Federal Circuit Limits Patent Exhaustion Doctrine For Complementary Technology

In its 2013 decision in Keurig, Inc. v. Sturm Foods, Inc., the Federal Circuit held that a purveyor of coffee cartridges did not infringe Keurig's coffee brewing patents because Keurig had already made an unrestricted sale of its brewing machines to end users, such that any further use of those machines was protected by the doctrine of patent exhaustion. Yet, in its February 10, 2015 decision in Helferich Patent Licensing, LLC v. The New York Times Company, et al., the Federal Circuit held that, under certain circumstances, purveyors of media content to users of handheld mobile devices could be found liable for infringement even where the mobile device manufacturers had already paid for a license under the asserted patents. In reaching this conclusion, the Federal Circuit purported to harmonize long-standing principles of patent exhaustion, but many observers will likely view the Helferich decision as narrowing the scope of the defense. In particular, the Federal