Talk:Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc.

Copyright issues
Orlady states: "I see that you apparently wrote the article in the law journal, but you do not appear to be the copyright holder. Wikipedia cannot publish copyrighted material."

Excuse me, but you are not correct. I have not assigned the copyright to anybody. Therefore, under US copyright law I own the copyright. See 17 USC sec. 201(a). As you recognize, the owner of copyright cannot infringe his own copyright. So far, the Quanta decision is too recent for any serious commentary on the decision to have been published, except for a piece in IEEE Micro and one in ''Eur. Intel. Prop. Rev.''--one of which you appear to have seen (and either of which I can cite to or quote--and maybe I can scare up some blog comments).

However, I would like to meet the requirements of Wikipedia, so I would greatly appreciate it if you would spell out in more detail what you would like to see. I will then try to carry out needed changes. PraeceptorIP (talk) 21:33, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Regardless of ownership of the words in the article, assertions in the article need to be supported by citations to published sources (such as the law journal article); they should not appear to be original inferences based solely on primary sources. --Orlady (talk) 21:17, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You're a lawyer and I'm not, so you can be expected to know far more about this issue than I do. However, I see that the article has a copyright notice identifying the copyright holder as "Thomson Reuters (Legal) Limited and contributors". If you did not release copyright to Thomson Reuters and can permit its use under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, you can follow the relevant instructions on in the templated notice on the article page.
 * Thompson Reuters is not legally well advised. Under US law, copyright can be assigned only by an instrument in writing. 17 USC sec 204(a). None exists here.

Now, if you could please give me the URL of where the release you want is located... or please use W.'s "[ ]" convention, and I'll click on the blue words. Then I will execute the release.

On the citations, would it be too much to ask if you could please put an indication wherever you want a footnote (Such as [citation?] or [who says so?] and I will supply one or try to. Thx. :-) -- PraeceptorIP (talk) 21:33, 25 November 2008 (UTC) --PraeceptorIP (talk) 23:00, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * For better or worse, I'm no expert on Wikimedia intellectual property protocols. I merely noticed the non-coincidental similarity between the law journal article and the Wikipedia article, so I flagged the article. For better info than I could possibly provide, see the heading "If you hold the copyright to this text and permit its use under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License" in the template in the article, and see FAQ/Copyright and WP:IOWN (which is part of the Copyright problems page). --Orlady (talk) 22:12, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Does this help? I have placed the notice of CC-BY license on which links to all of the articles listed (mostly pdfs), including this Quanta-LGE article, along with a statement that the CC-BY license applies to all listed materials (the page and the linked pages). All articles listed are of my authorship and I have assigned no copyright in any of them.
 * Yes, that helps. I removed the copyvio template, but got distracted and didn't report back here. (OOPS!) The article still needs better sourcing, and some rewriting to get more of an encyclopedia-like tone. It reads like a law journal article without the copious footnotes. As a result, the reader has no idea who is saying this stuff and on what basis. --Orlady (talk) 05:28, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * (outdent) Regardless of the copyright status of the material in this article, I would highly advise that you not include text directly copied from elsewhere, even if the copyright holder of the source has released it. While we may be free from legal concerns, copying directly from a source without attributing or using attribution marks is still poor writing and it reflects poorly on Wikipedia when people who aren't aware of this discussion see this article and see the source and associate Wikipedia with plagiarism.  I would strongly recommend that someone involved in this article rewrite it, using the law article as a reference to back up facts rather than as a direct source of text. &mdash;Politizer talk / contribs 15:50, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Some additional footnotes and citations added to lessen originality. --PraeceptorIP (talk) 21:52, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * More footnotes and citations. Removed template that needs annotation to decrease originality. It is now heavily annotated to secondary sources. PraeceptorIP (talk) 23:19, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Recent revisions by 222.151.202.177
222.151.202.177 (hereafter referred to as '177) has been extensively revising the thrust of this article to what may be a view associated with the former Administration's antitrust policy and, ultimately, the Chicago School of antitrust analysis. A number of statements have been made, such as "The Government appeared to delete this passage from its subsequent brief on the merits presumably because it recognized that there really is no anomaly once a determination is made as to whether or not the sale is authorized." in place of a statement comparing two versions of the Government's brief and then stating that no explanation was provided for the change between the briefs. The "appeared" and "presumably" in the passage by '177 is unsupported by any citation, and no documentary support for the statement exists. It is just an insupportable editorial comment.

Perhaps this could be discussed in an orderly manner on this or another Talk page. Perhaps a harmonization or synthesis of positions could then be devised, to the extent that citations will support the positions respectively articulated. I propose to revert the article to its pre-'177 state.

