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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

#241

Post by giobox »

danmaz74 wrote: post #218
pfisch wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'd think so, but the BBC found similar problems when launching their streaming services.

Annoyingly I can't find the link, but IIRC the BBC originally looked into making everything it had ever made in its giant archives available to stream. Even for the content the BBC produced and owned internally, which is a huge amount, they determined it simply wasn't possible to offer the full BBC back catalog all the time on their service - tracking down the various rights holders, actors, and other parties to the content to renegotiate for streaming was an impossible undertaking. A real shame - a readily accessible public database of all of the BBC's content would have been incredible, especially when so much of it was paid for by UK tax payers.

The last Labour government in 2010 was looking at options to legislate to absolve the BBC of these responsiblities, but sadly it didn't go anywhere. This is absolutely a problem that will need legal changes to fix for old content, realistically.

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

#242

Post by Retra »

deong wrote: post #162
phkahler wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I say aloud "No, I do not agree to the terms of this EULA, but I'm going to click this button in order to install the software anyway." How about that? You may say "but clicking the button indicates agreement" to which I say it does not unless I actually agree to the terms of the EULA. The EULA is the only thing defining the meaning of clicking the button... Lets suppose a techo-archeologist in 2100 finds an…

Well, if you sign the contract and the contract is legally "fair" (i.e., you weren't coerced, nothing fraudulent took place, etc.), then it doesn't matter what you say. The EULA isn't the only thing defining what agreeing to the contract means. The general framework of contract law in your country defines it as well. We can quibble over whether EULAs are enforceable contracts due to one reason or another, but you can…

If you don't agree to the terms of the agreement then you don't have an agreement.

Half the software I use has EULAs that were "agreed to" by some other third party.

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

#243

Post by wordsarewind »

As opined here the justification for the exhaustion of the patent after sale is that the patent holder has in the sale been granted the price desired, fair compensation, for the patented item, and thus cannot demand further use of the patent with respect to the item. However, this desired price can only be set by the patent holder in the monopoly granted through the patent in the US. Therefore, this price cannot be set outside of the US where the patent holder has no patent monopoly, and thus competition. Consequently, the patent holder will not receive the desired price and remain uncompensated by the patent, and thus may still require further use of it.

Surely the Supreme Court shouldn't disqualify the patent holder's right to fair compensation for the invention in sales outside of the US?

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

#244

Post by Teknoman117 »

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…

I came here to ask about things like this...

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

#245

Post by IanCal »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #226
sigzero wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No government should force that. It should be up to the company on where it's goods are sold etc.

Corporations have rights, true. But consumers also have rights.

For example of a small thing that's discussed by the EU with regards to this, if I get a netflix subscription here then go over the border I can no longer watch what I have even already downloaded. Netflix should not have to stop someone watching a show just because they went a bit further down the road.

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

#246

Post by WilliamDhalgren »

azernik wrote: post #202
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.

They're working on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Single_Market Note that the issue is rulemaking, not enforcement. The Single Market is a statement of principle, not a legally-applicable regulation, and needs specific rules to be made to put it into effect in different markets.

that's an optimistic way to frame the situation; there's heavy opposition from the content industry to limits to geoblocking, and unsurprisingly the industry seems to have support within the commission (Oettinger at least - perhaps the fact he now left the Digital Economy and Society position helps).

I'm not confident at all they'll be able to completely ban geoblocking in one go. Hopeful they will at least poke some holes in it this round. Most parts of the single market needed a couple of revisions of a directive (quite a few years removed) before liberalizing a particular market fully..

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

#247

Post by politician »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #239
brlewis wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. statute is supposedly the same. A valid contract involves consideration from both parties. After you've bought something the contract is set. One party can't subsequently say, "oh in addition you have to agree to this." Unfortunately law isn't what got written into statute or precedent yesterday. Law is what happens to you in court today.

Please stop talking about "valid contract" or "consideration" here. The EULA almost certainly contains a provision on mandatory binding arbitration. The validity of the contract may be ignored. Under "BUCKEYE CHECK CASHING, INC. v. JOHN CARDEGNA, ET AL." and "Rent-A-Center West v. Jackson" mandatory binding arbitration overrides a challenge to the validity of the contract. The arbiter will decide if the contract is v…

How does one avoid being locked into a mandatory binding arbitration agreement? For example, suppose I run a website that contains a TOS such that it requires visitors to deposit into my bitcoin account scaled by marketcap and a MBAA. When the Google crawler comes by, do I hit the jackpot?

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

#248

Post by caf »

giobox wrote: post #241
danmaz74 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You'd think so, but the BBC found similar problems when launching their streaming services. Annoyingly I can't find the link, but IIRC the BBC originally looked into making everything it had ever made in its giant archives available to stream. Even for the content the BBC produced and owned internally, which is a huge amount, they determined it simply wasn't possible to offer the full BBC back catalog all the time on…

The simplest fix might be a mandated license for streaming old content where the royalties go to a collection agency and can be claimed by the rightsholders when they finally show up.

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

#249

Post by toyg »

bdhess wrote: post #203
azernik wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're working on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Single_Market Note that the issue is rulemaking, not enforcement. The Single Market is a statement of principle, not a legally-applicable regulation, and needs specific rules to be made to put it into effect in different markets.

I would also add that the original intent was to remove government-imposed barriers to trade between the members (elimination of duties, regulation, etc). Whereas the unavailability of certain content based on location is almost certainly the result of a contractual arrangement between content makers and distributors rather than a government-imposed limit.

In some countries it is government-imposed, in the sense that national authorities exist in law, which will hoover up royalties before distributing them to creators and performers. This requires that any performance or distribution is recorded by (and paid to) such authority. At the moment, if an entity in the Italian market shows a French movie to Italian audiences, the Italian authority collects royalties before sending them to the registered owners of such rights; but what happens when a German entity shows the same film to Italian audiences? Does it pay Italian authorities or follow German rules?

That's the sticky point from a legal point of view, which needs European legislation and cooperation from all involved parties (investors, producers, distributors, streamers etc) to be resolved. Since the industry benefits from market segmentation though, they are dragging their feet. For example, it's usually better to sell the same film to a different distributor in each country, rather than a single one serving all markets - 28 smaller paydays will often tally up to levels that one single Euro-wide agreement is unlikely to reach; and some films will do well only in certain countries, so might be penalized at EU level.

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

#250

Post by averagewall »

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…

I would think you can sell a copy of the software but if it somehow doesn't work on the buyer's computer, that's too bad. Surely the law won't require software vendors to provide ongoing support to all future owners. Maybe you'd have to sell your whole computer and software together for it to keep working.

Like if you buy an iPad with your name engraved on it, then when you sell it, the buyer will be stuck with your name still on it - Apple isn't obliged to re-engrave it with the new owner's name.

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