Transcore v. Electronic Transaction Consultants Corp.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that the plaintiff’s covenant not to sue in favor of the defendant “authorized” the defendant’s sales to its downstream customers “and, accordingly, exhausted [the plaintiff’s] patent rights in the products sold.”
• holding that California law governed its interpretation of the parties’ settlement agreement
• holding that similar language in a settlement agreement to be unambiguous. The language reads as: “This Covenant Not to Sue shall not apply to any other patents issued as of the effective date of this Agreement or to be issued in the future.”
• finding that “the parties' intent with respect to downstream customers is of no moment in a patent exhaustion analysis,” as opposed to an implied license analysis
• emphasizing that for exhaustion purposes, “authorization” turns not on how an agreement characterizes the rights afforded to a seller, but on whether that agreement ultimately shields the seller from an infringement claim
• “[Licensee’s] rights under its implied license to the [asserted patent] are neces sarily coextensive with the rights it received in the ... license agreement.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).