This is not a rejection of the first sale doctrine. This is about Birkenstock being free to choose their distributors. End users are of course free to sell their own shoes, and Birkenstock is free to choose for which retailers it will provide its stock.
All Amazon needs to do is get someone to go to a Birkenstock store and buy sandals and then sell them through Amazon. That's not the store selling to Amazon, it's selling to some customer who happens to then resell them on Amazon.
The first-sale doctrine applies when Birkenstock is asking stores to figure out how to control what customers do with the sandals after they are sold.
Birkenstock isn't asking stores to figure out how to control what customers are doing. The problem is Amazon is approaching the stores themselves and attempting to buy out their inventory. This has nothing to do with customers deciding to sell their purchased shoes to Amazon.
> This is not a rejection of the first sale doctrine. This is about Birkenstock being free to choose their distributors.
Not so, the article says "He emphasized that the German shoemaker prohibits shop owners from selling, distributing or shipping its products to resellers". It doesn't distinguish resellers from distributors. What if I buy a pair, never open or wear them, then a year later want to get rid of them by selling them as "New"? Under this policy the store I purchased them from would be closed.
