384
Opinion of the Court
court, the federal court must give full faith and credit to the state-court judgment. See Murphy v. Gallagher, supra, at 884.
Finally, precedent supports the conclusion that the concerns underlying the grant of exclusive jurisdiction in § 27 are not undermined by state-court approval of settlements releasing Exchange Act claims. We have held that state-court proceedings may, in various ways, subsequently affect the litigation of exclusively federal claims without running afoul of the federal jurisdictional grant in question. In Becher v. Contoure Laboratories, Inc., 279 U. S. 388 (1929) (cited in Marrese, 470 U. S., at 381), we held that state-court findings of fact were issue preclusive in federal patent suits. We did so with full recognition that "the logical conclusion from the establishing of [the state law] claim is that Becher's patent is void." 279 U. S., at 391. Becher reasoned that although "decrees validating or invalidating patents belong to the Courts of the United States," that "does not give sacrosanctity to facts that may be conclusive upon the question in issue." Ibid. Similarly, while binding legal determinations of rights and liabilities under the Exchange Act are for federal courts only, there is nothing sacred about the approval of settlements of suits arising under state law, even where the parties agree to release exclusively federal claims. See also Brown v. Felsen, 442 U. S., at 139, n. 10 (noting that "[i]f, in the course of adjudicating a state-law question, a state court should determine factual issues using standards identical to those of § 17, then collateral estoppel, in the absence of countervailing statutory policy, would bar relitigation of those issues in the bankruptcy court"); Pratt v. Paris Gas Light & Coke Co., 168 U. S. 255, 258 (1897) (when a state court has jurisdiction of the parties and the subject matter of the complaint, the state court may decide the validity of a patent when that issue is raised as a defense).
We have also held that Exchange Act claims may be resolved by arbitration rather than litigation in federal court.
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