I wonder how this even made it to the Supreme Court, if it’s really about consumers refilling ink/toner cartridges. Of course if you invent a CMYK cartridge that can print more than a couple of pages before it refuses to print black (of which there is plenty of ink left) anymore just because it thinks it ran out of yellow ink, and you get a patent on that, then other manufacturers can’t manufacture and sell them. But that has absolutely nothing to do with an end-user (or their designated agent) refilling them. And if the end-user wants to refill them with orange ink instead of yellow, that again has nothing to do with a patent.
I guess if another manufacturer tried to sell a CMOK cartridge with orange instead of yellow, but using the same patented ‘keep printing other colors even when one mistakenly thinks it ran out’ technology, that might conceivably be a patent infringement. But if it’s about consumers refilling ink/toner, how was that not thrown out immediately?
