Justice Breyer's Bicycle Theory
When you've been a Supreme Court justice for more than a decade and you've heard all sorts of interesting (and not so interesting) cases, sometimes it helps to shake things up. That's what happened on Wednesday when Justice Stephen Breyer -- who his known for his pragmatism -- attempted to get his arms around a high-tech patent spat.
The case, which you can read about in Technology Daily's PM Edition, involves the complex "patent exhaustion" doctrine, which holds that a patentee or licensee cannot assert patent rights after the first sale or license to sell an article that embodies the patented invention.
In questioning attorneys for the companies at odds in the litigation, Breyer used the manufacturing, selling and repurposing of bicycle parts as an easier to understand example. He explained that he knows how a bicycle works but does not have a detailed knowledge of the inner workings of a computer chip.
At one point, Breyer's thought-provoking illustration elicited a wave of laughter from the chamber when he painted a mental picture of 90 patent examiners giving chase to the black robed one perched atop a Huffy or BMX. I started to zone out when Carter Phillips, one of the attorneys arguing the case, tried to change up the bicycle model for that of a StairMaster®.
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