is not unclear or ambiguous. The court then discussed whether or not Aftermath licensed the music to third party distributors, making extensive use of the Copyright Act of 1976, including references to sections , , and the First-sale doctrine as expressed in . The court reaffirmed the fundamental differences between a sale and a license, particularly pointing out that "a 'sale' of a work may either be a transfer in title of an individual copy of a work, or a sale of all exclusive intellectual property rights in a work." Relying heavily on the Supreme Court's interpretation of these statutes, the court of appeals thus ruled that Defendants' dealings with third parties were license agreements and not sales. This was mainly based on the fact that Defendants' transfer of copyrighted material to third parties did not include ownership title of copyrighted material, and that Defendants reserved the right to reclaim copyrighted material at any time, therefore no sale was made. Furthermore, the court established that the copyrighted material transferred to the third parties qualified as a master recording due to the quality and fidelity of the recordings. Aftermath had also argued that F.B.T. failed to complain about the lower royalty rates until the audit in 2006, claiming this demonstrated acquiescence on the part of the Plaintiff. The court ruled against this as well, determining that such actions by the Plaintiff were reasonable and contributed nothing to their intentions, stating, "F.B.T. had no obligation to audit the statements any earlier than it did, and it immediately raised the issue with Aftermath after the audit." The court therefore concluded that the Defendants owed Plaintiffs a royalty rate of 50% for downloads and ringtones under the "Masters Licensed" provision. Supreme Court of the United States The Defendants petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States, seeking a review of the Ninth Circuit's judgment. In March 2011 the US Supreme Court denied the Defendants' petition for writ of certiorari. References External links Eminem E-commerce in the United States 2010 in United States case law United States copyright case law United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit cases