Stealing intellectual property is an American pastime. Music, software, ebooks, you name it—free is the right price. And mounds of shaming and litigation has done little to discourage the copyright abolitionists. And then there is Joshua Christenson. He operated a website that offered discounted versions of Adobe software. These were not illegal copies, but actual Adobe products purchased from third parties. Of course, Adobe was not happy about this. How could Christenson sell these products when the original license prohibited downstream sales? So, Adobe filed suit. The only problem was that Adobe forgot to bring the actual licenses to the dance! Instead, it submitted license templates and testimony as to how Adobe routinely licenses software. Christenson argued that he had every right to sell the software under the “first sale doctrine.” This statute allows someone who owns a particular copy to…
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