United States v. General Electric Co., 272 U.S. 476 (1926), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court holding (per Chief Justice Taft) that a patentee who has granted a single license to a competitor to manufacture the patented product may lawfully fix the price at which the licensee may sell the product.

The Court ruled: “The owner of an article, patented or otherwise, is not violating the common law or the Anti-Trust Act by seeking to dispose of his articles directly to the consumer and fixing the price by which his agents transfer the title from him directly to such consumer.”[8] The U.S. Department of Justice has been trying to overturn the 1926 GE decision almost since it was first handed down, and has twice seen it upheld by an equally divided 4–4 Supreme Court.

In Mallinckrodt, Inc. v. Medipart, Inc., the Federal Circuit relied on GE as the basis for its ruling that the patentee’s post-sale restrictions were not prohibited under the exhaustion doctrine.

But the Supreme Court’s reversal of that decision in Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc. has created uncertainty about the continuing authority of this line of precedent and has left this area of law unsettled.

[15] One line is represented by the Supreme Court's "exhaustion" cases such as United States v. Univis Lens Co.[16] and Quanta.

Early in 2015, the Federal Circuit called for en banc briefing and argument of whether the Mallinckrodt case should be overruled, in light of Quanta.