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Bus. & Prof. Code, § 16603 · Chapter 1. Contracts in Restraint of Trade

Bus. & Prof. Code, § 16603

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

Every person who, as a condition to a sale or consignment of any magazine, book, or other publication requires that the purchaser or consignee purchase or receive for sale any horror comic book, is guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months, or by fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both.

This section is not intended to prohibit an agreement requiring a person to purchase or accept on consignment a minimum number of copies of a single edition or issue of a magazine or of a particular book or other particular publication.

As used in this section “person” includes a corporation, partnership, or other association.

As used in this section “horror comic book” means any book or booklet in which an account of the commission or attempted commission of the crime of arson, assault with caustic chemicals, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, kidnapping, mayhem, murder, rape, robbery, theft, or voluntary manslaughter is set forth by means of a series of five or more drawings or photographs in sequence, which are accompanied by either narrative writing or words represented as spoken by a pictured character, whether such narrative words appear in balloons, captions or on or immediately adjacent to the photograph or drawing.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Amended by Stats. 1983, Ch. 1092, Sec. 49. Effective September 27, 1983. Operative January 1, 1984, by Sec. 427 of Ch. 1092.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC&sectionNum=16603.
Text hash
sha256 dd605eef70ee531dfad3aa2c655bb058f9dbe454ad6c3135b0fec2c001a3793a
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

Procedural information only. Not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Confirm the current text with the official publisher before relying on it.