A year after dusting off a century-old Supreme Court precedent that bars the relitigation of certain patent infringement claims against manufacturers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this week extended it to the manufacturers’ customers.
The court held that under the so-called Kessler doctrine, when a court finds a product noninfringing, the patent holder is precluded from bringing new patent suits not only against the manufacturer of the product, but also the customers who use it.
