> not in keeping with the First Sale Doctrine.
I’m confused - what does this have to do with first sale?
I’m confused - what does this have to do with first sale?
> The first-sale doctrine is a legal concept that plays an important role in United States patent, copyright and trademark law by limiting the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property.
That means I should be able to sell my glasses to someone without the original creator causing problems with it. It's more complicated than that, but that's the gist.
If I bought these glasses and they shut down the service and refund me, fine, whatever. But what if I bought the glasses, decided 4 months later I didn't like them, sold them on Craigslist for $600, and moved on with my life? After the shut down I get $800 back, and the poor sap who bought them from me gets a pair of worthless glasses and a dead craigslist email. Luckily this company will most likely get away with it because of the "it's more complicated than that" part.
You can still sell the glasses, first sale allows that. It doesn’t say they must maintain their value.
There may be a false advertising case or fraud case here I’m not sure - but this has nothing to do with first sale.
Moreover, there is a difference between disabling the functionality of the device and disabling the remote (i.e., cloud) software the device may depend on to function. The first might be legally actionable, but the second is not.
You absolutely do. Companies who sold you something do not have the right to steal it back in exchange for a refund. Its your device, the transaction has been made, they are out of luck. They can offer you 10000x the price you originally bought it for and you are still free to decline.
Of course, this (and basically all law surrounding ownership) applies to things and not services, and charitably I assume that these devices are stopping working because an online service is stopping working, and not because Google randomly decided to hack into your device and break it in plain violation of the law, but let's not pretend that "giving a refund" is a generally acceptable solution.
And of course... if you have a contract with North (now Google) guaranteeing that they will provide the service indefinitely, and that contract doesn't include a term allowing Google to stop providing the service, you could still sue for injunctive relief requiring them to continue running the service. I assume you don't just because most companies aren't stupid enough to give out such contracts.
You absolutely do not. Legal damages are measured in monetary terms, and your putative damages are the amount you paid for the good. If the company refunds that in full, you have no legal cause of action; moreover, you are likely to end up owing the company for the legal fees they incur in defending themselves.
They can offer you 10000x the price you originally bought it for and you are still free to decline.
You can certainly do so. And the court will almost immediately toss out any case you may file against the company.
And of course... if you have a contract with North (now Google) guaranteeing that they will provide the service indefinitely, and that contract doesn't include a term allowing Google to stop providing the service, you could still sue for injunctive relief requiring them to continue running the service.
I don't know where you learned law, but this is absolutely false. The primary remedy provided by the court system is monetary not equitable. Courts will rarely if ever grant an injunction requiring a company to keep operating a service. They don't even do that in discrimination cases. Courts generally award monetary damages to users that suffered economic harm as a result of the service being discontinued.
Moreover, under centuries of US and British law, any contract that has an "indefinite" length is merely deemed to have a "reasonable" length. Courts have invalidated contracts that attempted to bind one or both parties for infinite terms.
Monetary damages are not measured in purchase cost, but replacement cost.
There are also punitive damages.
There is also jail time (if/when a prosecutor decides to charge the individuals involved).
> You can certainly do so. And the court will almost immediately toss out any case you may file against the company.
I think you're missing the important part where you are still the legal owner of the property. The judge will order them to return the property and the local prosecutor will charge them with possession of stolen goods.
> The primary remedy provided by the court system is monetary not equitable
Specific performance is a common form of remedy when damages would be hard to calculate (such as in this situation).
Moreover the monetary damages are not calculated based on the initial cost of the services (which may have been sold at a discount), but the damages at the current time (which may be substantially higher, or lower).
> Moreover, under centuries of US and British law, any contract that has an "indefinite" length is merely deemed to have a "reasonable" length. Courts have invalidated contracts that attempted to bind one or both parties for infinite terms.
You're not wrong, but "months or a few years" would not be past the "reasonable" limit in this case.
Jail time wouldn't apply in this case, and I don't know why you think it would unless you can cite a violation of criminal law.
The judge will order them to return the property and the local prosecutor will charge them with possession of stolen goods.
??? You still possess the glasses. Nothing was stolen from you. The company is merely turning off their servers on their property.
Specific performance is a common form of remedy when damages would be hard to calculate (such as in this situation).
Specific performance is a rare remedy, and would never be imposed when monetary damages are easy to calculate, as they are in this situation: you paid X for glasses, so X are your damages.
Moreover the monetary damages are not calculated based on the initial cost of the services (which may have been sold at a discount), but the damages at the current time (which may be substantially higher, or lower).
??? Monetary damages are based on reasonable damages for relying on a service, and moreover require damaged party to attempt to minimize damages by finding alternative services. I'm not aware of any unique service provided by the North glasses that could not be replicated through other devices and services.
Which hypothetical are we talking about, in every hypothetical involving replacement cost the device was either
- Stolen, this would fall under your local theft statute.
- Destroyed via an over the air update, this would fall under your local destruction of property statute, and would arguably fall under the CFAA federally in the US (I assume there is a similar Canadian law).
Notably neither of these hypotheticals are the other hypothetical (and as I said previously likely what actually happened) of them turning off online services.
> Specific performance is a rare remedy, and would never be imposed when monetary damages are easy to calculate, as they are in this situation: you paid X for glasses, so X are your damages.
This is not the case. Specific performance is a common remedy for unique devices/services that cannot be repurchased. Moreover "you paid X so your damages are X" is simply incorrect. It is "you cannot repurchase the services at this time so your damages are entirely unclear". If the company sold the services at less than the cost of the services (which is the logical implication of them deciding it is cheaper to attempt to refund you instead of continuing to run the servers), that is their problem not yours (under the assumption that you have a contract requiring them to continue to provide it).
Legally (in every jurisdiction I’m aware of) yes.
If they misled the buyers with false advertising or committed fraud along the way that would be an issue but again... not a first sale issue.
A few years later you get fancy 10Gbps fibre Internet from a startup called say "Glass Everywhere" that thinks everybody should be doing live VR sessions. GE provides a new WiFi router, though it's unclear whether you actually own it or it's somehow rented with the service.
You sell the first WiFi router on Craigslist for $30.
The person who buys it does not get 40Mbps vDSL Internet service from your old ISP. Even though the router still has your old credentials for that ISP, you terminated the account weeks ago and it doesn't work.
Courts understand that the WiFi router, and the service it enabled access to, are not the same thing, and that you cannot possibly sell unlimited access to the Internet in the form of a WiFi router, you were just selling this object, and if the purchaser didn't understand what it's for Caveat Emptor because this is a private sale.
The glasses work fine. The "poor sap" got working glasses. The service went away. If you implied the service comes with the glasses, they might very well have a claim on you for it going away, and I'd recommend giving their $600 back, otherwise they got what they paid for, Caveat Emptor.
First Sale has been eroded to the point it's barely worth talking about, but it was never intended to apply to situations like this.
The first sale doctrine just means that you can re-sell a physical product embodying some IP without needing to get a license from the IP-owner to make the sale.
Technically, for refund/warranty/other ownership purposes, the second-hand buyer now stands in your shoes, and should be entitled to the refund. You could theoretically claim it yourself, but in many states would be committing fraud in doing so.