Syllabus
patentee’s decision to give a patented item up for whatever fee it decides is appropriate. The patentee may not be able to command the same amount for its products abroad as it does in the United States. But the Patent Act does not guarantee a particular price. Instead, the Patent Act just ensures that the patentee receives one reward—of whatever it deems to be satisfactory compensation—for every item that passes outside the scope of its patent monopoly.
This Court’s decision in Boesch v. Gräff, 133 U. S. 697, is not to the contrary. That decision did not, as Lexmark contends, exempt all foreign sales from patent exhaustion. Instead, it held that a sale abroad does not exhaust a patentee’s rights when the patentee had nothing to do with the transaction. That just reaffirms the basic premise that only the patentee can decide whether to make a sale that exhausts its patent rights in an item.
Finally, the United States advocates what it views as a middleground position: that a foreign sale exhausts patent rights unless the patentee expressly reserves those rights. This express-reservation rule is based on the idea that overseas buyers expect to be able to use and resell items freely, so exhaustion should be the presumption. But, at the same time, lower courts have long allowed patentees to expressly reserve their rights, so that option should remain open to patentees. The sparse and inconsistent decisions the Government cites, however, provide no basis for any expectation, let alone a settled one, that patentees can reserve rights when they sell abroad. The theory behind the express-reservation rule also wrongly focuses on the expectations of the patentee and purchaser during a sale. More is at stake when it comes to patent exhaustion than the dealings between the parties, which can be addressed through contracts. Instead, exhaustion occurs because allowing patent rights to stick to an already-sold item as it travels through the market would violate the principle against restraints on alienation. As a result, restrictions and location are irrelevant for patent exhaustion; what matters is the patentee’s decision to make a sale. Pp. 13–18.
816 F. 3d 721, reversed and remanded.
Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagen, JJ., joined. Ginsburg, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Gorsuch, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
