RE: Consideration in a Shrinkwrap Contract

Peter Junger asked: "Are you claiming that you are entering into a copyright license when you buy a book?"

Call it a license or not, but a person who buys a book is bound not to distribute copies of the book, the same way a person who buys a copy of a piece of software is bound not to distribute copies to others. The First Sale Doctrine allows you to sell the book, or give it away, when you're done with it; but not to keep one copy for yourself and give another one away.

Robert C. Cumbow
 Graham & Dunn PC
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-----Original Message-----
From: Peter D. Junger [mailto:junger[_at_]samsara.law.cwru.edu] Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 9:49 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: Consideration in a Shrinkwrap Contract

John Noble writes:

: Moreover, the whole of Article 2 applies only to the sale of goods, not to
: copyright licensing. You can't invoke Article 2 to establish a sale of
: goods; you have to establish that it's a sale of goods in order to invoke
: Article 2.

Are not books goods? Are not CDroms? Are you claiming that you are entering into a copyright license when you buy a book? That would seem to imply that there are no cases to which the First Sale doctrine could apply, now wouldn't it.

(And, by the way, if almost everyone who buys a CDrom with software on it just thinks that they are getting a license, that would not be the first time when almost everyone was wrong about a question of law, now would it?)

--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
 EMAIL: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu    URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu   
        NOTE: junger[_at_]pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu no longer exists


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