page_title: Dawson Chemical Co. v. Rohm & Haas Co.
section_title: Ruling of Fifth Circuit
hierarchical_section_title: Dawson Chemical Co. v. Rohm & Haas Co. / Background / Ruling of Fifth Circuit
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of existing WP file File:Justice Blackmun Official.jpg Other information detail of existing WP file - File:Justice Blackmun Official.jpg
context_page_description: Dawson Chemical Co. v. Rohm & Haas Co., 448 U.S. 176, is a 1980 5-4 decision of the United States Supreme Court limiting the patent misuse doctrine and explaining the scope of the 1952 amendment of the patent laws that resurrected the contributory infringement doctrine in the wake of the Mercoid cases. The Mercoid cases and a few predecessor cases had denied relief against patent infringement to patentees who were deriving revenue from the sale of unpatented products used as supplies for patented combinations or as components of patented combinations, even when the unpatented products were specially adapted for use with the patented combinations and even when they lacked any utility other than that use. The patentees used contributory infringement suits or threats of such suits to enforce their business model, which the Mercoid cases outlawed.
  In the Mercoid cases the Court had stated: "The result of this decision, together with those which have preceded it, is to limit substantially the doctrine of contributory infringement. What residuum may be left we need not stop to consider."
context_section_description: Rohm & Haas appealed to the Fifth Circuit, which reversed. It concluded that § 271(d) was intended to "provide for a patentee's right to exclude others and reserve to itself, if it chooses, the right to sell nonstaples used substantially only in its invention."
caption: Justice Harry A. Blackmun
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