In this timely book, copyright scholar Péter Mezei offers a comprehensive examination of copyright exhaustion, including its historical development, theoretical framework, practical application, and policy considerations. He compares the substantive norms and case law for the first-sale doctrine in the United States and in the European Union, covering both analogue and digital applications in detail, and in doing so questions the common rejection of exhaustion in the resale of digital subject matter such as computer programs, sound recordings, audiovisual works, and e-books. Instead, he proposes a digital first-sale doctrine that would offer legal consistency to copyright law and a technologically feasible framework for content producers and consumers. This book should be read by anyone interested in how copyright law continues to evolve in conjunction with the digital world.

‘In this era of digital streaming, cloud computing and global content distribution, the exhaustion doctrine in copyright law deserves serious scholarly and policy attention. This timely and important book provides an in-depth comparative analysis of the doctrine's justifications, evolution and future development on both sides of the Atlantic and at the international level. Highly recommended!'

Peter K. Yu - Director, Center for Law and Intellectual Property, Texas A & M University School of Law

‘Users have grown comfortable with the freedom to resell books, sound recordings, and the like. In a world in which these media are distributed in digital form, users may not have that same luxury. Professor Mezei's book does an excellent job discussing the legal and policy issues underlying exhaustion, and how those same considerations ought to apply to digital works.'

John T. Cross - Grosscurth Professor of Law, University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law

‘Professor Mezei's new book is the much-needed update of the copyright exhaustion doctrine to the digital age of today. It discusses the international and EU law dimensions of copyright exhaustion in detail and compares the European legal developments to US law. A highly recommended book for practitioners, students and academic alike.'

Tuomas Mylly - University of Turku

‘Professor Mezei's book provides a detailed, nuanced, yet accessible treatment of the copyright exhaustion doctrine - a critical but underdeveloped area of intellectual property law that courts around the world are struggling to get right, especially as it applies to copyright-protected digital works.'

William T. Gallagher - Director of the Intellectual Property Law Center, Golden Gate University School of Law, and Founding Editor, The IP Law Book Review

'Due to its comprehensiveness and the precision of its reasoning this book is certain to gain the attention of experts and students of the exhaustion doctrine. For the former it is a rich resource for further research and a sharp analysis of the current state of law and policy; for the latter it is an excellently written … review of the 'state of the art' supplemented with a well-reasoned argument for the viability and continued necessity of a robust exhaustion doctrine in a digital environment.'

Bernd Justin Jütte Source: Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice