(DRPSF ¶ 31; PRDSF ¶ 22.) After three years, either party had the right to convert Carus’s license into a nonexclusive license; prior to that time, the exclusive license could only be terminated for cause.
) On December 5, 2012, SES notified Carus that it was exercising its right to convert Carus’s exclusive license in SES’s technology into a nonexclusive license.
Therefore, Carus asserts that none of the SR Products can be considered a Licensed Product because they use only partial encapsulation technology.
) Notably, following SES’s conversion of Carus’s license from exclusive to nonexclusive, Carus only made a few more royalty payments before they ceased altogether.
... the circumstances of the formation of the License Agreement and the parties’ course of performance as a whole, the Court concludes that the parties understood the SR Products to be Licensed Products despite the fact that none ...
Nonetheless, “‘best efforts’ agreements are not per se unenforceable under Illinois law.” Maurice Sporting Goods, Inc. v. BB Holdings, Inc., No. 15-cv-11652, 2016 WL 4439948, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 23, 2016).
In Roboserve, it recognized that a clause requiring a hotel corporation to use “reasonable endeavors” to promote the plaintiff’s minibars was “somewhat vague” but nonetheless found that it still had meaning and was enforceable.
Nonetheless, since Illinois has not abandoned the new business rule, the Seventh Circuit has continued to apply it in cases governed by Illinois law.