Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Re: Publisher claims book is ''licensed'', no resale allowed.

While you are generally correct about the "first sale" doctrine, you contracted away this right when you agreed to their terms. It is a bit of a contract of adhesion, but thee is really no way around it. Furthermore, the only "damages" you could claim would be the lost profits from the resale. Thus, practically speaking, it is not worth pursuing.

Re: Publisher claims book is ''licensed'', no resale allowed.

Whether and to what extent parties can contract around the First Sale Doctrine is an unsettled and much debated legal question. The current trend (at least in the software context) is for courts to permit vendors to limit or prohibit purchasers' re-sale rights (and thus circumvent the doctrine) by "licensing" rather than selling their products. Books are arguably distinguishable from software in that they contain thoughts and ideas whose free flow and exchange ought not be restricted by contract. However, I am not aware of any recent cases deciding one way or another on this isssue. What is clearer is that a vendor cannot create a copyright claim by contract where one would not ordinarily exist. In other words, if you were to successfully re-sell the book, the vendor may have a contract claim against you (probably for the $500.00 it could theoretically have made by selling the book to whomever bought it from you), but it would not be entitled to damages under copyright law (which can be siginficantly higher). As for your specific questions about whether you should pursue this and whether you can recover any money, I would say "no" to both. Whether e-bay has the right to remove your item from their site depends upon e-bay's policies and terms of use to which you agreed when you registered with e-bay. I haven't reviewed e-bay's terms of use, but I'm quite confident they say e-bay can remove items from sale at its discretion. I suppose a clever attorney could come up with a cause of action against the vendor such as tortious interference with contract (i.e. for interefering with your business relations with e-bay on faulty legal grounds), but this claim would be complicated by the unsettled First Sale Doctrine question and would, in any event, cost you much more than whatever you might be able to re-sell the book for. Hope this helps.