Supreme Court Continues to Address Patent Concerns 78
The Supreme Court has taken on another possibly landscape-changing patent case that will determine if patent holders are able to sue everyone up and down the food chain for a patent infringement. "This case, officially between LG and Quanta, really concerns the question of how many times patent holders can get a cut of any component found violating a patent. Currently, patent holders will often sue up and down the food chain. So, if you happen to have a patent on a component within a motor that is used in automobile wipers, you could sue the motor maker, the wiper maker and the auto manufacturer -- and get all three to pay, even though the same product is used throughout the supply chain. This case will look at whether or not it makes sense to allow for that type of double, triple or quadruple dipping."
Another /. totally BS patent story (Score:3, Informative)
"Exhaustion - also known as the first sale doctrine - serves as a default rule in both patent and copyright laws. Under the principle, a license fee is only be charged one time per object. Thus, a rights holder controls the first sale of a protected object, but does not control subsequent sales. The copyright rule is codified in Section 109. The patent rule, however, is only based on case law."
You can ignore this if you prefer hysteria and misinformation to reality.
Shell Company (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Another /. totally BS patent story (Score:5, Informative)
True, but the article summary and your response both gloss over the interesting issue in favor of something that's irrelevant. Patent exhaustion exists. Caselaw preventing double dipping for infringement damages already exists. This situation is different.
The decision in the Federal Circuit [fedcir.gov] holds that a patent is exhausted by an unconditional sale, p. 7, in line with Supreme Court precedent, but also holds that a patent rights are not exhausted by a conditional sale, pp. 7-8, in line with about 20 years of Federal Circuit precedent.
The interesting problem here is that the LGE patents do not cover the products sold by Intel. They only cover those products when combined with additional components. It appears that in the absence of a license, LGE could only have sued Intel for "contributory infringement" because Intel would be making products specially adapted to implement LGE's invention when combined with other components, see 35 U.S.C. 271(f) [uspto.gov], but not the patented combination itself. In essence, LGE and Intel negotiated a license that makes Intel a component source/supplier. Now those who purchased the specialized components and combined them in a manner that would infringe the patents are arguing that a license to manufacture a non-infringing but specialized component without fear of a patent lawsuit also conveys to the supplier's customers the right to practice the entire invention. That's not a clear cut question.
One of the axioms of property law is that you can only sell that which you yourself possess. If Intel has a license that merely permits it to manufacture and sell a specialized component, then arguably the purchasors have the right to resell the specialized component (that fraction of the patent right is exhausted), but do not have the right to manufacture or sell the patented invention because not even Intel has the right to manufacture and sell the patented invention. If Intel has a license to manufacture and sell the patented invention using its own components, with LGE getting a percentage of the revenues for the Intel components, then arguably neither Intel nor its purchasors have the right to manufacture or sell the patented invention when manufactured using non-Intel components -- LGE would be deprived it its rightful revenues, and Intel would infringe the patent for those combinations made with non-Intel parts.
The decision is unclear on the license structure, and I don't have time to dredge up the District Court decision, but there are potentially valid reasons for dividing up patent rights and royalty rates in this manner that cannot be reasonably described as double-dipping. For example, the Intel chips may still have value when combined with non-Intel chips in ways that do not produce the patented invention, but it may not make economic sense to manufacture two types of chips, one with the specialized aspect and one without. A licence with a modest royalty that is less than the entire royalty, whatever that is, benefits Intel by simplifying its product line and securing it from the potential of being sued as a result of the actions of its customers.