Does the future of patent law portend compulsory licensing by judicial fiat?
I hope not, but that is one risk created by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Ebay case and by the actions of some courts who have denied permanent injunctions in successful infringement cases. But the fact that a permanent injunction does not issue after a judgment of infringement does not mean that the infringer (by losing the case) obtains a right to use the patent owner’s property in the future. It simply means that the court declined to add the coercive force of an injunction to the statutory right to exclude as to future infringing conduct.
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