Does a patent confer a monopoly?

There was a further comment on the Supreme Court statement: A patent confers a monopoly. LBE had written in endnote 2 of his article Supreme Court Festo; Equivalents Still Limited (Intellectual Property Today, July 2002):

FESTO CORPORATION v. SHOKETSU KINZOKU KOGYO KABUSHIKI, 62 USPQ2d 1705 (2002), 2002 WL 1050479. The court refers to a patent as a monopoly and certain text is relevant to arguments made by Lawrence Lessig [Supreme Court: "The monopoly is a property right; and like any property right, its boundaries should be clear."] Patents are rights to exclude.

IPBiz suggests that anyone who thinks patents confer monopoly rights should review the history of the radio patent wars on blocking patents, or contemplate "what monopoly rights" Chester Carlson enjoyed during the lifetime of his basic patents on xerography.


Note also the following portion of endnote 1 of the July 2002 IPT article:

See also L. B. Ebert, Pioneering, Innovation, and Festo Last Looks," Int. Prop. Today, 12-14 (June 2002) which predicted the outcome of the two Festo questions. Of relevance to endnote 11 in L. B. Ebert, "Abstracting Festo: Which Line to Draw," IPT, 44-46 (Oct. 2001) [about the Schon work on superconducting oxidized buckyballs], note M. Stroh, "Darling of the physics world now suspected of fraudulent research," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (June 16, 2002), K. Chang, "A sudden host of questions on Bell Labs breakthroughs," NY Times, Fl (May 28, 2002); R. F. Service, "Pioneering physics papers under suspicion for data manipulation," Science, 2002 May 24, 296, 1376-1377. Separately, see June 5, 2002 issue of JAMA on not believing everything you read.