You May Be Exhausted Over Standard Essential Patents (And Not Even Know It)
For many product manufacturers, post-sale repair and maintenance of their products is a significant source of revenue, and manufacturers use various incentives to entice their customers to return to them for post-sale...more
In interpreting a patent license agreement originally drafted in the era of third generation (3G) cellular networks, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that the license agreement covered subsequent wireless...more
Recently, the Department of Justice issued a business review letter (BRL) relating to Avanci’s proposed 5G licensing platform for patents declared as potentially essential owned by its globally diverse thirty eight...more
Broad Claim Language and Unpredictability in the Art Lead to Non-Enablement - In Enzo Life Sciences, Inc. v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., Appeal Nos. 2017-2498, -2499, -2545, -2546, broad patent claims were invalid as...more
A district court in the Western District of Washington denied Adaptics Ltd.’s (“Adaptics”) motion for summary judgment of patent exhaustion, which was based on a theory that an authorized sale by a downstream reseller can...more
This year was a significant year for intellectual property cases at the Supreme Court level. In fact, the Supreme Court granted certiorari for seven patent cases, and decided five of these cases before the end of the year....more
In an application of 2017 U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Impressions Products, Inc. v. Lexmark Intern., Inc., the Northern District California in International Fruit Genetics LLC v. Orcharddepot.com, No. 4:17-cv-02905-JSW,...more
Arbitration - Waymo v. Uber Technologies, 870 F.3d 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2017) - Waymo sued Uber and others for trade secret misappropriation and patent infringement. Uber contends that Waymo should be compelled to...more
The U.S. Supreme Court at the end of the past term handed down a decision, Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., that greatly expanded the doctrine of patent exhaustion. This equitable doctrine prevents a...more
I was on a panel at the Patent Law in Global Perspectives Seminar on October 20 at Stanford Law School, discussing the implications of Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark, 581 U.S. ___, 137 S. Ct. 1523 (2017), for patent...more
Last May, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a highly-anticipated decision in Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark Int’l, Inc., reversing the Federal Circuit and holding that, when a patent holder sells a product, it exhausts all...more
Patent owners have long imposed post-sale restrictions on their patented goods and relied on U.S. patent laws to enforce these restrictions. For instance, companies have sought to enforce “single use” restrictions on their...more
Despite being short one justice for much of the year, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down multiple significant decisions this past term that can unsettle long-standing legal understandings in multiple technology fields. These...more
The US Patent Act gives patent holders the right to prevent others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention in the United States or importing the invention into the United States. The premise behind...more
Supreme Court Hits Reset on Patent Venue Law in TC Heartland - In the recent TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC decision, the Supreme Court reversed nearly thirty years of patent venue law and held that a...more
SCOTUS: For Patent Venue, Domestic Corporations ‘Reside’ Where Incorporated - Why it matters: On May 22, 2017, the Supreme Court issued its decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC—rejecting...more
In 1628, Lord Coke in his “Institutes of the laws of England” summarized the common law on restraints on the alienation of chattels stating that any attempt by a seller to restrict resale or use of the chattel after selling...more
SCOTUS Narrows Opportunity For ITC Section 337 Jurisdiction Over Imported Biosimilars Based On 180-Day Notice Provision - In Amgen Inc. v. Sandoz Inc., 794 F.3d 1347, 1357-58 (Fed. Cir. 2015), the Federal Circuit held that...more
Hailed by some as the “right to repair”, on May 30, 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that a seller’s patent rights are not valid beyond the first sale of the patented product. Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark Intern., Inc....more
Patent owners can no longer restrict the use of their patented products after the products are sold. Under the doctrine of patent exhaustion, a patent owner’s rights are “exhausted” once the patent owner sells the product. ...more
In a nearly unanimous opinion issued recently, the U.S. Supreme Court held “a patentee’s decision to sell a product exhausts all of its patent rights in that item, regardless of any restrictions the patentee purports to...more
In Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, No. 15–1189, 137 S. Ct. ___, 2017 WL 2322830 (May 30, 2017), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a patentee’s sale of a product exhausts all of its U.S. patent rights in...more
In Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that a patent owner's initial sale of a product, in the U.S. or in a foreign country, exhausts all of the U.S. patent rights in...more
An authorized sale exhausts all patent rights in the item sold. In Impression Products Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc. No. 15-1189, May 30, 2017, the Supreme Court found that patent exhaustion is “uniform and...more