The patent owner is granted the exclusive right to prevent others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the patented invention. See 35 U.S.C. § 154. Prior to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) accompanying the Uruguay Round GATT, patents were issued for a non-renewable period of seventeen years, measured from the date of issuance. Under current statutory provisions, the term of protection for utility patents is twenty years measured from the date of filing (35 U.S.C. § 154), with extensions of up to five years permitted for drugs, medical devices, and additives (35 U.S.C. § 156). The current term of protection for design patents is fourteen years from the date of filing. See 35 U.S.C. § 173.
A long-established doctrine of patent law, the exhaustion doctrine, entitles a patentee to a single royalty per patented device. This rule aims to prevent patentees from collecting a series of royalty payments for a single invention. The Supreme Court affirmed this rule in its 1942 decision, United States v. Univis Lens Co., 316 U.S. 241. In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court reconsidered the contemporary relevance of the doctrine in Quanta Computers v. LG Electronics (06-937). In a unanimous decision, the Court reaffirmed the doctrine, holding that the exhaustion doctrine prevents a patentee from bringing an action against a third party purchaser after having already received a royalty payment from the initial sale.