The question in Impression Products v. Lexmark International is whether the big printer manufacturer can prevent Impression Products from buying used Lexmark cartridges overseas, refill them with ink and sell them in the U.S. A similar doctrine called patent exhaustion says patent owners can't exercise control over their products after the first "authorized" sale. Impression products bought them anyway from a reseller and imported them back into the U.S. Lexmark argued, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, that this violated U.S. patent laws, under which patent owners can prohibit the importation of their patented products. What Lexmark wants is for the court to read international price discrimination into the patent law and it isn't there, he said.

Source: Forbes March 21, 2017 21:46 UTC