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by usea 4949 days ago
As part of the operation, federal law enforcement officers made undercover purchases of products such as sports jerseys, DVD players, clothing and jewelry from websites suspected of selling counterfeit products. If the copyright holders confirmed that the products were unauthorized, ICE obtained a court order to shut down the sites.

I am confused due to the way this is worded. Does this mean that sites selling second-hand, authentic goods (not counterfeit) could be taken down if the copyright-holder did not "authorize" the site to sell their goods?

3 comments

I think it more reflects the nature of the modern apparel market: Companies like Nike and Puma frequently don't make their own products anymore; they license or contract other companies to manufacture products bearing their logo.
Potentially there's a thing about "grey market" - eg a supermarket (Tesco) in the UK buying Levi Jeans from a different region and selling them cheap in the UK.

(http://www.out-law.com/page-2814)

I'm not sure what the state of the law is now.

But I think it's just bulk pirated goods. Many t-shirts with fake labels stitched on or look-alike handbags sold as real brands etc.

If they were selling them as "new", sure.
Can the MPAA stop someone from selling a sealed DVD as "New" then if they bought it from Best Buy first?
In the US, they probably can't. If the DVD is imported, they almost certainly can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale_....

Omega was able to successfully prevent Costco from selling genuine, certified authentic Omega watches intended for different foreign markets as "new Omega watches" in the US.

So yes, if you bought a sealed DVD from a Russian Best Buy equivalent (ignoring the region coding issues) and sold it in the US, you'd probably be in trouble.