Posted on 06/01/2017 1:17:17 PM PDT by Thalean
The Supreme Court heard arguments in March and considered the principle of patent exhaustion. This idea stipulates that a patent owner’s rights over a product should vanish once the patent owner sells the product to a consumer. By attaching a post-sale restriction to its single-use cartridge, Lexmark aimed to create a zombie patent that’s never exhausted. You may have bought that cartridge, but Lexmark still controls it.
The justices agreed 7-1 that Lexmark can’t do that. (Justice Neil Gorsuch was appointed after the court heard the case.) The court held that Lexmark exhausted its patent rights when it sold its cartridges “regardless of any restrictions the patentee purports to impose.” To allow otherwise, the justices ruled, would adversely impact the economy.
“Take a shop that restores and sells used cars,” chief justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The business works because the shop can rest assured that, so long as those bringing in the cars own them, the shop is free to repair and resell those vehicles. That smooth flow of commerce would sputter if companies that make the thousands of parts that go into a vehicle could keep their patent rights after the first sale.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
Who was the holdout?
This shouldn’t have been up for dispute.
This should apply to the lawsuits that anti-Second Amendment types are bringing against gun manufacturers.
Those lawsuits attempt to impose on gun manufacturers all sorts of requirements for the sale of guns manufactured by them on gun dealers.
Such things as recording all sales by video, limiting magazine size, restricting what sort of stock can be put on.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Hee hee... “printer ink must be made of unicorn blood...”
Probably Ginsberg.
She may have thought they were talking about firearms cartridges.................
“Justice Ginsburg filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part”
you have the right to repair your own stuff,
= = =
How about modifying the ‘software’ of your vehicle.
John Deere and gm want to stop this.
https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/
Ginsberg according to another article.
Well, that takes us back to GMO seed. Should one be able to plant the harvested seed from the original purchase? Court already said no.
Beautiful. Now let’s extend this to software.
Now make this apply to John Deere tractors.
Why do actors get residuals and auto workers don't?
Why can you copy a key but not a DVD?
Can the builder sue you if you paint your house a different color?
“How about modifying the ‘software’ of your vehicle.”
Been there, done that.
Modifying the software for your own personal use is covered under “fair use” as long as you aren’t trying to redistribute or resell it, or something like that.
Where you would run into issues, under current law, is if you resold the vehicle without restoring the onboard software to the original state.
Farmers Can’t Legally Fix Their Own John Deere Tractors Due To Copyright Laws
Not all actors do. It depends on the contract they agreed to before the work began. Most are independent contractors whereas the auto worker are W2 employees, many covered by a union collective bargaining agreement.
This will hopefully set a precedent that prevents John Deere from stopping farmers from repairing their own tractors.
While I agree that the law should allow people to repair things, its the job of the legislature to make a good law that respects the economy. The court should be ready to uphold stupid law, if that is what the law is, and not consider if its a good or bad law...because that is the road of legislating from the bench, and once you start down that dark path, forever will it control legal precedent--as it already has--but I guess I would like to see this trend reverse.
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