Angry Rabett

Angry Bear is quite wroth with the work rate of the current US Supreme Court, Eli's POV is more the more they work the more problems they create, however, there is one case on the docket that rings the Rabett's chimes. 

As old time readers of Rabett Run know, every Fall Eli goes on a five alarm rant about the practices of textbook publishers and the co-respondent faculty.  This year the US Supremes confront a case that could significantly lower the cost of textbooks.

A few years ago, an enterprising math grad student at Berkeley, Supap Kirtsaeng, noticed the large difference in price between the inexpensive (ok, not so pretty) textbooks at home in Thailand and those in Berkelistan.  Supap wrote home and told his folks to buy every textbook in sight and ship them to him in the US, which, upon arrival he resold.

John Wiley threw a fit and sued after Dr. (now) Kirtsaeng had earned about a million bucks.  The issue is picky picky and goes by the name of the first sale doctrine, e.g. that the publisher can only control the price of the original sale, the point of contention is whether this only applies to books printed in the US or all books on which there is a US copyright.  Lower courts have sided with Wiley but the decisions were narrow and everyjudge moaned that the Congress could have been clearer on that point.  There is some related law in a suit where Omega sued Costco and won for selling grey market watches at cut rate prices.

One can only hope.