On 2/22/97, Jamie Powers <Jamie[_at_]srgpe.com> wrote:
>
> This discussion of contract trumping statute on IP rights might be
> aided by a review of Aronson v. Quick Point Pencil where the U.S.
> Supreme Court posed the question as: "Whether federal patent law
> preempts state contract law so as to preclude enforcement of a
> contract to pay royalties to a patent applicant . . . if a patent
> is not granted."
>
> Guess who still had to pay the agreed royalties?
>
> Contracts won this bout.
Not exactly -- under the facts in Aronson, there was no conflict with federal patent policy, because nothing was removed from the public domain (indeed, the reason the licensee wanted to get out of the contract was that it was paying royalties for an unpatentable device that its competitors were all freely copying).
If you want to read some *really* instructive cases on this point, look at Lear v. Adkins and Brulotte v. Thys. :)
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