Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (579 U.S. 197)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 16, 2016 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 579 U.S. 197 · 136 S. Ct. 1979
- Decided
- June 16, 2016
- Term
- October Term 2015
- Vote
- 8–0
- Majority author
- Justice Kagan
- Issue area
- Attorneys
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice KAGAN delivered the opinion of the Court. Section 505 of the Copyright Act provides that a district court "may ... award a reasonable attorney's fee to the prevailing party." 17 U.S.C. § 505. The question presented here is whether a court, in exercising that authority, should give substantial weight to the objective reasonableness of the losing party's position. The answer, as both decisions below held, is yes-the court should. But the court must also give due consideration to all other circumstances relevant to granting fees; and it retains discretion, in light of those factors, to make an award even when the losing party advanced a reasonable claim or defense. Because we are not certain that the lower courts here understood the full scope of that discretion, we return the case for further consideration of the prevailing party's fee application. I Petitioner Supap Kirtsaeng, a citizen of Thailand, came to the United States 20 years ago to study math at Cornell University. He quickly figured out that respondent John Wiley & Sons, an academic publishing company, sold virtually identical English-language textbooks in the two countries-but for far less in Thailand than in the United States. Seeing a ripe opportunity for arbitrage, Kirtsaeng asked family and friends to buy the foreign editions in Thai bookstores and ship them to him in New York. He then resold the…
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