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SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

law.cornell.edu

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Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

#211

Post by Glyptodon »

URSpider94 wrote: post #189
Glyptodon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they really need to do is make cartridges rentals instead of sales, no?

There's no particular reason to make it a rental. They can still put whatever contractual restraints they want on a sale, they just have to enforce those under contract law, not via patent law. The entire reasoning for bringing a patent lawsuit is that it allows them to sue the refillers/resellers, instead of having to sue millions of individual customers who might have violated a shrink-wrap contract with Lexmark. G…

With a rental wouldn't purchasers of used cartridges essentially be knowingly buying stolen property? (Which seems very straightforward in terms its legal ramifications compared to other options.)

Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

#212

Post by CalChris »

There's a certain obviousness to this decision. Indeed it's hard to read the rest of the opinion after it explains what it is to exhaust patent rights in the first paragraph. There's plenty of precedent, indeed when you're quoting Coke, you're going back to the 17th century and his decision doesn't seem different from the opinion.

This all begs the question how did this ham handed attempt to abuse patent rights even end up in court and then how did it get appealed to the Supreme Court and moreover why did the Supremes bother to hear it? Because it seems obvious at least to this NL and obvious stuff usually isn't on their docket.

Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

#213

Post by wcummings »

ada1981 wrote: post #175
njarboe wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting if food was sold this way. Instead of an upfront purchase of atoms and molecules, you license their use and pay a monthly fee. It would be a bit hard to tell which exact atoms came from each food consumed with current tech, but one could do estimates of the expected half-lives of various atoms and molecules in the human body and have people agree to pay according those rates. This would defini…

Bechtel had a neat scheme where they bought all of the water rights for 40 years in Bolivia for $2.5B -- with a contract that guaranteed them a minimum of 15% return each year. Citizens revolted when it was learned they may need to obtain a license from the government to collect rainwater from their roofs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War

The James Bond writers are really getting lazy.

Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

#214

Post by abtinf »

Omniusaspirer wrote: post #135
joshuak wrote: post #54

Good, but the tip of the issue is licensing. Autodesk[1] has set precedence that all an organization must do to limit the resale of anything is institute a EULA. Simply by asserting that an offer is for a license not the thing being licensed the seller can bypass common law, Lord Coke, and the first sale doctrine. P.S. This also means that expensive professional software like Autodesk's, or anything with such an EULA…

There seems to be a logic gap here if I'm understanding the possibilities correctly. What stops me from founding a company through which I get paid, leveraging that company to purchase 100% of my "assets", then instituting a EULA and selling (at no cost) a lifetime license to use anything I want to myself? As per your logic (as I understand it), I could then declare myself utterly destitute and owning $0 worth of ass…

The definition of "property" is an extraordinarily complex topic.

Just a few of the absolute most basic questions:

What does it mean to possess something?

Is physical possession all that matters?

Is it the right to use something?

If you possess something, but someone prevents you from using it, have you lost property?

And then if you start mixing in taxes... whoa boy. Take a look at http://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...

The net of all of it that the law, both formal and common, has evolved to deal with this topic. But there are constant new frontiers, like this SCOTUS decision.

Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

#215

Post by delinka »

Omniusaspirer wrote: post #135
joshuak wrote: post #54

Good, but the tip of the issue is licensing. Autodesk[1] has set precedence that all an organization must do to limit the resale of anything is institute a EULA. Simply by asserting that an offer is for a license not the thing being licensed the seller can bypass common law, Lord Coke, and the first sale doctrine. P.S. This also means that expensive professional software like Autodesk's, or anything with such an EULA…

There seems to be a logic gap here if I'm understanding the possibilities correctly. What stops me from founding a company through which I get paid, leveraging that company to purchase 100% of my "assets", then instituting a EULA and selling (at no cost) a lifetime license to use anything I want to myself? As per your logic (as I understand it), I could then declare myself utterly destitute and owning $0 worth of ass…

> My company could also claim $0 worth of assets.

You need a place to live. You have the company purchase it, "license" it to you under a EULA. The company now owns property worth some amount of money (it can sell this property and turn it into cash.) Thus, the company has at least a single asset. And you own the company. You have an asset.

Oh, you want the company to rent a place to license to you? Fine, now no one has assets, but the leasing company might not actually be willing to sign the lease with a company who's going to effectively sublease.

Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

#216

Post by njarboe »

desiderantes wrote: post #171
njarboe wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting if food was sold this way. Instead of an upfront purchase of atoms and molecules, you license their use and pay a monthly fee. It would be a bit hard to tell which exact atoms came from each food consumed with current tech, but one could do estimates of the expected half-lives of various atoms and molecules in the human body and have people agree to pay according those rates. This would defini…

Until you reach a point where most of your atoms come from them, and you are their property now. Great! Why do people here propose the most obtuse and shitty dystopian scenarios for everything?

Sorry, forgot about Poe's Law[1] for a moment there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

#217

Post by torstenvl »

gameshot911 wrote: post #65

Can someone clarify one part: >The other option is to buy a cartridge at a discount through Lexmark’s “Return Program.” In exchange for the lower price, customers who buy through the Return Program must sign a contract agreeing to use the cartridge only once and to refrain from transferring the cartridge to anyone but Lexmark. >As a result, even if the restrictions in Lexmark’s contracts with its customers were clear…

The court didn't directly address that point. The Lexmark contract likely has a choice of law provision, e.g., "this contract will be interpreted and enforced in accordance with the laws of the State of California." It would be inappropriate for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on an issue of state law unless it also posed a question under federal law.

The case is limited to the question of whether Lexmark has the right under patent law to prevent resale, refurbishment, and refilling of its cartridges. The Court ruled that it does not.

Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

#218

Post by danmaz74 »

pfisch wrote: post #209
algesten wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do hope EU gets on top of Apple/Google/Netflix/HBO/etc soon. It's supposed to be One Market, yet these all impose territory restrictions where content in Spain is not necessarily available in France and vice versa.

Don't you think the most likely outcome of this is the far majority of older media titles will just no longer be available in the EU indefinitely? It will be unreasonably difficult and just not worth it to track down and negotiate with all the various the owners for each territory for most older titles.

Why would that happen? I'm pretty sure that whoever the owner of those rights are, they want to make money out of them.

Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

#219

Post by eveningcoffee »

derefr wrote: post #210
touchofevil wrote: post #48

If you want to learn about a really interesting aspect of the "first sale doctrine" and how it applies to software, you should have a look at "Vernor vs Autodesk" in the USA and compare it to "Oracle vs UsedSoft" in the EU. Basically, in the USA the courts determined that if a company sells you software, but in their terms & conditions claim that they are merely granting you a license, then you can't resell the softw…

What does the European ruling imply for services like Steam, that will sell you a game license-key, but in a way where that key is bound to your particular Steam account? Does it force such keys to be transferrable in Europe? Or force the licensing server to have a "transfer of ownership" API such that it will revoke one key and generate another for the new owner?

In principle it could. It depends on how much of this is followed by governments or interested third parties (through courts).

For example many countries started to require that mobile phone numbers should be transferable between carriers and mandated the carriers to build an infrastructure for this.

Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold

#220

Post by touchofevil »

derefr wrote: post #210
touchofevil wrote: post #48

If you want to learn about a really interesting aspect of the "first sale doctrine" and how it applies to software, you should have a look at "Vernor vs Autodesk" in the USA and compare it to "Oracle vs UsedSoft" in the EU. Basically, in the USA the courts determined that if a company sells you software, but in their terms & conditions claim that they are merely granting you a license, then you can't resell the softw…

What does the European ruling imply for services like Steam, that will sell you a game license-key, but in a way where that key is bound to your particular Steam account? Does it force such keys to be transferrable in Europe? Or force the licensing server to have a "transfer of ownership" API such that it will revoke one key and generate another for the new owner?

I think that this is the big question! I actually started an auction site based on allowing EU users to resell their Steam games (and ios/google play apps) b/c I think due to the Oracle v UsedSoft ruling Steam users should be able to resell their Steam game keys. However, b/c there is no mechanism to transfer keys (or ios apps) between users, there wasn't much my startup could do.

There was an attempt in Germany to sue Steam to allow users to resell their entire Steam account(1). However, that effort failed. I think they should have pursued a case that focused on allowing Steam users to resell individual games. There may still be a court case that could be won that focuses on reselling the individual games keys between users.

I think in the EU though there could be some debate about whether games are considered "software". Only software is covered by Oracle v UsedSoft as I recall.

(1) https://theundisciplined.com/2014/03/20/losing-steam-is-used...

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