PraeceptorIP (talk) 02:06, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Explanation of Recent revisions by 222.151.202.177
'177 does not have a political agenda in these pages. Rather, '177 has been researching the issue of patent exhaustion for a client and noticed several, wait, not several but hundreds of, assertions by PraeceptorIP that simply are way off the mark. I only have time enough, and am willing only, to edit the first paragraph introduction for accuracy.

I deleted PraeceptorIP’s assertion “and checked a line of decisions in the Federal Circuit that had treated the doctrine as outmoded” because there is no support for this statement. First of all, the Supreme Court in Quanta did not “check” any Federal Circuit decisions in its opinion. If it did, then PraeceptorIP should identify which decisions and where in the Quanta opinion’s written text. And if PraeceptorIP cannot identify which decisions and/or where, then PraeceptorIP should at least explain and clarify what PraeceptorIP means by “checked”. Presently, PraeceptorIP’s assertion gives the impression that the Supreme Court did a full-scale review and examination of the Federal Circuit’s treatment of the patent exhaustion doctrine over the past 17-19 years going back to Mallinckrodt. It did not. The Supreme Court simply reversed the Federal Circuit’s holding that the exhaustion doctrine does not apply to method claims. That is it. The Supreme Court did not make any opinion, check, stop, reverse, examine, restrain, or whatever else PraeceptorIP could have possibly meant by “check”, every Federal Circuit decision on patent exhaustion in the past 17-19 years. The fact is, the Supreme Court only cited and distinguished the Federal Circuit’s lower decision in Quanta, not any other decision by the Federal Circuit. To say that the Supreme Court “checked a line of decisions” is grossly misleading.

Second, there is no support for the assertion that the Federal Circuit has treated the exhaustion doctrine as outmoded. This phrase is not only ambiguous and PraeceptorIP’s opinion (i.e. not factual), but also filled with political undertones, given the backdrop of the Quanta decision, which one can glean from the court citations I make later. In short, PraeceptorIP cites no legal authority or any support whatsoever for what PraeceptorIP means by “the Federal Circuit… had treated the doctrine as outmoded.”

I also deleted “Subject to some possible caveats, the effect was to restore the law to its pre-Mallinckrodt state” because this statement also is not supported by law or the Supreme Court’s analysis or conclusion in Quanta. In fact, this statement is so broad sweeping that any reasonable patent lawyer would simply laugh it off anyway. Notwithstanding the humor PraeceptorIP perhaps intended, this statement certainly does not deserve to be here unless it is supported by legal authority or commentary that at least provides some sort of explanation of why PraeceptorIP believes the Supreme Court’s opinion restores the law to its pre-Mallinckrodt state. In doing so, PraeceptorIP should explain what he means by “Subject to some possible caveats.” What caveats? The phrase and the ambiguity of “caveats” have no meaning without explanation or supporting authority.

Finally, by making this statement PraeceptorIP is basically saying the law goes back to the district court’s analysis in Mallinckrodt. This is an extreme stretch, and certainly is not supported in any publicly available document. Let's face it, if the Supreme Court was indeed rolling back the law to pre-1992, then certainly one could simply type in Quanta and Mallinckrodt in Google and should be able to find at least one, if not several, highly-reputed scholars making the same analysis and conclusions. There is none. This should suggest something to Wikipedia and its readers about the validity and credibility of PraeceptorIP's comments.

Here's some clarification for readers. The district court in Mallinckrodt (decided in 1990)(i.e. pre-Federal-Circuit-Mallinckrodt) concluded/held that “[W]e refuse to limit [the Supreme Court cases of] Bauer and Motion Pictures Patents to tying and price fixing not only because their language suggests broader application, but because there is a strong public interest in not stretching the patent laws to authorize restrictions on the use of patented goods.”This was the status, albeit even unclear then, of the patent exhaustion doctrine pre-Mallinckrodt. However, the Supreme Court in Quanta did not state, suggest or even hint that this was the effect of its opinion. The Supreme Court did not cite the district court’s case (decided in 1990), or even the Federal Circuit's Mallinckrodt case (decided in 1992); nor did the Supreme Court make any hints that it was addressing these two Mallinckrodt cases. If it did, PraeceptorIP should explain how it did so, so that readers can be more informed that what they are reading in Wikipedia is based on statements made by the Supreme Court or other courts and not a statement glowing with political motivation all over it.

