Wójcik Anna, The evolution of the copyright exhaustion doctrine in the European Union: limitations and controversy in the digital age

The copyright exhaustion has traditionally been perceived as a legal mechanism protecting the equilibrium between the interests of the copyright holder and the society. It was meant to assure that the public benefited from access to works at more affordable prices and the copyright holder was prevented from accumulating gains resulting from further resales of the same copy. However, this more than a century old doctrine, developed in the case law and then transposed into a statutory form, faces an unknown future with the dawn of the new technology era and the widespread digitisation. Due to the fact that works in the digital format practically do not age and are easy to multiply at quasi not cost, the fears of piracy have withheld the EU legislator and the Courts to uniformly apply the exhaustion rule to all kinds of works, which has in turn caused the sense of legal uncertainty and the supersession of the ownership with the licensing model. This article attempts, by analyzing the historical background of the exhaustion doctrine, to answer the question whether accommodating its functioning to the nowadays' reality is the step forward that ought to be taken or whether the exhaustion of copyright has truly become an obsolete concept.