In addition, the Court rejected Kimble's arguments that the Brulotte doctrine should be overturned because the practice it outlaws is not anticompetive and it does not violate the antitrust laws. The Court found this argument beside the point: "But Brulotte is a patent rather than an antitrust case," it insisted.Kimble, slip op. at 14. It also said, "The patent laws—unlike the Sherman Act—do not aim to maximize competition (to a large extent, the opposite)." Kimble, slip op. at 15. Under the Court's legal analysis, "[P]atent (not antitrust) policy gave rise to the Court's conclusion that post-patent royalty contracts are unenforceable—utterly 'regardless of a demonstrable effect on competition.'"Kimble, slip op. at 16. Earlier in its opinion, the Court explained that it was well-settled that it was "patent law's policy [to] establish[] a 'post-expiration . . . public domain' in which every person can make free use of a formerly patented product."Kimble, slip op. at 5. The Court also said that legal enforcement of agreements for post-patent expiration royalties conflicts with the "free market visualized for the post-expiration period" and so "runs counter to the policy and purpose of the patent laws." Kimble, slip op. at 16. The majority opinion is thus a strong rebuke to those analysts that seek to make the misuse doctrine a kind of petty antitrust law, in which antitrust principles of analysis dominate over policies unique to patent law; Kimble reaffirms many prior Supreme Court decisions that hold that misuse may be found in conduct that does not violate the antitrust laws.See, e.g., Zenith Radio Corp., 395 U.S. at 140 (holding that conditions for patent misuse may not violate Sherman or Clayton Acts); (patent may be misused contrary to purpose of patent laws without violating antitrust laws); Morton Salt Co., 314 U.S. at 491-94 (consideration of Clayton Act is unnecessary to determine whether patent misuse occurred).
