I have been selling books and realized one of them is a copyrighted. What should I do?

Almost any written work is copyrighted. Rights exist as soon as the proverbial pen leaves the page; i.e., there’s no “copyright application” process or anything like that. (There is a copyright registration process, in which an author deposits a work with the Library of Congress. But this registration process is optional. Moreover, you don’t have to have a copyright notice, i.e., a legend like “(c) 2018, Charles The Patent Lawyer” somewhere in the book. That’s also optional.

 Copyright in Vietnam

In any case, don’t worry. Copyrights do prevent unauthorized reproduction and distribution. But copyrights do not prevent selling works you otherwise lawfully own.

There’s an idea called “exhaustion,” also called “the first sale doctrine.” Roughly speaking, it stands for the idea that a rights-holder exhausts some of the rights associated with a particular copy of their work when they sell the work. Among the exhausted rights are the right to sell that particular copy.

In other words, if I buy a copy of Harry Potter, I am not authorized to reproduce the entire book word-for-word on my blog. I’m not authorized to make copies and give or sell them to my friends. But I am allowed to lend or sell my particular book to others.