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''Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC'', 576 U.S. __, 135 S. Ct. 2401 (2015), is a 2015 decision of the United States Supreme Court significant for several reasons. One is that the Court turned back a considerable amount of academic criticism of both the patent misuse doctrine as developed by the Supreme Court and the particular legal principle at issue in the case. Another is that the Court firmly rejected efforts to assimilate the patent misuse doctrine to antitrust law and explained in some detail the different policies at work in the two bodies of law. Finally, the majority and dissenting opinions informatively articulate two opposing views of the proper role of the doctrine of ''stare decisis'' in US law. The narrow issue in ''Kimble v. Marvel'' was whether the Court should overrule the 50-year-old proposition in ''Brulotte v. Thys Co.'', 379 U.S. 29 (1964), that a patent license agreement requiring royalties for the period beyond the life of the licensed patent was unenforceable under the Supremacy Clause, state contract law notwithstanding, because it involved a misuse of patent rights. The Supreme Court in the ''Kimble'' case refused to overrule ''Brulotte'' and its doctrine against post-expiry royalties. ==Criticism of ''Brulotte''== In 1964 the Supreme Court decided ''Brulotte v. Thys Co.'', in which it held that a contract to pay patent royalties beyond the expiration of the patent was unenforceable. The decision was widely criticized in academic circles and by the patent bar, as well as in lower court decisions. The thrust of the criticism was that the patent misuse doctrine should be based on antitrust law principles, and that conduct without a significant anticompetitive effect should not be proscribed. In its opinion in the ''Kimble'' case, the Supreme Court listed some of the criticism suggesting that the ''Brulotte'' decision was wrong and should be overruled:〔561 U.S. at - n.3.〕 * ''Scheiber v. Dolby Labs., Inc.'', 293 F. 3d 1014, 1017–1018 (CA7 2002) (Posner, J.) (''Brulotte'' has been "severely, and as it seems to us, with all due respect, justly criticized . . . However, we have no authority to overrule a Supreme Court decision no matter how dubiousits reasoning strikes us, or even how out of touch with the Supreme Court’s current thinking the decision seems") * Ayres & Klemperer, ''Limiting Patentees’ Market Power Without Reducing Innovation Incentives: The Perverse Benefits of Uncertainty and Non-Injunctive Remedies'', 97 985, 1027 (1999) ("Our analysis . . . suggests that Brulotte should be overruled"). Other criticism of ''Brulotte'' includes the following: * Harold See and Frank M. Caprio, ''The Trouble with Brulotte: The Patent Royalty Term and Patent Monopoly Extension'', 1990 Utah L. Rev. 813 (1990). * Note, ''Patents: Supreme Court Holds Post-Expiration Royalty Agreements Unlawful Per Se'', 1965 L.J. 836, 841 (1965) ("Thus, the ambiguity in ''Brulotte'', so long as it remains unresolved, may greatly limit marketing available to ()."). * Paul Goldstein, ''Federal System Ordering of the Copyright Interest'', 69 49, 70 (1969) (" In the presence of only the most attenuated federal interest, and absent any generalized public concern, the ''Brulotte'' rule gives to the federal courts a broad and probably illegitimate supervisory power over state administration of private contracts."). * Richard A. Posner. ''Transaction Costs and Antitrust Concerns in the Licensing of Intellectual Property'', 4 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 325, 332 (2005) ("''Brulotte'' does not reflect the Supreme Court's current thinking about competition and monopoly, but it will continue to bind the lower courts until the Supreme Court decides to overrule it."). * In addition, decisions of the Federal Circuit have held that a patent cannot be held to have been misused without a showing of substantial anticompetitive effects, except where the Supreme Court has expressly ruled otherwise.〔See, e.g., ''Princo v. ITC'', 616 F.3d 1318, 1328 (Fed. Cir. 2010) ("impermissibly broadened the physical or temporal scope of the patent grant and has done so in a manner that has anticompetitive effects"); ''Mallinckrodt, Inc. v. Medipart, Inc.'', 976 F.2d 700, 706 (Fed. Cir. 1992) ("To sustain a misuse defense involving a licensing arrangement not held to have been per se anticompetitive by the Supreme Court, a factual determination must reveal that the overall effect of the license tends to restrain competition unlawfully in an appropriately defined relevant market."); ''Windsurfing Int'l Inc. v. AMF, Inc.'', 782 F.2d 995, 1001-02 (1986).〕 Other commentators, however, have rejected adoption of an antitrust lens for analysis of patent misuse: * Robin C. Feldman, (''The Insufficiency of Antitrust Analysis for Patent Misuse'' ), 55 L.J. 399, 422 (2003) ("the antitrust rule of reason focuses on one particular issue: the impact on competition, rather than all possible equitable considerations" relevant to patent policy); ''id''. at 448 ("A behavior that retards the progress of science would be of concern to patent policy" but antitrust tests are not attuned to this type of problem.") * Marshall Leaffer, (''Patent Misuse and Innovation'' ), 10 J. L. 142, 148 (2010) ("patent misuse should transcend the contours of traditional antitrust law and should concern itself with policy of patent law and the effect on innovation"). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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