Page:Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark Int’l, Inc. Decision.pdf/13

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beyond the first sale would clog the channels of commerce, with little benefit from the extra control that the patentees retain. And advances in technology, along with increasingly complex supply chains, magnify the problem. See Brief for Costco Wholesale Corp. et al. as Amici Curiae 7–9; Brief for Intel Corp. et al. as Amici Curiae 17, n. 5 (“A generic smartphone assembled from various high-tech components could practice an estimated 250,000 patents”).

This Court accordingly has long held that, even when a patentee sells an item under an express restriction, the patentee does not retain patent rights in that product. In Boston Store of Chicago v. American Graphophone Co., for example, a manufacturer sold graphophones—one of the earliest devices for recording and reproducing sounds—to retailers under contracts requiring those stores to resell at a specific price. 246 U. S. 8, 17–18 (1918). When the manufacturer brought a patent infringement suit against a retailer who sold for less, we concluded that there was “no room for controversy” about the result: By selling the item, the manufacturer placed it “beyond the confines of the patent law, [and] could not, by qualifying restrictions as to use, keep [it] under the patent monopoly.” Id., at 20, 25.

Two decades later, we confronted a similar arrangement in United States v. Univis Lens Co. There, a company that made eyeglass lenses authorized an agent to sell its products to wholesalers and retailers only if they promised to market the lenses at fixed prices. The Government filed an antitrust lawsuit, and the company defended its arrangement on the ground that it was exercising authority under the Patent Act. We held that the initial sales “relinquish[ed]. . . the patent monopoly with respect to the article[s] sold,” so the “stipulation. . . fixing resale prices derive[d] no support from the patent and must stand on the same footing” as restrictions on unpatented goods. 316 U. S., at 249–251.