Cite as: 523 U. S. 135 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
The Bobbs-Merrill opinion emphasized the critical distinction between statutory rights and contract rights.10 In this
case, L'anza relies on the terms of its contracts with its domestic distributors to limit their sales to authorized retail outlets. Because the basic holding in Bobbs-Merrill is now codified in § 109(a) of the Act, and because those domestic distributors are owners of the products that they purchased from L'anza (the labels of which were "lawfully made under this title"), L'anza does not, and could not, claim that the statute would enable L'anza to treat unauthorized resales by its domestic distributors as an infringement of its exclusive right to distribute copies of its labels. L'anza does claim, however, that contractual provisions are inadequate to protect it from the actions of foreign distributors who may resell L'anza's products to American vendors unable to buy from L'anza's domestic distributors, and that § 602(a) of the Act, properly construed, prohibits such unauthorized competition. To evaluate that submission, we must, of course, consider the text of § 602(a).
III
The most relevant portion of § 602(a) provides:
"Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the excluof any copy of a copyrighted work the possession of which has been lawfully obtained." Copyright Act of 1909, ch. 320, § 41, 35 Stat. 1084; see also Copyright Act of 1947, ch. 391, § 27, 61 Stat. 660. It is noteworthy that § 109(a) of the 1978 Act does not apply to "any copy"; it applies only to a copy that was "lawfully made under this title."
10 "We do not think the statute can be given such a construction, and it is to be remembered that this is purely a question of statutory construction. There is no claim in this case of contract limitation, nor license agreement controlling the subsequent sales of the book." Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U. S. 339, 350 (1908).
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