John Dragseth Quoted in Life Sciences Intellectual Property Review Article, "Life v Promega reaction: SCOTUS raises more questions"

John Dragseth (Principal) was recently quoted inLife Sciences Intellectual Property Review article, “Life v Promega reaction: SCOTUS raises more questions” on February 23, 2017.

John Dragseth, principal of law firm Fish & Richardson, told LSIPR that the vast majority of patent cases involve either infringing acts inside the US or the importing of infringing articles into the US, adding that there are very few cases on exports.

"This decision is huge in the cases where it does apply because it could wipe all liability for sales outside the US, but export cases are not a significant percentage of the overall caseload in US courts," said Dragseth.

According to Dragseth, the decision raises a couple of main issues that will have to be confronted in the future.

The main problem, he explained, is the understanding of what a component is when there is an assemblage of multiple things joined together into a single overall unit.

Dragseth added: "It likely depends on the context, which means we will never have a bright-line answer."

Dragseth questioned the court's definition in the ruling: "So do you just count up the number of exported components and divide it into the total number of components and determine that there is infringement if the number is greater than, say, 50%, 75%, 90%, or 95%?

"Or can you despite the court's language take into account the qualitative importance of the exported component to the overall product, as long as you also make sure there are at least two components?" he asked.

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