In doing so, PraeceptorIP should also explain why the Supreme Court, all nine members, yes this was a 9-0 opinion, why the Supreme Court would “restore the law to its pre-Mallinckrodt state” while at the same time acquiesce in distinguishing its General Talking Pictures cases. The Supreme Court cited and described in its Quanta opinion the General Talking Pictures cases, and it is these cases that have reportedly (widespread public knowledge) caused the tension in the patent exhaustion arena. In Quanta, the Supreme Court said: “[In the] General Talking Pictures Corp. v. Western Elec. Co., 304 U.S. 175 [37 USPQ 357] (1938), and General Talking Pictures Corp. v. Western Elec. Co., 305 U.S. 124 [39 USPQ 329] (1938) [cases],... the manufacturer sold patented amplifiers for commercial use, thereby breaching a license that limited the buyer to selling the amplifiers for private and home use. The Court held that exhaustion did not apply because the manufacturer had no authority to sell the amplifiers for commercial use, and the manufacturer ‘could not convey to petitioner what both knew it was not authorized to sell.’” It is well-known, and PraeceptorIP would certainly agree, that the district court judge in the Mallinckrodt case said there was some tension between the General Talking Pictures cases and earlier Supreme Court precedent such as Bauer and Motion Pictures Patents. That tension is highlighted by my quotations above, or at least provides a foundation from which readers can build upon and seek further information on how the tension got started. The fact is, the tension still remains, and certainly there was no restoring back to pre-Mallinckrodt days in the Supreme Court’s Quanta opinion, as PraeceptorIP falsely states.

Based on my explanation above, Wikipedia and readers will easily be able to see that PraeceptorIP’s statements are a wholly incorrect statement/summary/analysis of the law. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.151.202.177 (talk) 08:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * 2/27. In response to unregistered, anonymous user 222.151.202.177's latest reverts and undo's.


 * It trivializes Quanta to claim that it is a decision holding that the exhaustion doctrine applies to method claims as well as to apparatus claims. That is the most minor part of the opinion, the rest of which deals with more general aspects of the doctrine that do not depend on the claim format at all. If that were all that the decision held it could have been a one-paragraph per curiam reversal.


 * Furthermore, the opinion raises (to any informed reader) many unanswered but important questions -- as the commentators quoted in the Impact and issues that the court did not consider section point out.


 * How should the opinion be understood? Is this a sub silentio overruling of Mallinckrodt? It surely is not a ringing endorsement, since it rejects (on very strained grounds, factually) the Federal Circuit's rather reasonable reliance on that decision as being applicable to the facts present. That the Court engaged in gymnastics to reach the conclusion that LGE's license to Intel had (contrary to the CAFC ruling) somehow failed to invoke GTP or Mallinckrodt surely suggests that few or no members of the Court were willing to stand up to reaffirm the soundness of Mallinckrodt. The Bush Administration's SG's blanket condemnation of Mallinckrodt in the Govt. amicus briefs certainly suggests that there is little general support for that decision, and implies that its days are numbered--even if it dodged the bullet this time.


 * PraeceptorIP (talk) 19:06, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Just some general notes until I read all of this in more detail: While I don't necessarily agree that this decision "checks" the line of Fed. Cir. cases, I also don't see any need for the Supreme Court to specifically opine, check, overrule or otherwise point out every case that its decisions affect. It's a SUPREME court...the assumption is that the opinion is generally applicable and that it should be the primary point of reference for the subject...lower court rulings be damned. If a lower court decision is inconsistent, it can be rightfully treated as overruled, whether it was mentioned or not (of course I wouldn't go around to those lower courts saying that, but that's more a matter of not offending the court). As far as this case only "only citing and distinguishing" the Fed. Cir.'s opinion in this case, I would find that it does indeed check every Fed. Cir. decision that says anything on the lines of "exhaustion doesn't extend to method claims," which I assume there are several at least. As to the Fed. Cir. treating the doctrine as outmoded, I'm not well-read enough (at least not yet), and a citation or two would help that since that statement has quite a lot of weight to it (e.g. it's like saying that the Fed. Cir. doesn't think the Graham Factors apply anymore and that the TSM Test is it...look what happened there). Now, as far as '177 staying anon., while I would prefer that the substantive analysis of the case be done by people with the right background, I think it is counter to Wikipedia's aims and goals to wholly discount what looks like relevant opinion simply because a user is anon. That being said, since this is a technical subject (in all senses of the word), I think it would be best if EVERYONE put forth references/citations to back up any controversial assertions, whether you're more of an "expert" in the area or not...may as well just strictly follow WP:V. Anyway, there's my two cents until I catch up with it all. Cquan (after the beep...) 23:06, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * 3PO A wp:3PO was requested here. I refactored the talk page per wp:TALK and various other policies.  Please be civil and only use this space to discuss changes to the article, not perceived motivation behind such changes.  Such issues should be addressed at the various noticeboards.  NJGW (talk) 21:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)