Microsoft v. AT&T

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Microsoft v. AT&T

Argued February 21, 2007
Decided April 30, 2007

Full case name:	Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp.
Docket #:	05-1056

Citations:	550 U.S. ___

Prior history:	Judgment for appellee, 414 F. 3d 1366. On Writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

Holding

Because Microsoft does not export from the United States the copies of Windows installed on the foreign-made computers in question, Microsoft does not "suppl[y] ... from the United States" "components" of those computers, and therefore is not liable under §271(f) as currently written. Pp. 7–19.

Court membership

Chief Justice: John Glover Roberts, Jr.
Associate Justices: John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito

Case opinions

Majority by: Ginsburg
Joined by: Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter
Concurrence by: Alito
Joined by: Thomas, Breyer
Dissent by: Stevens
Roberts took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Microsoft v. AT&T

Microsoft v. AT&T, 550 U.S.___ (2007), was a United States (U.S.) Supreme Court case that restricts the extraterritorial reach of U.S. patent law. A section of U.S. patent law, 35 U.S.C. § 271(f), lets the holder of a U.S. patent block the export from the U.S. of components that can be assembled to produce a device which violates that patent, even though the patent is not enforceable in the place where that assembly takes place. The court held that a master software disk that is exported and then used to install software at the point of assembly is not a component within the meaning of the law.

In accordance with the general principle that U.S. law stops at U.S. borders, the ruling effectively prevents holders of U.S. software patents from enforcing those patents in other countries unless they hold a valid patent there.