When it comes before the U.S. Supreme Court this month, Independent Ink Inc. of Gardena, Calif., near Los Angeles, will make a simple request. The small, 35-person firm will ask for the right to compete against a Fortune 200 multinational that earned more than $12 billion last year.
The huge multinational, on the other hand, will be asking the court for protection against this competition. And to get that protection, Illinois Tool Works Inc. of Glenview, outside Chicago, will be requesting that the court overrule a 40-year-old precedent.
At stake in Illinois Tool Works Inc. v. Independent Ink Inc., No. 04-1329, is not just hundreds of millions of dollars that Independent Ink might win in litigation. The ruling could change significantly the way many patent and copyright infringement suits are conducted—making such suits faster, cheaper and easier for intellectual property rights owners to win.
The ruling could also strengthen IP rights owners’ business prospects by allowing them to tie the sale of their patented or copyrighted products to the sale of other goods, thus fencing out competition for those goods.
That, Independent Ink says, runs head-on into the Sherman Antitrust Act, placing this case at the intersection of intellectual property and antitrust law. Arguments are scheduled for Nov. 29.
Details here from the ABA Journal.