Intellectual Property (IP) Transactions Cases Practice Test

The key idea is patent exhaustion: once a patentee sells a patented item with authorization, their patent rights in that item are exhausted. That means the buyer gets the right to use, resell, or otherwise dispose of that specific item without infringing the patent. If the seller tries to impose post-sale restrictions to control what the buyer can do with the item, those restrictions cannot be used to extend patent rights after the sale. In other words, resale or reuse of the authorized-sold item is generally not an infringement because the patent right has been exhausted. There can be other legal avenues (like contract terms or antitrust considerations) for restrictions that go beyond patent rights, but they don’t sustain a patent infringement claim for the resale itself.