[$] Patent exhaustion and open source

When patents and free software crop up together, the
usual question is about patent licensing. Patent exhaustion —
the principle that patent rights don't reach past the first
sale of a product — is much
less frequently discussed. At FOSDEM 2019,
US lawyer Van Lindberg argued that several US court
decisions related to exhaustion, most of them recent but some less so,
could come together
to have surprising beneficial effects for free software. He was clear that the
argument applied only in the US but, since court systems tend to
look to each other for consistency's sake, and because Lindberg is an
engaging speaker, the talk was of great interest even in Brussels.