We previously posted at Law Pundit about Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc.: U.S. Supreme Court Oral Arguments: First Sale and the Patent Exhaustion Doctrine
and
First Sale and the Patent Exhaustion Doctrine in the Resale and Use of Printer Ink Cartridges
The (virtually) unanimous 8-0, 7-1 May 30, 2017 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts holds that the patent exhaustion doctrine applies to all products sold, domestically and abroad (Ginsburg dissenting on the latter), and that patents can thus not be used to circumvent the first sale doctrine.
Our previous analysis was thus once again proven correct, as it has been for many years in predicting U.S. Supreme Court reversals of what we have regarded to be clearly erroneous Federal Circuit Court decisions in the patent sphere.
For a detailed analysis of this eminently important patent case, see Patently-O: Impression v. Lexmark: Patent Rights Exhausted by Sale, Domestic or Abroad.
The "international" patent rule voiced here by the Supreme Court follows the same general and inexorable legal logic applied regarding the limitation on copyrights expressed in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, 568 U.S. 519, 133 S. Ct. 1351 (2013).
