The U.S. Supreme Court clarified a murky area of the law—and dished out bad news for copyright holders—when it ruled last year that U.S. copyright owners can’t block U.S. resales of “gray market” products that are manufactured and first sold abroad. Some importers would like to see the same logic extended to products protected by U.S. patents, but so far the courts haven’t been willing to oblige.
A federal judge in Cincinnati refused last week to dismiss a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Lexmark International Inc. against a company that sold remanufactured inkjet printer cartridges purchased overseas to customers in the United States. Siding with Lexmark’s lawyers at Banner & Witcoff, U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett ruled that it’s up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to decide whether the Supreme Court’s March 2013 decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. should also apply to patent law.
