Seller Says He Owns My Album

Well this one is one for the books.

About five years ago I bought online a nice album for a popular collecting area, produced by a fellow in the UK (that is as specific as I plan to get). Fast forward- my interests have shifted and getting supplies for it have become a pain- it is still being produced however. Anyway I decide I will sell the album with a few stamps included on ebay for whatever I can get for it. In looking it over I then find something I hadn't noticed before- a page with terms of sale that includes the proviso that the album remains the property of the producer. In essence he says he is only selling the right to use the pages and that anyone seeking to sell them to another will need his written permission!

Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? I doubt he could enforce this sort of draconian rule on someone in the US, or could he?

How could this seller from five years ago enforce that "sort of draconian rule" five years from the sale of said album. First, that seller would have to know that you're selling the album, believe I'd forget to mention it to that seller! Just sayin.

This just might be a poorly written 'copy-write' restriction in that the purchaser could nor copy or duplicate pages and sell as a product for profit. I doubt that the original product provider is 'renting' pages to house stamps and the stamps are tenants and must be removed from the 'album house' before sale (& then returned to the 'owner'). (But then there is the litigation system of how one interprets legal language.)

If the terms were not disclosed to you at the time of negotiating the original transaction, then it is unlikely to be enforced against you.

The seller is attempting a lease or license transaction. They are legal, but generally not unless the terms can be ascertained before the transaction closes. And they are certainly unconventional for these types of goods. A court would see this as so unusual or surprising that it is unfair to enforce (it is "unconscionable").
Courts have made exceptions in the case of shrinkwrap software licenses, but there you acquire title to the disk media and a license to use the software; this does not fit that analogy.

If this happened to me I probably would have removed and shredded that page, then offered the album for sale. (How, other than this thread, could the seller prove that those terms were delivered with the sale? You didn't accept them at the time.)

Good point- I will make sure the page with those stipulations is removed when I sell it. Also due to weight I am only shipping to US buyers so unless it gets sold back into the UK I doubt there is any chance of legal complications for me.

I suspect this guy had some attorney write all this up for him with no thought of how this might play out later. I had thought of contacting him prior to listing but if I do so I'd think it would be a tacit admission that he has some control in this matter, which he does not.

He is still selling it, and I find nothing on his site to clue in prospective buyers that this limitation is being asked of what they do with it later.

If the terms were part of the copyright notice, it should be regarding the reproduction of the pages, not the selling of actual tangible pages. Just like selling a book on a secondary market.

Hmmmm.... I see a burgeoning market for ebay lease sales.

To be added to the bottom of the ebay listing in teeny tiny font:

"By completing this ebay transaction, BUYER agrees that they are only leasing the stamp(s) in question and that SELLER retains ownership rights to said stamp(s). BUYER may not sell, lease, donate, exchange, or otherwise transfer ownership or possession of said stamp(s) without written release from SELLER. If BUYER wishes to transfer ownership to any party other than SELLER, a termination fee of 300% of the original purchase price is due to SELLER, and written release of lien must be obtained prior to transferring possession of stamp(s) to a new owner."

well, let's look at this a different way:
If you buy the CD with the Steiner pages, you get the right to print and use the pages yourself. You don't get the right to print and sell the pages commercially. If this is similar to the situation you're in - you bought a file, then printed them, and now are selling them, you may have violated the original terms you agreed to when you acquired the file(s).

This may come down to whether the stamps or the album are the primary thing being sold. If you're including the blank pages with the ones that you put stamps on, the publisher may have reason to question your sale. If you are selling the stamps and they happen to be on some of the album pages and the stamps represent the bulk of the value and the pages you're sending are basically worthless without the missing ones, the publisher may have less of a cause to complain. In fact, the publisher may be happy for you to include those sample pages with a note that the buyer can fill out the missing pieces of the album by purchasing the files/CD.

(I'm not a lawyer and this should not be in any way taken as a legal opinion, just some logic applied to the situation).
C.

I am selling the pages, binders, and several hundred stamps mounted on them. I think I am OK here.

These are not downloaded pages. They were preprinted. I do not see how the publisher can complain too much here- anyuone buying this will get his contact information to use for getting supplements, etc.

I'm also not an attorney, but I believe that if you discuss this type of situation in writing in a public forum there's really no way you can plead ignorance if challenged.

That said I agree with those who expressed doubt that you'd be challenged--- unless the seller is a particularly litigious person. None of us is safe from them!

Books sold in the US are subject to the first sale doctrine, which essentially says that you can resell the book even though the book is subject to copyright. I'm not sure that the first sale doctrine applies in the UK. UK published books often contain restrictions on resale. I just grabbed my wife's copy of Bridget Jones' Diary off the shelf and Penguin Books has a restriction that "Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent re-sold hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent ...." I assume the seller of your book is trying to take advantage of the UK law, but in the US you normally have the right to resell. These copyright issues get real messy when dealing with software.

Not sure if this applies to the UK, but a general principle of business law is that ownership transfers upon a sale. One would have to think the publisher, per other comments above, was seeking copyright protection.

Why not raise the price of the stamps and clearly indicate that the pages are included for free!

Jack Kelley

Brilliant Jack ... though for me nothing beats the satisfaction of seeing a page of unreasonable terms and conditions swallowed by the shredder. Take that, seller!