A Roadmap for Eliminating Patents in Open Source

Of course, modern US patent rights have been around now for two centuries and in that time manufacturers have tried many ingenious schemes to get around the exhaustion doctrine profitably, all of which have so far failed in the courts, leading to quite a wealth of case law on the subject. The idea that Exhaustion didn’t have to involve an exchange of something (so became authorized transfer instead of first sale) in US law is comparatively recent, dating to a 2013 decision LifeScan v Shasta where one point won on appeal was that giving away devices did exhaust the patent. This looks to be wrong, however; the Supreme Court decision is clear: once a FRAND Patent pool holder distributes any code, that distribution is an authorized transfer within the meaning of the first sale doctrine and all FRAND pool patents exhaust at that point.

Source: blog.hansenpartnership.com