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US Supreme Court Limits Patent Claims
Aire Libre and other readers noted a unanimous Supreme Court decision that denied LG Electronics's attempt to evade the first-sale doctrine by use of "business method" patents. LG licensed patents to Intel, then attempted to dictate what use Intel's customers could make of the Intel products incorporating LG patents. The decision (PDF) notes how easily patents can be written up as "business methods" to nullify the first-sale doctrine ("exhaustion") and to give the patent owner perpetual control downstream. Aire Libre adds, "That reasoning bodes well for copyright freedom as well, in light of the growing number of copyright holders who seek to nullify the Copyright Act's limitation on the distribution right by claiming the goods are 'licensed, not sold,' or subject to some restrictive EULA."
Reason has no place in a legal proceeding. Sad, but true. This ruling doesn't have any direct implications on copyright issues. Any perceived reason the justices showed with this ruling can only be tested against copyright if and when a similar dispute regarding copyright makes it to the Supreme Court. Until a person or organization has deep enough pockets to push/appeal a court case to the SC we'll never know if the justices' reason extends to copyright or not.
...that it is the very same conservative US Supreme Court that liberal slashdotters have been damning for years are the ones that strike this blow for freedom.
Even worse for liberal pride, it was Clarence Thomas who wrote the opinion.
Never fear, once Obama becomes president the courts will be filled with Hollywood's choices once again and this inconvenience event will be relegated to obscure history.
Wow, this is a breath of fresh air.
Yay SCOTUS! (don't get to say that very often)
It clearly seems like LG was in the wrong here, but this was a case where both parties actually produce and sell goods using the patents they own. Has the US Supreme Court had anything to say about the numerous cases involving patent squatters/submarine patents? That seems like it ought to be a more serious issue.
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It clearly seems like LG was in the wrong here, but this was a case where both parties actually produce and sell goods using the patents they own. Has the US Supreme Court had anything to say about the numerous cases involving patent squatters/submarine patents? That seems like it ought to be a more serious issue.
If you look at the Supreme Court's decision (http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/06-937.pdf) it will be clear how it turns, first, on whether the patent license to Intel permits Intel to sell goods that practice the patents, and second, did the goods sold by Intel practice the patents. The answer to both questions was yes, triggering the application of the doctrine of exhaustion of patent rights with respect to the product that was sold. That was true even where the patent had method claims, and when those would not be completely practiced until the sold product was combined with other components. The rationale for that aspect was that the sold items practiced the patent by embodying all of the inventive matter and having in practice no other use except to practice the patent: the components left to be added were standard stuff, while all of the inventive content was in the items sold.
None of that depended in any way on the question whether the patent licensor engaged in manufacture on its own account. The court did not need to consider that. So the decision clearly applies to patent holders who grant licenses to others to sell patented products, irrespective of whether the licensors themselves do manufacturing or not.
-wb-
As far as I know, selling processors and chipsets to other manufacturers making the actual computers is a major business for Intel, probably even much bigger than direct consumer sales. It's damn obvious then, that whatever Intel sells, most of it will be incorporated in a product of its own ans sold again by other companies and that's the whole purpose of Intel producing most of its inventory at all (chipsets etc.).
Taking that into consideration, isn't Intel likely to go medieval at anyone mobbing their most important customers with such a blatantly bogus claim? Sure, LG is big - but probably not big enough to stand chances with Intel if they were to release the hell hou^W^W^W^W^W^W lawyers...
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
This suddenoutbreakofcommonsense only took 8 years, and one stubborn company that refused to settle when all the others did. It may have been an obvious outcome to some, but apparently not to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals or the unnamed number of other companies who gave in to the royalty demands.
The real question in all this is why the appeal court sided with LG.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
This is about "method" patents, not only "business method" patents. The SCOTUS maintained that the first sale doctrine applies to method patents as well. This is a big deal for industries with complex supply chains where an end product (like a laptop) has components that have passed through many hands. In the same way that a patent holder of a surface mount resistor can't charge a royalty to the PC brand if they already charged the mother-boardmaker, a holder of a method patent for example, a "method of caching operations in a processor", cannot charge a royalty to everyone who buys and sells the product. The licensors are left with the decision to pick where in the value chain to insert their bite, at the low end where their value added is great but profits are lower, or higher up where the profits are higher but the contribution of the invention is diluted. IANAL
> I do not want some judge changing the original meaning
I don't get it. You actually believe that the words of the Constitution encode enough information to enable everyone to unequivocally understand what the authors of that document believed should be done in all possible situations (even assuming they had one unanimous opinion)?
Face it. That's impossible, and that's why we have judges. And why they're constantly overturning old decisions and laws.
Of course, I do agree with you that judges shouldn't be making their decisions based on partisan loyalty. But one has to cope with the fact that they are human also.
