Supreme Court denies Certiorari in Quanta v. Ricoh

Does the unconditional sale of a patented item overseas result in a forfeiture of rights to enforce patent rights in the United States? Federal Circuit precedent has answered this question in the negative; see Harold C. Wegner, Post-Quanta, Post-Sale Patentee Controls, 7 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 682, 698 (2008).

So called "international patent exhaustion" was the focal point of a certiorari petition that was recently denied by the Supreme Court in Quanta v. Ricoh. The Supreme Court's consideration of certiorari petitions is now over until the Court resumes for the October 2009 Term. Would Obama's pick, Judge Sonia Maria Sotomayor, have made a difference in this vote? Probably not. Regardless of this vote, most scholars believe that the Supreme Court will eventually need to take a hard look at this issue. Professor Hal Wegner says that "[t]here has been a wealth of legal writing on the subject since 1974, particularly from Europe, where intra-European exhaustion took root in the European Court of Justice Centrafarm case that year. The topic attracted much attention in Asia in the late 1990's when the Japan Supreme Court issued its blockbuster opinion in the BBS case. Quanta may well be the wakeup call for consideration of this issue in the United States."