Quality_King_v._L'anza

<i>Quality King Distributors Inc., v. L'anza Research International Inc.</i>

Quality King Distributors Inc., v. L'anza Research International Inc.

1998 United States Supreme Court case


Quality King Distributors Inc. v. L'anza Research International Inc., 523 U.S. 135 (1998), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court over whether a copyright holder could restrict redistribution of material containing copyrighted content (authorized by the copyright holder) which is imported into the United States as so-called "grey market" goods.

Quick Facts Quality King Distributors, Inc. v. L'anza Research International, Inc., Argued December 8, 1997 Decided March 9, 1998 ...

Opinion of the Court

The Supreme Court found that the copyright holder could not prevent re-importation of the products it had authorized for export from the United States.

This case did not address the importation of products made outside the United States under authority of the copyright holder. The Court addressed that issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 568 U.S. 519 (2013), holding that those sales were also qualifying "first sales", and that copyright holders could not restrict trafficking of those works after those sales.

See also



Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Quality_King_v._L'anza, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.