Life Technologies Corporation v. Promega Corporation

Promega Corporation (plaintiff) held an exclusive license to a patent covering a five-component genetic testing kit; Life Technologies Corporation (defendant), sublicensed to manufacture and sell kits using the patent worldwide in certain law-enforcement fields, made four components in the United Kingdom but manufactured the fifth component, a Taq polymerase enzyme, in the United States before shipping it to the U.K. for assembly. Promega sued, alleging that shipping the single U.S.-made component for kits sold in clinical and research markets outside the licensed field violated § 271(f)(1)'s prohibition on supplying "all or a substantial portion" of a patented invention's components from the U.S. for overseas assembly. The jury found for Promega, but the trial court granted Life Technologies judgment as a matter of law, reasoning a single component couldn't be "all or a substantial portion"; the Federal Circuit reversed, finding one component sufficed if qualitatively important, and Life Technologies appealed.