[Patents] What are the limits of patent owner's privileges?

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> Can the patent owner regulate the aspects such as sale, distribution and use
> of a thing, that has some patented parts, and thus, limiting the free trade?

There is a principle of exhaustion of rights: once someone has produced
a car under a patent license and brought the car on the market, the patent
owner can no longer restrict what the buyer does with the car.

But of course the patent owner could refuse to license and instead produce
special cars for a rental service that operates only under the terms
dictated by him.

Shrink-wrap car/seed purchase contracts should also be conceivable.  In
that case the buyers might breach of a contract, even if not infringing on
a patent.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch                                         http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation      http://swpat.ffii.org/
98000 signatures against software patents       http://www.noepatents.org/