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| Authored by: bugstomper on Wednesday, July 25 2012 @ 03:00 PM EDT |
The article doesn't contain enough information to say one way or the other if
the principle applies in this case, but there is a legal principle that
licensing a patent to someone allows them to include it in things that they
sell.
For all we know that is what the arguments in court would be about: Whether the
patent license bought by the manufacturer of the microprocessor exhausted the
patent when the chip was sold, or whether the license was for certain devices
made using the microprocessor and so has to be purchased by whoever makes those
devices.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_exhaustion
"a common law patent doctrine that limits the extent to which patent
holders can control a patented product after an authorized sale. Under the
doctrine, once an unrestricted, authorized sale of a patented article occurs,
the patent holder’s exclusive rights to control the use and sale of that article
are exhausted, and the purchaser is free to use or resell that article without
further restraint from patent law"
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