Aronson v. Quick Point Pencil Co., 440 U.S. 257 (1979), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that federal patent law does not preempt state contract law so as to preclude enforcement of the contract.
Description.
The challenged law required the licensee of a patent-pending invention to pay a royalty to the inventor even if the patent was ultimately denied. The Supreme Court upheld the law because it did not cause anyone to decline to seek a patent or try to hide their disclosed inventions after the fact.