Supreme Court Docket Report -- Decision Alert - June 9, 2008

Key Words: Supreme Court, patent, patent exhaustion, Quanta, The False Claims Act, Allison Engine, qui tam, Phoenix Bond, mail fraud, RICO

Today the Supreme Court issued three decisions, described below, of interest to the business community.

Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., No. 06-937 (previously discussed in the September 25, 2007 Docket Report).

Under the longstanding doctrine of patent exhaustion, the first authorized sale of an article that practices a patent exhausts all patent rights in that article. The Supreme Court today reaffirmed that doctrine and held that the authorized sale of an article that substantially embodies a patent exhausts the patent holder's rights and prevents the patent holder from invoking patent law to control post-sale use of the article. The Court specifically rejected the argument that method claims—those that describe a process rather than a