Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC

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Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 31, 2015 Decided June 22, 2015
Full case name	Kimble et al. v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, successor to Marvel Enterprises, Inc.
Docket no.	13-720
Citations	576 U.S. 446 (more) 135 S. Ct. 2401; 192 L. Ed. 2d 463; 2015 U.S. LEXIS 4067; 83 U.S.L.W. 4531; 114 U.S.P.Q.2d 1941
Holding
Contracts that restrict free public access to formerly patented, as well as unpatentable, inventions are unenforceable. Earlier decision in Brulotte v Thys Co. affirmed.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Case opinions
Majority	Kagan, joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor
Dissent	Alito, joined by Roberts, Thomas

Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U.S. 446 (2015), is a significant decision of the United States Supreme Court for several reasons. One is that the Court turned back a considerable amount of academic criticism of both the patent misuse doctrine as developed by the Supreme Court and the particular legal principle at issue in the case. Another is that the Court firmly rejected efforts to assimilate the patent misuse doctrine to antitrust law and explained in some detail the different policies at work in the two bodies of law. Finally, the majority and dissenting opinions informatively articulate two opposing views of the proper role of the doctrine of stare decisis in US law.

The narrow issue in Kimble v. Marvel was whether the Court should overrule the 50-year-old proposition in Brulotte v. Thys Co., 379 U.S. 29 (1964), that a patent license agreement requiring royalties for the period beyond the life of the licensed patent was unenforceable under the Supremacy Clause, state contract law notwithstanding, because it involved a misuse of patent rights. The Supreme Court in the Kimble case refused to overrule Brulotte and its doctrine against post-expiry royalties.