Document Type
Article
Abstract
This Article proceeds as follows. Part I provides relevant background on the law of patent exhaustion. Part II details the restricted sale at the Supreme Court and the conditional sale at the Federal Circuit. Part III discusses various self-replicating technologies and explains that not all self-replicating technologies are the same. Some are capable of easily reproducing an unlimited number of copies, while others may require a significant amount of resource and human intervention to replicate. Additionally, under certain circumstances, an article can be induced to make a similar, but not identical copy. An example of this is a DNA segment with mutations. Part IV details the seed cases at the Federal Circuit. Part V reviews the Supreme Court’s decision in Bowman v. Monsanto and discusses the potential impact of the ruling. Part VI discusses issues not decided in the Court’s opinion about whether the sale was authorized and the situation of inadvertent infringement. This Article concludes that making new copies of seeds falls outside the doctrine of patent exhaustion, which provides guidance for other self-replicating technologies, such as in the field of biotechnology.
Recommended Citation
Li Guo,
Self-Replicating Technologies: Do They Exhaust Patent Rights?,
18 J. Tech. L. & Pol'y
(2013).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jtlp/vol18/iss2/3