University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law 2016 Copyright and Good Faith Purchasers Shyamkrishna Balganesh University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Common Law Commons, Intellectual Property Law Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Law and Society Commons, Political Economy Commons, Property Law and Real Estate Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons, and the Public Policy Commons Repository Citation Balganesh, Shyamkrishna, "Copyright and Good Faith Purchasers" (2016). Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law. 1535. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1535 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law by an authorized administrator of Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. California Law Review Copyright © 2016 by California Law Review, Inc., a California Nonprofit Corporation Copyright and Good Faith Purchasers Shyamkrishna Balganesh* Good faith purchasers for value—individuals who unknowingly and in good faith purchase property from a seller whose own actions in obtaining the property are of questionable legality—have long obtained special protection under the common law. Despite the seller’s own actions being tainted, these purchasers obtain valid title and are free to transfer the property without restriction. Modern copyright law, however, does just the opposite. Individuals who unknowingly, and in good faith, purchase property embodying an unauthorized copy of a protected work are altogether precluded from subsequently alienating such property without running afoul of copyright’s distribution right.