Intellectual Property Law

Textbook Kickbacks and the First Sale Doctrine

By Tim Armstrong, Derek Bambauer, and William McGeveran.

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports another infuriating example of universities betraying their key role in the dissemination of knowledge and becoming just another greedy content provider. (The converse of this, I guess…)

Apparently some universities now cut deals with publishers to sponsor “custom” versions of textbooks and then require their students to purchase those special editions. I certainly don’t see anything wrong with teachers assembling custom coursepacks of materials for their classes (sometimes it can even save students’ money if it replaces a costly textbook). But this is something else entirely — the books may not be significantly different from the standard edition and the school gets a kickback (er, I mean “royalty”) from the publisher for each book sold. The Journal opens the article with an especially offensive example (because the Journal has not yet fulfilled earlier hopes that it would make articles permanently available online, I will quote this key passage for you — it’s fair use after all!):

Full post as published by Info/Law on July 10, 2008 (boomark / email).