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Patent Exhaustion Takes Center Stage at SCOTUS

By Troll Tracker

I'm pushing the survey results back until Friday because (1) I'm out of the office this week, (2) I haven't figured out how to share my results yet, and (3) I had forgotten that today is the Supreme Court oral argument in Quanta v. LG. I previously posted about the case here and here, but for the really best summary, I have two words for you: SCOTUS Wiki!!! Seriously, today is the first I have ever checked out this really cool website.

See also this article from today's Financial Times, which calls LG's position "absurd," and adds

chips are only useful if combined with other components to make a computer. But in the true spirit of global profit- maximisation, LG wants the people that make computers ? and not just people that make chips ? to pay for its technology. The Supreme Court must decide whether LG?s patent rights are ?exhausted? when it licenses the technology to Intel, or whether it can continue to extract patent royalties all the way up the manufacturing chain.

Hat tips to Howard Bashman for pointing out the FT article and to SCOTUSBlog for directing me to the wiki. For more information, see this guest post on Philip Brooks' Patent Infringement Updates blog, by a couple of attorneys from Amster Rothstein.

While I won't be able to follow the Supreme Court argument in real time, I'll post some observations on it tonight, time permitting.

Full post as published by Patent Troll Tracker on January 16, 2008 (boomark / email).