Costco, eBay, Google and the nation's top art museums are backing a Thai graduate student against book publishers, the movie and music industries and other manufacturers in a Supreme Court battle over copyright protections with important implications for consumers and multibillion dollar annual sales online and in discount stores.

Supap Kirtsaeng was studying in the United States when he struck a nerve in the publishing world by tapping into the market for cheaper college textbooks. Kirtsaeng re-sold copyrighted books that relatives first bought abroad.

His profitable venture provoked a copyright infringement lawsuit from publisher John Wiley & Sons. The case is being argued Monday at the high court.

Kirtsaeng used eBay to sell $900,000 worth of books published abroad by Wiley and others and made about $100,000 in profit. The international editions of the textbooks were essentially the same as the more costly American editions. A jury in New York awarded Wiley $600,000 after deciding Kirtsaeng sold copies of eight Wiley textbooks without permission.

The issue at the Supreme Court concerns what protection the holder of a copyright has after a product made outside the United States is sold for the first time. In this case, the issue is whether U.S. copyright protection applies to items that are made abroad, purchased abroad and then resold in the U.S. without the permission of the manufacturer. The high court split 4-4 when it tried to answer that question in a case in 2010 involving Costco and Swiss watch maker Omega.

The Supreme Court upheld a law Wednesday that extended U.S. copyright protection to books, musical compositions and other works by foreign artists that had been available without paying royalties.

The justices said in a 6-2 decision Wednesday that Congress acted within its power to give protection to works that had been in the public domain. The law's challengers complained that community orchestras, academics and others who rely on works that are available for free have effectively been priced out of performing "Peter and the Wolf" and other pieces that had been mainstays of their repertoires.

The case concerned a 1994 law that was intended to bring the U.S. into compliance with an international treaty on intellectual property. The law made copyright protection available to foreign works that previously could not have been copyrighted.

The court ruled in 2003 that Congress may extend the life of a copyright. Wednesday's decision was the first time it said that published works lacking a copyright could later be protected.

"Neither congressional practice nor our decisions treat the public domain, in any and all cases, as untouchable by copyright legislation. The First Amendment likewise provides no exceptional solicitude for works in the public domain," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her opinion for the court.

But Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for himself and Justice Samuel Alito, said that an important purpose of a copyright is to encourage an author or artist to produce new work. "The statute before us, however, does not encourage anyone to produce a single new work. By definition, it bestows monetary rewards only on owners of old works," Breyer said.

File-sharing software company LimeWire, which shut down last year after being barred from allowing people to share copyright-protected files online, reached a $105 million out-of-court settlement with the major record labels Thursday, the labels said.

In a statement, Recording Industry Association of America Chairman Mitch Bainwol said his group, which represents the labels, is pleased with the settlement.

“The resolution of this case is another milestone in the continuing evolution of online music to a legitimate marketplace that appropriately rewards creators,” he later added.

LimeWire, which had enabled people to share songs and other files over the Internet, had been fighting the RIAA for several years.

The RIAA argued LimeWire’s software encouraged illegal sharing of copyrighted music. Last May LimeWire was found liable of copyright infringement, with a trial to follow early this year. That trial started last week.

In October, LimeWire received a federal injunction forcing it to disable key functions of its software. At that time, the company said it would continue developing a new service that would include a desktop player, mobile apps and a catalog of music from which people could legally stream and download songs.

Software company Autodesk can stop a man from re-selling second-hand copies of its software because the programs are licensed to users, not owned by them, a US appeals court has ruled.

Software producers who clearly impose restrictions on buyers and make it clear that buyers are only licensing material rather than buying it outright do have the right to restrict second hand sales of the material, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has said.

Autodesk is involved in a long-running legal dispute with Timothy Vernor, who sells goods on auction site eBay. He bought second hand versions of Autodesk's architectural drawing software from a company and made them available for sale on eBay, but Autodesk made repeated claims that this infringed its copyright.

Vernor's eBay account was eventually suspended, leading him to take a case to the courts, asking a judge to declare his activity lawful.

A US District Court agreed with Vernor, saying that a previous case involving film prints lent to actress Vanessa Redgrave, the Wise case, set a precedent that transferred material could be owned by the person to whom it was given.

The Court of Appeals disagreed, and said that the Wise case did not mean, as the lower court had said, that any agreement which allows a person to keep a copy of copyrighted material was a sale rather than a transfer of a licence.

The Supreme Court has turned down Microsoft Corp.'s appeal of a jury verdict that it infringed on another company's patent.

The justices said Monday they will not intervene in Microsoft's legal fight with Alcatel-Lucent. The disputed patent covers a method of entering information into fields on a computer screen without using a keyboard. Alcatel-Lucent says Microsoft's Outlook calendar and other programs illegally used this technology.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit already has ordered the trial court to reconsider the $358 million in damages the jury awarded to Alcatel-Lucent.

Microsoft Corp., the world’s biggest software maker, agreed to pay VirnetX Holding Corp. $200 million and license technology to communicate privately over the Internet, ending a patent dispute.

“We believe that this successful resolution of our litigation with Microsoft will allow us to focus on the upcoming pilot system” for a virtual private network, Chief Executive Officer Kendall Larsen said yesterday in a statement.

VirnetX, which won a $105.8 million jury verdict in its patent-infringement lawsuit in March, was seeking a court order to block Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft from continuing to use the technology in its Windows operating system and Communications Server. The jury award also could have been tripled by the court’s judge.

Microsoft argued at trial that the patents were valued at no more than $15 million. Investors bet the patents were worth more, driving Scotts Valley, California-based VirnetX’s share price up almost 300 percent in the past 12 months. VirnetX had a market value of $267.9 million, based on the May 14 price.

VirnetX had been public in its desire to be bought to resolve the dispute. The agreement in which it obtained the patents from defense contractor SAIC Inc. included a provision that SAIC would get 10 percent of any proceeds if VirnetX were acquired by Microsoft, according to a company regulatory filing.

The patents relate to use of a domain-name service to set up virtual private networks, through which a website owner can interact with a customer in a secure way or an employee can work at home and access a company’s files. The technology stemmed from work performed for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to develop secure communications, VirnetX said.

File-sharing software company LimeWire has lost a long-running court battle to the major recording companies.

A judge with the U.S. District Court in New York ruled this week that the company and its chairman, Mark Gorton, were liable for inducing copyright infringement.

The decision in the case, which began in 2006, doesn't mean the site will shut down right away. The record labels and LimeWire are to meet with Judge Kimba Wood on June 1 to determine the next steps, such as a possible deal to work together going forward and a potential award for damages.

Recording Industry Association of America Chairman Mitch Bainwol said in a statement Wednesday that the ruling was "an extraordinary victory" against one of the largest remaining file-sharing services in the United States.

The RIAA said more than 200 million copies of LimeWire's file-sharing software have been downloaded so far, including 340,000 in the last week alone.

The ruling could pave the way for a deal, similar to the way Napster was sued out of existence in 2000 but was reborn and is now under the ownership of Best Buy Inc. with licensing deals with all the major recording companies.

"This isn't about getting something shut down, it's about getting something licensed and legal," said Steve Marks, general counsel for the RIAA.