The US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit held that an exclusive foreign licensee lacked standing to sue for trademark infringement in the United States and affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment. Kroma...more
2017 saw a bumper crop of Supreme Court decisions on intellectual property matters around the world including eight by the United States Supreme Court, two by the Canadian Supreme Court, and two by the United Kingdom Supreme...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
In another noteworthy year for patent law, the U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Circuit issued a number of decisions that altered the patent landscape, including four Supreme Court decisions. The topics of the key cases...more
After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its 11th annual list of top patent stories. For 2017, we identified nineteen stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe...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
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
On May 30th, the Supreme Court ruled in Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc. that all patent rights are automatically exhausted upon the sale of a product irrespective of contract stipulations and...more
The most important patent-antitrust case in recent years is not an antitrust case but is the United States Supreme Court’s May 2017 decision in Impression Products Inc. v. Lexmark Int’l., Inc., 583 U.S. ___ (2017). ...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
During what many have labeled a “quiet Term,” the U.S. Supreme Court, working with only eight justices for most of the session, still delivered at least 30 rulings of particular interest to business and industry. These...more
The Court also holds that patent exhaustion applies to both foreign and domestic sales in a historic decision. Key Points: ..Patent rights are exhausted by sale even if the patentee purports to impose post-sale...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
Inter Partes Reexamination Estoppel Attaches On Claim-by-Claim Basis for New Requests and Pending Proceedings - In In re Affinity Labs Of Texas, LLC, Appeal Nos. 2016-1092, 2016-1172, the Federal Circuit held that the...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
On May 30, 2017, in Impression Products, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a patent owner’s sale of an item, either within or outside the United States, exhausts all of the patent owner’s patent rights in that item,...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 case of keen importance to sellers of refurbished products such as auto parts and medical devices, last month, in Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., ___ U.S. ___ (2017), the Supreme Court of the...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