first-sale doctrine

American  

noun

1. a legal principle allowing the purchaser of a lawfully made copy of a copyright-protected work to sell or give away that copy without permission but not to reproduce it.

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Etymology

Origin of first-sale doctrine

First recorded in 1920–25

Example Sentences

Thanks to legal concepts like the first-sale doctrine, physical book buyers typically own the media they’ve purchased outright, and they’re allowed to sell it without the original publishers making money.

From The Verge

The lending of physical books takes place under the legal principle of first-sale doctrine, which limits the rights of content creators to control how their works are resold, said Mehtab Khan, a resident fellow at the Yale Law School’s Information Society Project.

From Washington Post

Quite a lot about copyright law, the First Amendment and first-sale doctrine, but at the end of the day it reinforced what we already knew: Get off other people’s platforms.

From New York Times

The problem for ReDigi is in applying what’s called the first-sale doctrine.

From Slate

Redbox argued that it was protected by the "first-sale doctrine," a part of copyright law that says someone who buys a copyrighted work is allowed to resell it or give it away, as long as they don't make their own copies to sell.

From Los Angeles Times