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Article: Does Your Licensing Strategy Still Work? The Supreme Court Clarifies Patent Exhaustion Doctrine.(Case overview)
- Article from:
- Mondaq Business Briefing
- Article date:
- June 26, 2008
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Mondaq Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In a decision that will affect the viability of patent licensing strategies now in use, the Supreme Court (Court) clarified the patent exhaustion doctrine. For more than 150 years, the Court has used the doctrine of patent exhaustion to limit the patent rights following the first authorized sale of a patented item. In Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., No. 06-937, Slip Op. (June 9, 2008), the Court unanimously reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's ("CAFC") decision that the doctrine did not apply to method patents and further did not apply because the sales were not authorized by the license agreement.
The Court's ...