Earlier this week, the Supreme Court altered the landscape of patent exhaustion in Impression Products Inc. v. Lexmark International Inc. The Court, in reversing the Federal Circuit, held that a patentee’s decision to sell a product exhausts all patent rights in that item, regardless of any restrictions the patentee purports to impose or the location of sale.

As a result, a patentee who sells a product, whether domestically or internationally, cannot later sue for patent infringement relating to use or resale of that item. Rather, patentees who sell products under their U.S. patents, but who want to restrict downstream use or resale of those products, will have to rely on, and enforce, contract rights against their customers.