... will likely make its way to the supreme court. The complexity of the case, and the controversy over YOUR Intellectual Property versus MY culture. Lawrence Lessig is on staff for RDR Books defending, the same lawyer that fought (ok, and lost) in Eldred v. Ashcroft. I know this is too much to ask, but I see no reason not to revert back to the Statute of Anne. Give copyright holders a FIRM grip over their IP to allow them to reap its rewards and present it the way they desire, BUT, after a "Limited Period of Time", give it to the people to let it grow and thrive.
Unless we are going to argue reincarnation, this lifetime is the only one I have. 'Forever' is my entire lifetime, or anyone elses. Nothing that is part of my culture can be remixed or reused by myself or virtually any generation I will ever see when there is a term limit of life + 70 years / 120 years.
Anyway, Lessig and others learned some HARD lessons, such as the power of money among other things, not to mention the series of some good small wins for EFF over the past year, for GPL and such, showing the value free and freedom to the public.
In light of the entire history of supreme court they can seem small, they have ruled on the side of reason defying long standing law, and majority opinion: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), United States v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256 (1946). United States v. Miller, 317 U. S. 369. While Miller had to do with government taking, why can not the same PROPERTY law apply as they keep arguing. "It is the owner's loss, not the taker's gain, which is the measure of the value of the property taken." was ruled. As for Rowling v. RDR Books, IMO, an idea only becomes culture AFTER it is given to the public. And you CAN'T copyright an IDEA. Making cultural references to an idea aren't piracy, and not even plagiarism, it is literature in its absolute meaning.
So I hope that this case shows that the supreme court is ready to rule on the side of reason that Congress CAN NOT hide away like it did after LaMacchia with the NET Act. Eldred v. Ashcroft 537 U.S. 186 (2003) ruled the way it did because the argument made could not beat the argument of big money, so YES, I think this case COULD have major implications in the near future over copyright.
The only circumstances under which I could be persuaded otherwise would be if they tax this PROPERTY progressively with respect to the amount of time on copyright, gross value earned from copyright, and number of copyrights held by a person. This would make it EQUAL with real property. At present, any vaguely original though or artistry I express in a tangible way has GREATER protection than the home for my family. And before I am accused of making a straw man, consider the ways you can loose and reclaim an IP versus the way you can loose and reclaim your house.
Hope that wasn't too off topic for anyone, just my thoughts on the supreme court and reason.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
http://www.lessig.org/blog/2008/02/20_minutes_or_so_on_why_i_am_4.html
A 20 minute video done by Lawrence Lessig on why he supports Obama. Would it be too much to consider that the endorsement of the Electronic Freedom Foundation?
That does give me some comfort over some of the things that REALLY concern me over Obama as mentioned above.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
What was clarified in this decision is that vendors don't have the right to control the downstream licensees of their patents, and the first sale doctrine was reaffirmed.
This will change the way that EULAs are interpreted in the future. Specifically, any restrictions against resale or limiting the uses the product can be used for will no longer be valid.
This further limits any legal action Apple might take against Psystar for shipping computers that run retail copies of the MacOS.
Apple is limited on the copyright front by antitrust law; the requirement in the EULA that purports to require that the software only be run on Apple hardware is probably an illegal tying arrangement. (Don't argue otherwise without doing some reading first. There's a history of relevant cases and the party trying to enforce the tying terms usually loses.)
With this decision, Apple is also limited on the patent front. Apple's patent rights were "exhausted" when the boxed copy of the MacOS was sold. They can't raise a patent claim based on some restriction on later use of the software, not even for "method" claims.
Please tag responsibly.
> what would Washington say to see Obama in the Presidency ...
I think that's kind of a strawman. It might be what he would say if he were shown that scenario with no context, but what is actually important is what he would say if he were also to be exposed (at a slow enough rate to absorb) to all of the societal changes which have taken place in the meantime, before being shown Obama.
<pedantic>
BTW, the Oval Office was built in 1909 and I doubt that Washington would recognize a modern necktie, either. And "nigger" wasn't necessarily derogatory, in Washington's time.
</pedantic>
Aire Libre has little idea of what he's talking about.
First the patents in question in this case were not "business method" patents. They were simple process claims. The decision doesn't even contain the word pair "business method" and nobody that knows anything about patent law would conclude the patents in question here were business method patents.
At issue was whether and how the doctrine of exhaustion applied to process claims, which can't be "sold", so to speak. The Court ruled, basically, that if the article substantially embodies the article, so as use of the article in in its usual course would infringe the process patent, then the process patent is also exhausted. This is a change in law, to be sure; fallout uncertain.
As for Aire Libre's comment that this decision somehow "bodes well" for copyright law, anybody that actually reads the decision would draw the opposition conclusion. This is because the Court, on page 17 of the opinion, basically says two parties can agree to limit the license however they want, but here they did not -- there were essentially no conditions on the grant of rights.