From this website:
[url]
http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202449036387&Calling_for_Time_Why_the_Supremes_Will_Consider_emCostcoem_v_emOmegaem[/url]

Calling for Time: Why the Supremes Will Consider Costco v. Omega
Joe Mullin

Corporate Counsel

April 23, 2010

The website requires permission to reprint, so I will only quote a few key phrases, and ask that you review yourself.

"At first blush, Costco Wholesale Corp v. Omega, S.A., which the U.S. Supreme Court last week agreed to hear, doesn't involve the kind of cutting-edge issues that copyright lawyers usually grapple with in the digital age. So why is the Court willing to consider a dispute between a company that makes fancy watches and a company that imports and resells them? It sounds like the kind of lawsuit that should have been resolved 200 years ago."

"What's at stake in these disputes is the ability of resellers large (Costco) and small (Liu) to offer legitimate, non-pirated versions of copyrighted goods to U.S. consumers at prices that undercut those charged by the copyright holders—something that's possible thanks to the robust secondary markets provided by major Internet retailers such as eBay and Amazon."

"The issue before the Court is a narrow but important one: Can copyright owners assert rights over imported goods that have already been sold once?"

"Costco lawyers at Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck & Untereiner write in their brief that in 2003, Omega began to stamp its Seamaster watches with a small globe design, less than 5 millimeters across, "for the express purpose of invoking the Copyright Act to restrict the resale of its products." At the time, Costco was already selling Omega watches at prices well below the company's suggested retail prices after buying them from foreign importers who had purchased the watches. For instance, Omega sold batches of Seamaster watches to distributors in Egypt and Paraguay, and Costco bought 117 of those watches in 2004. The retail chain then began selling the Seamasters for $1,299—$700 less than Omega's suggested U.S. retail price."

"In the consumer groups' brief, attorneys argue that if the Ninth Circuit ruling is allowed to stand, countless resellers—from used bookstores to neighborhood yard sales—would be "barred from the simplest transaction" if the copies they're reselling were made outside the U.S. And, Von Lohmann says, if Omega's intepretation of the copyright-importation laws and the first sale laws hold—and copyright holders are allowed to control the price of imported goods they've already sold once—then copyright owners will have a huge incentive to move their manufacturing offshore, something that Congress most likely never intended."

I think this has the potential to be a very important case . . . . .