In a sizable decision for Quanta Computer Inc. in Quanta v. LG Electronics, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled to uphold the doctrine of patent exhaustion, which states that once an entity licenses its patent rights to another, it no longer has control over how the purchaser uses it.

The case involved LG Electronics of South Korea and customers of Intel products. LG licensed the patents to Intel, but then claimed royalties from Intel customers who used Intel and non-Intel products together. In essence, LG tried to double-dip.

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