In zijn arrest van 9 januari 2007 concludeert het Amerikaanse Supreme Court dat een licentienemer de geldigheid van het in licentie gegeven octrooi mag aanvechten, evenals zijn verplichting tot het betalen van roayalties daarvoor, zonder dat hij eerst de licentie behoeft op te zeggen. Daardoor hoeft hij dus niet het risico te lopen dat achteraf - indien zijn standpunt niet gehonoreerd wordt - blijkt dat hij zich schuldig zou hebben gemaakt aan octrooi-inbreuk.
p. 15: Respondents assert that the parties in effect settled this dispute when they entered into the 1997 license agreement. When a licensee enters such an agreement, they contend, it essentially purchases an insurance policy, immunizing it from suits for infringement so long as it continues to pay royalties and does not challenge the covered patents. Permitting it to challenge the validity of the patent without terminating or breaking the agreement alters the deal, allowing the licensee to continue enjoying its immunity while bringing a suit, the elimination of which was part of the patentee’s quid pro quo. Of course even if it were valid, this argument would have no force with regard to petitioner’s claim that the agreement does not call for royalties because their product does not infringe the patent. But even as to the patent invalidity claim, the point seems to us mistaken. To begin with, it is not clear where the prohibition against challenging the validity of the patents is to be found. It can hardly be implied from the mere promise to pay royalties on patents “which have neither expired nor been held invalid by a court or other body of competent jurisdiction from which no appeal has been or may be taken,” App. 399. Promising to pay royalties on patents that have not been held invalid does not amount to a promise not to seek a holding of their invalidity.
Respondents appeal to the common-law rule that a party to a contract cannot at one and the same time challenge its validity and continue to reap its benefits, citing Commodity Credit Corp. v. Rosenberg Bros. & Co., 243
F. 2d 504, 512 (CA9 1957), and Kingman & Co. v. Stoddard, 85 F. 740, 745 (CA7 1898). Lear, they contend, did not suspend that rule for patent licensing agreements, since the plaintiff in that case had already repudiated the contract. Even if Lear’s repudiation of the doctrine of licensee estoppel was so limited (a point on which, as we have said earlier, we do not opine), it is hard to see how the common-law rule has any application here. Petitioner is not repudiating or impugning the contract while continuing to reap its benefits. Rather, it is asserting that the contract, properly interpreted, does not prevent it from challenging the patents, and does not require the payment of royalties because the patents do not cover its products and are invalid. Of course even if respondents were correct that the licensing agreement or the common-law rule precludes this suit, the consequence would be that respondents win this case on the merits—not that the very genuine contract dispute disappears, so that Article III jurisdiction is somehow defeated. In short, Article III jurisdiction has nothing to do with this “insurance-policy” contention.
We hold that petitioner was not required, insofar as Article III is concerned, to break or terminate its 1997 license agreement before seeking a declaratory judgment in federal court that the underlying patent is invalid, unenforceable, or not infringed. The Court of Appeals erred in affirming the dismissal of this action for lack ofsubject-matter jurisdiction. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the cause is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.