Chillin'Competition

This is my fourth post of the day on interesting highlights that we should have covered. It only makes sense that it deals with exhaustion…

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If interested in patent issues related to antitrust you should pay attention to a decision issued a few days ago by the U.S. Federal Circuit in Lexmark v Impression products on patent exhaustion/ “first sale” doctrine (interestingly holding that the Supreme Court’s decision in Quanta, among others, had not overruled the Federal Circuit’s earlier decisions on the effect of foreign and conditional sales; for interesting amicus curiae from the AAI and others defending the opposite, see here). Its potential antitrust implications are significant. For interesting discussions on the case (I’ve ran out of blogging time by now), see here, here or here.

[Sponsored Ad: if interested about the antitrust/patent interface, then do attend the LCII conference on patent- hold up next week  organized by Nicolas Petit, who is currently doing quite a lot of patent-related work; see here for his latest paper]

And now that I mention IP and exhaustion I realize we never discussed on the blog the very interesting issues at stake in the Commission’s investigation into geo-blocking arrangements in the Sky-Hollywood Studios/ Pay-TV investigation in which I am representing the UK’s independent producers (the oral hearing took place last month).

Without disclosing anything I should not, let me just anticipate (or rather, bet) that exhaustion –or rather, non-exhaustion, will be the key to that case.