The problem with most ebooks is you can’t exactly give them with a friends or pass them onto your children when you’re done. But Amazon might actually address that with a new patent to sell used ebooks.
Unfortunately you can’t just buy an ebook and own an ebook and do what you want with it. So basically the patent means Amazon could own the rights to letting people resell the digital pages or audio files they have stored in their tabler or ereader. You know, like Craigslist for your old Kindle copy of The DaVinci Code (50 cents or best offer!) Or a garage sale for 50 Shades of Grey on your iPad. (Sorry, I want at least $1.17 for that, but I’ll throw in these gardening gloves.)
Except you would have to go through Amazon, rather than selling digital books in your own digital yard sale, so to speak. And if Amazon’s new patent to sell used ebooks ever turns into a real thing, you may never get to.
Of course, many patents never amount to anything at all, and are actually moves to secure intellectual property before another company does. We hope that’s the case here, so one day perhaps our children can inherit our ebooks free on own terms. [Publishers Weekly]