In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Second Circuit and held that Kirtsaeng's sale of lawfully-made copies purchased overseas was protected by the first-sale doctrine.

The Court held that the first sale doctrine applies to goods manufactured outside of the United States, and the protections and exceptions offered by the Copyright Act to works "lawfully made under this title" is not limited by geography.

Since the Congress did not explicitly abrogate this common law doctrine in the Copyright Act of 1976, the majority concluded that the old rule remains in place.

[11] The majority opinion also notes the significant negative impacts, pointed out by several amici, that would occur if the Court were to reject international exhaustion principles: Associations of libraries, used-book dealers, technology companies, consumer-goods retailers, and museums point to various ways in which a geographical interpretation would fail to further basic constitutional copyright objectives, in particular "promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful Arts."

In a 2015 order in Lexmark v. Impression Products, the Federal Circuit sua sponte (unprompted) called for briefing and amicus curiae participation in an en banc consideration of whether:

[12]Similarly, an effort by academic publisher Pearson to control after-market textbook sales on the basis of trademark was dismissed, citing Kirtsaeng.

Whereas Omega had initially prevailed in the Ninth Circuit, the same way that John Wiley had, the decision was reversed after the United States Supreme Court decided Kirtsaeng.