Patent Exhaustion: Supreme Court Expands Patent-Limiting Doctrine -

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 patent holder from restricting further sales or use of a patented invention once the patentee has received the benefits of her patent from a first sale. In doing so, the Court upset the settled expectations of many patent holders and their licensees. Paradoxically, the decision is not inconsistent with the Court’s recent pronouncements in other patent cases and other areas of intellectual property. All of these decisions are also consistent with the Court’s recent trend of limiting patent rights to the greatest extent possible as patent cases continue to come before it.