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Exhaustion of Patent Rights

By: Derek Hawkins//June 1, 2017//

Exhaustion of Patent Rights

By: Derek Hawkins//June 1, 2017//

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WI Supreme Court

Case Name: Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc.

Case No.: 15-1189

Focus: Exhaustion of Patent Rights

Lexmark exhausted its patent rights in the Return Program cartridges that it sold in the United States. 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 impose. As a result, even if the restrictions in Lexmark’s contracts with its customers were clear and enforceable under contract law, they do not entitle Lexmark to retain patent rights in an item that it has elected to sell.

“The Patent Act grants patentees the “right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling [their] invention[s].” 35 U. S. C. §154(a). For over 160 years, the doctrine of patent exhaustion has imposed a limit on that right to exclude: When a patentee sells an item, that product “is no longer within the limits of the [patent] monopoly” and instead becomes the “private, individual property” of the purchaser. Bloomer v. McQuewan, 14 How. 539, 549–550. If the patentee negotiates a contract restricting the purchaser’s right to use or resell the item, it may be able to enforce that restriction as a matter of contract law, but may not do so through a patent infringement lawsuit. The exhaustion rule marks the point where patent rights yield to the common law principle against restraints on alienation. The Patent Act promotes innovation by allowing inventors to secure the financial rewards for their inventions. Once a patentee sells an item, it has secured that reward, and the patent laws provide no basis for restraining the use and enjoyment of the product. Allowing further restrictions would run afoul of the “common law’s refusal to permit restraints on the alienation of chattels.” Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 568 U. S. 519, 538. As Lord Coke put it in the 17th century, if an owner restricts the resale or use of an item after selling it, that restriction “is voide, because . . . it is against Trade and Traffique, and bargaining and contracting betweene man and man.” 1 E. Coke, Institutes of the Laws of England §360, p. 223 (1628). Congress enacted and has repeatedly revised the Patent Act against the backdrop of this hostility toward restraints on alienation, which is reflected in the exhaustion doctrine. This Court accordingly has long held that, even when a patentee sells an item under an express, otherwise lawful restriction, the patentee does not retain patent rights in that product. See, e.g., Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., 553 U. S. 617. And that wellsettled line of precedent allows for only one answer in this case: Lexmark cannot bring a patent infringement suit against Impression Products with respect to the Return Program cartridges sold in the United States because, once Lexmark sold those cartridges, it exhausted its right to control them through the patent laws”

Reversed and remanded

Concur: Ginsburg

Dissent: Ginsburg

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.

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