This is diffuicult for me to word correctly, so I''ll plow out a short example. I''m a retailer in the UK, I buy some copies of software product X from the US. I sell these copies of the product. Company Y that produces product X tells me this is illegal, and tries to sue my ass off. Why is it illegal to do this? Notes: When I say copies, I mean actual proper versions. This did not happen to me. -Mezz "The United States Patent Office: selling monopoly rights to common sense for over 25 years"

If I''m reading what you wrote corrctly...

What you''re engaging in is known as the grey market. It happens when distribution rights are sold to different companies for different areas. Company A has the rights to sell the game in the US, and Company B has the rights to sell it in Europe (for example). When someone in the UK tries to buy copies of the game from Company A who only has the rights to sell to US merchants, Company B gets (understandably) upset because they paid good money for the exclusive right to sell the product to European merchants.

While the spirit of the contracts are being broken in cases like these, it''s a bit fuzzy as to whether any actual laws are being broken. (Hence the term grey market - it''s not black and white.) Somewhere along the chain, it seems to me, someone can always claim ignorance regarding what he/she knew about who had what rights or the location of other parties.

(I did a paper in university regarding the trade in grey market US-based satellite dishes in Canada, if anyone cares how I know this.)

Hope this helps.

I''m the one who wrote the above response, just forgot to sign my name.

-Decoy

Some brief thoughts, which may or may not be true:

If you bought the products at US retail, then I don''t see possibly how it could be illegal to resell them, unless they are sold as part of a package clearly labelled as ''not for resale'', etc. Otherwise, whatever physical product you buy as a consumer, I am sure you are able to resell however you like.

Note also, that there might be applicable taxes in bringing the products into the UK, which often would negate the worth of buying at retail just to sell on at retail. However, a few products might still be profitable this way: computer peripherals, for example, are anything up to 40% cheaper at retail in the US.

If however, you bought the products at US wholesale prices, then perhaps whoever sold them to you is actually the one who broke a distribution agreement, and therefore it''s their problem. They in turn could possibly argue that you misled them as to where you would resell the products you bought, which might be one case where you did do something that broke a contract. eg. They sold to you on the assumption that they would be resold in the US, and you then took them to the UK, breaking the agreement you had with the wholesaler.

Personally, I think that the only law that covers this sort of thing is contract law: it seems like companies like to be able to negotiate their own distribution terms on a per-territory basis, getting away with higher profits where they can, knowing that without significant importing/exporting to create competition, they''ll get away with it. (eg. The price of CDs is way higher in Europe and the UK than in the US, but even so, record companies are currently being taken to court over having CD prices too high over there. Prices -are- too high, but due to the difficulty of getting US versions of CDs in the UK, there is no incentive for retailers to lower UK prices.)