Petitioner Supap Kirtsaeng in 2014. (credit: Doug Kari)
Supap Kirtsaeng built himself a business on eBay buying textbooks in Asia and reselling them to students in the US. That practice made him the target of a copyright lawsuit by John Wiley & Sons, a large textbook company that didn't like Kirtsaeng undercutting their US prices. Lawyers for Wiley said that they should control the right to import their copyrighted works.
Kirtsaeng won a resounding victory in 2013, when the Supreme Court said he was protected by the first-sale doctrine. He'd bought the books legally and could resell them, even if that involved moving the books across the border.
After his win, Kirtsaeng sought to get his attorneys' fees paid. In the US legal system, parties must generally bear their own expenses. However, copyright law allows for judges to "award a reasonable attorney’s fee to the prevailing party," at their discretion. Because of that provision, fee-shifting is more common in copyright cases.
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