Once a given product has been sold under the authorization of the IP owner, the reselling, rental, lending and other third party commercial uses of IP-protected goods in domestic and international markets are governed by the principle.
[2] While there is a "fairly broad consensus" throughout the world that patent exhaustion "applies at least within the context of the domestic market",[1] "[t]here is less consensus as to what extent the sale of an IP protected product abroad can exhaust the IP rights over this product in the context of domestic law.
The rules and legal implications of the exhaustion largely differ depending on the country of importation, i.e. the national jurisdiction.
The importation, in a country that recognizes the concept of international exhaustion, of a product sold in a foreign country with the authorization of the IP right owner cannot be prevented by the IP right owner.
[3] The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), an international agreement administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO), does not address the issue of exhaustion of intellectual property rights.