Does this mean that printer prices are about to go up since HP/Brother/Lexmark will no longer be able to make as much money on the ink?
The writing's on the wall for the whole business anyway.
SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
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Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#32Can somebody explain, what does the word ‘exhaust’ mean? It doesn't seem like it's being used in the plain-English sense here.
One meaning of exhausting is "using up" (like exhausting a resource). In copyright and patent law, there is an idea that the rights of the copyright holder or patent holder only extend so far, and can be in effect "used up" in certain contexts so that they don't have further rights to restrict other people's activities. This case related to such a situation.
Edit: Wikipedia describes this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_of_intellectual_pro... and in a lot more detail at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S....
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#33In practice it means people will still be able to stop you from doing things with stuff you own. Just not using patent rights. Lexmark's real problem here is that its enforceable contracts are usually with the resellers, and so enforcing against a third party purchaser is trickier, so it tried to use patent law instead. (It has plenty of contracts, including on the wrapping of the printer cartridges, I'm just stickin…
They'll always be looking for new ways, but fortunately for the moment SCOTUS has been productive about shooting them down as they come up. Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley prevented bizarre applications of copyright exhaustion, and now they've done the same to patent law. This is an encouraging sign that, whatever its other faults, SCOTUS seems to take the first-sale doctrine pretty seriously.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#34Could Lexmark argue that they're not really selling the cartridges to you, but are instead leasing them for an indeterminate period of time?
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#35Outside of the narrow case involving printer cartridges, what other implications and precedents can we expect this to set? Can it stop smartphone makers from being able to blacklist devices that are resold, for instance?
> smartphone makers from being able to blacklist devices that are resold What is that blacklist?
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#36This is really similar to the concept of 'first sale' in copyright law, which similarly prevents the copyright holder from using copyright to restrict what a buyer does with the object. Glad to see it extended to patent law as well.
The first sale doctrine was already reflected in both areas of law. What this decision is about is whether patents are still exhausted if you sell the product with an EULA-style list of restrictions. Lexmark argued that because they specified that the cartridges were only to be used once, they retained their rights and ability to sue. The court determined that the restrictive sale contract did not prevent patent exhaustion.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#37This is another in a series of necessary smackdowns of the Federal Circuit.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#38Does this mean that printer prices are about to go up since HP/Brother/Lexmark will no longer be able to make as much money on the ink?
Perhaps, but how often do you really need to buy a printer? And they're so cheap a mild price increase wouldn't harm much.
The Canon MG2520 (I think there's a newer version now) is a printer/scanner/copier combo that often retails for $20. (And comes with ink.)
Price of ink would fall in exchange, since they have to compete with the off-brand folks.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#39Can somebody explain, what does the word ‘exhaust’ mean? It doesn't seem like it's being used in the plain-English sense here.
The decision has this definition in the first paragraph, which I think is reasonably clear: "When a patentee sells one of its products, however, the patentee can no longer control that item through the patent laws—its patent rights are said to 'exhaust.'" (It sounds to me like the plain-English sense of "run out": there are no more patent rights left after the sale, they have been used up in the process of getting the product on the shelves and sold in preference to a competitor's product.)
Wikipedia has some articles about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_of_intellectual_pro...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S....
If I'm reading the decision right, the question is not whether patent rights "exhaust" in the common case when you sell things (everyone agrees that they do). The question is whether Lexmark, by putting conditions on the sale, can prevent their rights from exhausting. The federal circuit's interpretation was, yes, the rights would exhaust, except that when Lexmark put conditions on the sale that the toner-cartridge purchaser agreed to, Lexmark retained its rights because that's a legal and valid contract between the buyer and seller. SCOTUS said, no, it doesn't work that way, the rights were definitely exhausted:
"Lexmark exhausted its patent rights in the Return Program cartridges that it sold in the United States. A patentee’s decision to sell a product exhausts all of its patent rights in that item, regardless of any restrictions the patentee purports to impose. As a result, even if the restrictions in Lexmark’s contracts with its customers were clear and enforceable under contract law, they do not entitle Lexmark to retain patent rights in an item that it has elected to sell."
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#40Outside of the narrow case involving printer cartridges, what other implications and precedents can we expect this to set? Can it stop smartphone makers from being able to blacklist devices that are resold, for instance?
> smartphone makers from being able to blacklist devices that are resold What is that blacklist?
I am guessing this is a reference to some Google Pixel phones that were resold when they first hit the market[1].