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Supreme Court Considers When US Patent Violations Are 'Induced' Abroad (arstechnica.com)
The US Supreme Court today will take up a case that will determine how much help an overseas manufacturer can get from the U.S. without running afoul of US patent laws. From a report on ArsTechnica: The case originates in a dispute between two competitors in the field of genetic testing. Both Promega Corporation and Life Technologies (selling through its Applied Biosciences brand) make DNA testing kits that can be used in a variety of fields, including forensic identification, paternity testing, medical treatment, and research. Promega licensed several patents to Applied Biosystems that allowed its competitor to sell kits for use in "Forensics and Human Identity Applications." The license forbade sales for clinical or research uses. In 2010, Promega filed a lawsuit in federal court, saying that Life Technologies had "engaged in a concerted effort to sell its kits into unlicensed fields," thus infringing its patents. A Wisconsin federal jury found that Life Tech had willfully infringed and should pay $52 million in damages. But the district judge overseeing the case set aside that verdict after trial, ruling that since nearly all of the Life Tech product had been assembled and shipped from outside the US, the product wasn't subject to US patent laws.
Next time, don't use legalzoom forms for your contract. Pay some shyster to insert "worldwide" after "The license forbade sales for clinical or research uses."
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
This is a fairly common issue in biotech. US patent office tends to grant patents far too easily in biotech, resulting in a situation where a product is patent-protected in the US, but not abroad. The decision is absolutely right, Life Technologies licensed the product for the US market, but not the rest of the world, as there was no need for that. The patented parts of the product were not produced in the US, so there was no US-based transaction of the protected property. The analogous situation would be that Sony was suing a distributor for distributing a movie whose copyright is still in place in the US, but has expired abroad on the basis that the DVD's that the movie is distributed on were produced in the US.
china makes cheap knockoffs and there rules make so they can get away with it / the JV rule where the ownership usually is 51%-49% with the foreign firm owning the majority.
Uh... a patent protects the market. It'd be fine for Samsung to make the devices overseas in a jurisdiction where the devices didn't infringe, as long as they didn't then import and sell them in the U.S.
Duh.
Isn't this a simple contractual dispute? Probably there is no such thing as a simple contractual dispute. It just doesn't seem to be about patents as it is about licensing. Look up "Apple"? Yeah yeah, trademarks, but the idea is there.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No patent protection on tech manufactured overseas?
Different things are patentable in different countries. For instance, America allows patents on software, and DNA sequences. Many other countries do not. There are also issues of jurisdiction. In this case the infringing product was sold in the UK, so maybe it should be resolved in British courts.
A Wisconsin federal jury found that Life Tech had willfully infringed and should pay $52 million in damages. But the district judge overseeing the case set aside that verdict after trial, ruling that since nearly all of the Life Tech product had been assembled and shipped from outside the US, the product wasn't subject to US patent laws.
It's infringement under US Patent law to make, use, or sell a patented invention in the US. However, it's also infringement to import a patented invention, made elsewhere, into the US. So you can't, for example, escape liability by saying "oh, we don't manufacture in the US. We manufacture in Mexico and then heave them over Trump's wall to waiting buyers." So, something had been assembled and shipped from outside the US would still be subject to US patent laws if it was being shipped to the US.
In this case, LifeTech manufactures their kits in the UK and sells them in Europe (and elsewhere). One component of the kit is manufactured in the US and shipped from the US to the UK, and the question is whether that component brings those sales under US patent law.
So, just to clarify, the summary should be "since nearly all of the Life Tech product had been assembled and shipped from outside the US to locations outside the US, the product wasn't subject to US patent laws."
"I think there's a term for that, and it might rhyme with "voter suppression"."
By who? The city has been Democrat controlled since I lived there in the 60s. Did the Republicans come in and take over the election?
Just another day in Paradise
The Michigan state house and senate are both Republican controlled. Who do you think approves the budget for new voting machines?
Michigan's aging voting machines a 'catastrophe waiting to happen'
They knew about this in advance.
Nope, no sig
The Michigan state house and senate are both Republican controlled. Who do you think approves the budget for new voting machines?
Michigan's aging voting machines a 'catastrophe waiting to happen'
They knew about this in advance.
Oh, and I suppose they collude to only put the good machines outside of the city. Seriously, wtf does that have to do with voter suppression? Tin foil hat much, or do you have actual evidence you can link to?
Just another day in Paradise