicable