On The Expanding Application Of Exhaustion Of Rights In Parallel Importation Of Copyrighted Works In America

With the development of economic globalization, the copyright products go across national boundaries, flowing in the international market. The copyright principle of automatic protection and the international protection of copyright makes the phenomenon of parallel import more likely to happen. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. shows that the principle of exhaustion of rights has no geographical restrictions, which means the America adopts the international exhaustion of rights in copyright. Under this principle, copyright parallel import is legal. However, the application scope of copyright exhaustion experiences a long history in America. As the focus changes from the “place of first sale” to the “place of manufacture”, it’s about thirty years of the U.S. to adopt the copyright international exhaustion, which shows the prudent attitude of America to exhaustion of rights. Therefore, the discussion of the principle of exhaustion is far more over. Analyzed from two aspects of theory and judicial practice that we can know the principle of exhaustion of rights does not apply to all types of parallel import. Through analyzing the principle of copyright exhaustion in America and discussing the basic theory of the principle of exhaustion, this article trying to find out the best way of copyright exhaustion in our country.The first chapter of this article analyses the latest American precedent of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc..Discussing the development of the application scope of copyright exhaustion from the angle of the history of common law, thus draws the conclusion that the application scope of copyright exhaustion expands.Chapter two analyses the reasons of the choice of international exhaustion made by the U.S., which include three aspects, the policy, needs of protecting the interests of domestic rightholders, and needs of free trade. In fact, the root cause of this change is to protect the domestic social and economic interests as a whole.The third chapter further discusses the scope of application of the copyright exhaustion from another perspective. Classifying the forms of parallel import, analyzing the effects of international exhaustion respectively put in two different types of parallel imports. It is concluded that when the rightholder of the import nation is an exclusive licensee, the principle of the international exhaustion of rights cannot be used to limit the relative rights of the exclusive licensee. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between two different types of parallel import in applicating copyright international exhaustion.Chapter four analyses the present situation of China’s legislation and judicature and the feasibility of China to regulate parallel import with the principle of exhaustion of rights in order to better regulate the parallel import problems in copyright, make the laws on this issue more certainty and predictability.