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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 37 > Issue 7 (1939)

 

Abstract

The patent laws of the United States grant to a patentee the "exclusive right to make, use, and vend the invention or discovery . . . throughout the United States and the Territories thereof . . . . " Much litigation has arisen over the extent of the monopoly thus granted a patentee, but even at this late date it is not too clearly defined. The question came up anew in the case of General Talking Pictures Corp. v. Western Electric Co., where the owner of a patent on a device used in sound reproduction and broadcast reception had licensed its manufacture and sale in two different fields, namely the commercial field of sound recording and reproducing-embracing talking picture equipment for theaters; and the private, or home, field-embracing radio broadcast reception, radio amateur reception, and radio experimental reception. The licenses granted restricted the respective licensees to one or the other of these two fields. One of the licensees, who was restricted to the home field, manufactured and sold the device to defendant for use in the commercial field. Defendant knew that the licensee had no authority to make or sell the device for that field, but both he and the licensee deliberately disregarded the restriction. The United States Supreme Court, with two justices dissenting, held that this was a violation of the patent, and that defendant was liable for infringement. The conflict between the majority and the dissenting justices presents squarely the issue of what restrictions may be placed on the manufacture, use, and sale of the device by the patentee, first, where the patentee himself manufactures and sells it, and, second, where he licenses others so to do. It is in an attempt to clarify this issue and the decisions applicable thereto that this comment is submitted.

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