Call it academic arbitrage. Supap Kirt-saeng, a Thai student who earned a phD in mathematics from the University of Southern California, made as much as $1.2m with some basic maths. He asked friends and family to ship him cheap textbooks from Thailand, which he sold for a handsome profit in America. The books were intended only for sale in Thailand, and Wiley, a publisher of some of the textbooks he sold, sued him for copyright infringement in September 2008 and won. Mr Kirtsaeng appealed, and the case made its way to America's highest court.
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