Supreme Court rules sales in US and abroad extinguish seller's patent rights

[delete12345]

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that restrictions placed on a patented product could not be enforced through an infringement suit because an authorized sale exhausts all rights under the Patent Act.

So, one would ask, what does this mean?

According to the article,

When an item passes into commerce, it should not be shaded by a legal cloud on title as it moves through the marketplace. But a license is not about passing title to a product, it is about changing the contours of the patentee's monopoly: The patentee agrees not to exclude a licensee from making or selling the patented invention, expanding the club of authorized producers and sellers.

This implies the court has set a precedent legal ground, and is devastating to IP trolls as well as DMCA takedown abusers. It literally admonishes any TOS that tries to ban streaming, screen shots, reviews, content, etc.... of video games and it's a blow to companies by denying basic rights of the use of the product they purchased from them.

Update:

My initial assumption is incorrect. User @FAST6191 has pointed out the following, via post:

I read the source as well. Definitely a patent affair. Everything I have seen for let's plays and the like have been copyright and trademark related, and terms of service that spring from each of those. I doubt a judge/court would rush to make an equivalent ruling or use it as a base without serious further consideration either -- with the ways patents are supposed to work, and work in practice, this sort of thing I can see being a good move to prevent stifling of innovation, for copyright and especially trademark I am not sold as is.
For games the best I can see is those that make third party modded controllers are clear from the patent angle, should be easy enough to dodge basic trademarks (don't use the name/imply authorisation), don't know what would go for colours if there is a design patent/industrial design right thing involved and I can't especially see a copyright angle. DMCA I don't know and any "cheating" is an end user problem.

Source

 

[HamBone41801]

someone give this man the reporter tag!

 

[Garblant]

Good job! Let's just hope someone doesn't just copy this and add a picture to it...

 

[Silverthorn]

Good job! Let's just hope someone doesn't just copy this and add a picture to it...

What kind of picture would you even put for this ? A tribunal ?

 

[Plushie]

So, does this affect lets players in a positive way?

 

[Olmectron]

What kind of picture would you even put for this ? A tribunal ?

 

[the_randomizer]

So this means what?

 

[Olmectron]

So this means what?

It literally admonishes any TOS that tries to ban streaming, screen shots, reviews, content, etc.... of video games

 

[the_randomizer]

So in other words, companies can't get butthurt when people stream content of their games?

 

[TotalInsanity4]

W00t

 

[Veho]

I thought "patent" only applied to technological innovations. Are you sure they're not talking about copyright? Are they sure they're not talking about copyright? I am confus

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

So that means no Big N DMCA YouTube takedowns anymore?

 

[tech3475]

I suspect this wont mean anything until there is a court case about something like LPs, especially as copyright is different to a patent AFAIK.

Even then, I suspect abuses will still occur as we've seen among things which easily fall under fair use such as reviews.

 

[chartube12]

I thought "patent" only applied to technological innovations. Are you sure they're not talking about copyright? Are they sure they're not talking about copyright? I am confus

I see why your confused. He didnt quote the whole thing.

What this means once you purchase an item, it truly belongs to you. They can not stop you from making modifications to a pyshical product and ban you from using it. Now this doesn't you won't suddenly get unbanned from online services for using modified software. However it does mean you could lets say reverse engine the ram and the better cpu and gpu from the ps4 pro to work on the non-pros
Assuming thier isn't any software stopping you from doing so. Even then with enough legal power and money, you could in theory sue Sony to remove the software block. But no hacker or engineer has that much money.

 

[Silverthorn]

I see why your confused. He didnt quote the whole thing.

What this means once you purchase an item, it truly belongs to you. They can not stop you from making modifications to a pyshical product and ban you from using it. Now this doesn't you won't suddenly get unbanned from online services for using modified software. However it does mean you could lets say reverse engine the ram and the better cpu and gpu from the ps4 pro to work on the non-pros
Assuming thier isn't any software stopping you from doing so. Even then with enough legal power and money, you could in theory sue Sony to remove the software block. But no hacker or engineer has that much money.

That's what I understood from it. It clearly allows for more modifications and research to be done on any kind of device you purchase, but I'm not sure it applies to software and by extension streamers, let's players etc...

 

[Garblant]

So, if someone gets banned (after today) for having a hacked 3ds after THIS event, they could sue?

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

I'm more curious about the stream thing. So does this mean that rule enforced about that persona 5 game having something to do with 7 days or whatever, is that now part of this situation?

 

[Silverthorn]

So, if someone gets banned (after today) for having a hacked 3ds after THIS event, they could sue?

If they can prove that said modification didn't come with pirated content and was strictly homebrew stuff I guess they might be able to try and refer to this ruling.
Because even if you're allowed to modify your system, you can't put illegal stuff on it obviously.
Kind of the same idea that you can't modify a motorbike to go past certain speeds because that's illegal, but you can still make a lot of other improvements on it that the manufacturer might not want you to do.

 

[Garblant]

If they can prove that said modification didn't come with pirated content and was strictly homebrew stuff I guess they might be able to try and refer to this ruling.
Because even if you're allowed to modify your system, you can't put illegal stuff on it obviously.
Kind of the same idea that you can't modify a motorbike to go past certain speeds because that's illegal, but you can still make a lot of other improvements on it that the manufacturer might not want you to do.

I like how you think, shirtless Batman...

 

[Silverthorn]

I like how you think, shirtless Batman...

Happy to hear it.
Still, this ruling gives no guarantee that you would win an hypothetical case to get unbanned from online services, since those are, obviously, services, and not part of the actual product you've modified.
This ruling is more something of a :"If you sell something you have patents upon, you can't be pissed when someone makes a secondhand business off of those items by eventually modifying them(so long as it's nothing illegal of course)"
So what this would mean is that selling hacked consoles for examples (with no pirated content on it of course) would be fine and definitely in the scope of this ruling.
That's what I understand out of it anyway, I am no lawyer.