Opinion of the Court
533. What helped tip the scales for global exhaustion was the fact that the first sale doctrine originated in “the common law’s refusal to permit restraints on the alienation of chattels.” Id., at 538. That “common-law doctrine makes no geographical distinctions.” Id., at 539. The lack of any textual basis for distinguishing between domestic and international sales meant that “a straightforward application” of the first sale doctrine required the conclusion that it applies overseas. Id., at 540 (internal quotation marks omitted).
Applying patent exhaustion to foreign sales is just as straightforward. Patent exhaustion, too, has its roots in the antipathy toward restraints on alienation, see supra, at 6–8, and nothing in the text or history of the Patent Act shows that Congress intended to confine that borderless common law principle to domestic sales. In fact, Congress has not altered patent exhaustion at all; it remains an unwritten limit on the scope of the patentee’s monopoly. See Astoria Fed. Sav. & Loan Assn. v. Solimino, 501 U. S. 104, 108 (1991) (“[W]here a common-law principle is well established, . . . courts may take it as given that Congress has legislated with an expectation that the principle will apply except when a statutory purpose to the contrary is evident” (internal quotation marks omitted)). And differentiating the patent exhaustion and copyright first sale doctrines would make little theoretical or practical sense: The two share a “strong similarity . . . and identity of purpose,” Bauer & Cie v. O’Donnell, 229 U. S. 1, 13 (1913), and many everyday products—“automobiles, microwaves, calculators, mobile phones, tablets, and personal computers”—are subject to both patent and copyright protections, see Kirtsaeng, 568 U. S., at 545; Brief for Costco Wholesale Corp. et al. as Amici Curiae 14–15. There is a “historic kinship between patent law and copyright law,” Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U. S. 417, 439 (1984), and the bond between the two leaves no
