Law Commons^™

Exhausting Patents, Wentong Zheng

Wentong Zheng

A bedrock principle of patent law — patent exhaustion — proclaims that an authorized sale of a patented article exhausts the patentee’s rights with respect to the article sold. Over one hundred and fifty years of case law, however, has produced two conflicting notions of patent exhaustion, one considering exhaustion to be mandatory regardless of whether the patentee subjects the sale to express patent restrictions, and another treating exhaustion as a default rule that applies only in unconditional sales. The uncertainty surrounding the patent exhaustion doctrine casts a significant legal cloud over patent licensing practices in the modern economy and …