"[7] The Court dismissed Henry's arguments that holding the licensing restrictions permissible would lead to great harm to the public: For the purpose of testing the consequence of a ruling which will support the lawfulness of a sale of a patented machine for use only its connection with supplies necessary for its operation, bought from the patentee, many fanciful suggestions of conditions which might be imposed by a patentee have been pressed upon us.

These and other illustrations are used to indicate that this method of marketing a patented article may be carried to such an extent as to inconvenience the public and involve innocent people in unwitting infringements.

But these illustrations all fail of their purpose, because the public is always free to take or refuse the patented article on the terms imposed.

And if it be that the ingenuity of patentees in devising ways in which to reap the benefit of their discoveries requires to be restrained, Congress alone has the power to determine what restraints shall be imposed.

Arguments based upon suggestions of public policy not recognized in the patent laws are not relevant.

"[10] He strongly objected to the doctrine "that a patentee, in selling the machine covered by his patent, has power by contract to extend the patent so as to cause it to embrace things which it does not include; in other words, to exercise legislative power of a far-reaching and dangerous character.

"[12] White then listed a catalog of dangerous results of the ruling: White explained that these evils were not imaginary but were already becoming prevalent, as a result of the widespread following that had attached to the Sixth Circuit's decision in the Button-Fastener case:[14] The illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely.

That they are not imaginary is now a matter of common knowledge, for, as the result of a case the Button-Fastener case decided some years ago by one of the circuit courts of appeal, which has been followed by cases in other circuit courts of appeal, to which reference will hereafter be made, what prior to the first of those decisions on a sale of a patented article was designated a condition of sale, governed by the general principles of law, has come in practice to be denominated a license restriction.

... As the transformation has come about in practice since the decisions in question, the conclusion is that it is attributable as an effect caused by the doctrine of those cases.

And, as I have previously stated, it is a matter of common knowledge that the change has been frequently resorted to for the purpose of bringing numerous articles of common use within the monopoly of a patent when otherwise they would not have been embraced therein, thereby tending to subject the whole of society to a widespread and irksome monopolistic control.

[15]White argued that this legal development was contrary to the exhaustion doctrine on which many earlier Supreme Court cases had been based, including Adams v.

[16] White maintained that the Button-Fastener case and the court of appeals decisions following it were all wrongly decided and should be overruled.

Dick decision "spurred congressional action" to pass section 3 of the Clayton Act in 1914, which prohibited tie-ins of patented or unpatented products when the effect was to substantially lessen competition in a market.

Dick case's reasoning that a sale on condition (i.e., the product was sold subject to a restriction on its use) was not within the exhaustion doctrine was revived in the Federal Circuit in Mallinckrodt, Inc. v. Medipart, Inc.[20] That case apparently was overruled sub silentio in Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc.[21] However, an en banc decision of the Federal Circuit refused to overrule Mallinckrodt and instead reaffirmed it.