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His trip is part of an effort by a group of internet companies and retailers trying to defeat two patents - patents that a patent-licensing company called Eolas and the University of California are saying entitle them to royalty payments from just about anyone running a website with "interactive" features, like rotating pictures or streaming video.

During his nearly four years at UC Berkeley, Lucas Zucker has gone to great lengths to find affordable textbooks. He shopped online for the best deals and often waited weeks into the semester for the books to arrive from across the country; he shared books with classmates; he bought older editions with identical content that was rearranged; and one semester he didn't buy some books because they were just too expensive.

"Copyright is a federal law, and generally when state laws conflict with federal laws, federal law wins," Schultz said. "Perhaps more important is there's a First Amendment issue as well. If I take notes in class, and I want to share them, that's speech."