by Dennis Crouch
The Federal Circuit has affirmed an $84.9 million antitrust patent-misuse judgment against a patent owner who conditioned licenses on exclusive purchase of unpatented products, finding that the products were "staple goods" with substantial non-infringing uses and therefore outside the Congressionally created safe harbor 35 U.S.C. § 271(d). Ingevity Corp. v. BASF Corp., No. 2024-1577 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 11, 2026) (Lourie, J.). Tying cases have used to be much more common in patent litigation, but largely went dormant after the Supreme Court's decision in Illinois Tool Works Inc. v. Independent Ink, Inc., 547 U.S. 28 (2006), which eliminated the presumption that patents confer market power.
In this essay, I look at the particular dispute between Ingevity and BASF and also the historic trajectory of this sort of antitrust liability for improper extension of patent rights.
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