## Facts

- Keurig sold single-serve coffee brewers and owned patents with apparatus claims to the brewers and method claims for brewing using disposable cartridges.
- Keurig asserted only method claims, which required steps including piercing a disposable cartridge with inlet and outlet probes, admitting heated liquid, and extracting the beverage.
- Sturm sold unpatented “Grove Square” coffee cartridges designed for use in Keurig brewers, but did not sell brewers.
- Keurig alleged Sturm induced infringement by encouraging consumers to practice the patented brewing methods when using Sturm cartridges in Keurig brewers.
- Keurig’s brewers were sold through authorized sales without post-sale restrictions relevant to cartridge use.

## Issues

1. Whether Keurig’s authorized sale of its patented brewers exhausted Keurig’s patent rights in the asserted method claims for using those brewers.
2. If exhaustion applied, whether Sturm could be liable for inducement based on consumers’ post-sale use of Keurig brewers with Sturm cartridges.

## Decision

- The Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Sturm.
- Keurig’s authorized, unrestricted sale of patented brewers exhausted Keurig’s rights in the asserted method claims as practiced through use of those brewers.
- Because exhaustion rendered consumers’ post-sale use of the brewers noninfringing, Sturm could not be liable for inducement absent direct infringement.

## Legal Principles

- An authorized sale of a patented article exhausts the patentee’s rights to control the purchaser’s use of that article.
- Exhaustion can apply to method claims when the sold product embodies and practices the claimed method; the presence of method claims does not avoid exhaustion when the patentee sells a product that practices the invention.
- The “substantial embodiment” inquiry is not controlling where the patentee sells a product that is itself patented and practices the claimed invention.
- A patentee may not use method claims to impose post-sale control over how purchasers use a patented product with unpatented consumables.
- Inducement requires direct infringement; if exhaustion bars direct infringement by end users, inducement liability fails as a matter of law.

## Conclusion

The court held that Keurig’s authorized sale of its patented brewers exhausted its patent rights in the asserted brewing methods, so consumers’ use of those brewers with third-party cartridges could not infringe and Sturm therefore could not be liable for inducing infringement.


Keurig, Inc. v. Sturm Foods, Inc., 732 F.3d 1370 (Fed. Cir. 2013)