Companies in non-content industries are catching a disease from our content industries: control-itis. We know that content industries like music, movies, publishing, and software have started to believe consumers need to ask permission to do anything at all with their content. Whereas once you could lend a book to a friend or sell it to a used bookstore, now the publishers want to charge you for these activities, and the nature of electronic technology which makes a copy even to show something on the screen means copyright law comes into play. What were once free uses have now become fair uses, as Lessig talks about in the Read-Write Culture video we included on the iPods we sent to Senators.

While viewing a piece of writing on a computer might constitute copying, consumers still have the right to resell lawfully acquired works - the First Sale doctrine, which survives despite publishers' deepest wishes. But according to Consumer Law and Policy Blog, some companies are using copyright claims to try to interfere with eBay auctions of their goods (via Consumerist).

Most of the article talks about the recent Supreme Court Leegin decision about price-fixing, but the most astonishing argument is Innovate Motorsports' claim that any sale of their goods violates copyright, trademark, and patent rights. (The kitchen sink too? I'm sure they would have tried to throw trade secret law in there if they could have made up some kind of justification.) Their eBay page has such beauties as "Innovate is the owner of certain copyrights to ... product literature, catalogues, product specifications, installation guides, user guides ... These items may not be used by anyone without express written permission from Innovate." In other words, it's not just that making a copy of some of their copyrighted material is a regulated use; even simply using it, like reading or selling it, is under their control according to their argument. Likewise, they claim that "the sale of our products by anyone other than authorized dealers, in strict compliance with the terms of their license, constitutes patent infringement." Unless they have a patent on selling their products on eBay (which they don't, and which would be a stupid patent), then no, it's not a violation of their patent to sell a product made with a patented process.

These claims seem clearly ridiculous. But in today's IP climate, it's a serious problem. eBay has taken down auctions for Innovate items under their VeRO program just like the auctions we wrote about previously. And with Congress's willingness to grant more control to companies to monopolize their markets, we can't count on our right to sell lawfully acquired physical goods forever without vigilantly defending this right. Most of all, the more companies keep repeating clearly false notions that they are entitled to control every aspect of secondary markets in their goods, people may start to believe them.