Supreme Court Continues to Address Patent Concerns

The Supreme Court has taken on another possibly landscape-changing patent case that will determine if patent holders are able to sue everyone up and down the food chain for a patent infringement. "This case, officially between LG and Quanta, really concerns the question of how many times patent holders can get a cut of any component found violating a patent. Currently, patent holders will often sue up and down the food chain. So, if you happen to have a patent on a component within a motor that is used in automobile wipers, you could sue the motor maker, the wiper maker and the auto manufacturer -- and get all three to pay, even though the same product is used throughout the supply chain. This case will look at whether or not it makes sense to allow for that type of double, triple or quadruple dipping."

Comments

Kudos to the Roberts court

[einhverfr]

IANAL, etc.

I think that the Roberts court has done an admirable job of tackling real legal issues and helping to make the law consistant, just, and effective. For example, they have addressed:

1) Can religions use otherwise illegal drugs in their ceremonies? Yes (interestingly, as a matter of statutory rather than constitutional law). See UVD v. Gonzalez.

2) What constitutes a patent being "obvious?" An obvious innovation is now defined in a way which is meaningful and can be meaningfully used as a defense.

Now if we can only get a few more questions answered such as:

Are exclusive copyright licenses divisible? (9th circuit says no)
Under what circumstances can a non-exclusive copyright permission (such as the BSDL) grant given to all third parties be changed (i.e. in the Atheros incident)?