Tabberone is pronounced tab ber won
not tay ber own
In 1908, in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339 (1908), the first-sale doctrine was established. In this opinion the Court
stated that ONLY those rights specifically granted under copyrigh law apply and the copyrigh owner cannot dictate or assume rights not granted.
[page 350-351]
"In our view the copyright statutes, while protecting the owner of the copyright in his right to multiply and sell his production,
do not create the right to impose, by notice, such as is disclosed in this case, a limitation at which the book shall be sold at retail by
future purchasers, with whom there is no privity of contract. This conclusion is reached in view of the language of the statute,
read in the light of its main purpose [210 U.S. 339, 351] to secure the right of multiplying copies of the work,-a right which is the special
creation of the statute. True, the statute also secures, to make this right of multiplication effectual, the sole right to vend copies of the book,
the production of the author's thought and conception. The owner of the copyright in this case did sell copies of the book in quantities and
at a price satisfactory to it. It has exercised the right to vend. What the complainant contends for embraces not only the right to sell the
copies, but to qualify the title of a future purchaser by the reservation of the right to have the remedies of the statute against an infringer
because of the printed notice of its purpose so to do unless the purchaser sells at a price fixed in the notice. To add to the right of
exclusive sale the authority to control all future retail sales, by a notice that such sales must be made at a fixed sum, would give a
right not included in the terms of the statute, and, in our view, extend its operation, by construction, beyond its meaning, when interpreted
with a view to ascertaining the legislative intent in its enactment. "