Full Federal Circuit Upholds Standards for Patent Rights Exhaustion

摘要

The full Federal Circuit, in a 10-2 decision today, upheld its standards on patent exhaustion: A buyer can't ignore a patentee's restrictions on reuse and resale of a patented product and-when those products are first sold overseas-importation into the U.S. is infringement unless the importer has an express or implied license from the patentee (Lexmark Int'l, Inc. v. Impression Prods., Inc., 2016 BL 40555, Fed. Cir., 2014-1617, 2014-1619, 2/12/16).