It’s not mentioned because it’s utterly irrelevant. The question before the court was whether the Patent Act provided legal basis for Lexmark to enforce restrictions on the use of property even after its sale to others. The court found that it does not.
Even if I were convinced that Lexmark’s pricing scheme was a benevolent attempt to provide cheap toner for all; the implications of their having the ability to enforce whatever restrictions they deemed fit for the entire duration of the relevant patents would be broad and chilling. On the ‘de-facto abolition of “ownership” across most sectors’ scale of broad and chilling. Since I don’t even suspect Lexmark of having my print cost interests at heart; the ‘loss’ is even less relevant compared to the win.
Now, if Lexmark believes that some contracts are being violated, perhaps they have something; but their attempt to bring patent law into the matter is egregious.
I must have missed the part where the court forbade them from attempting to extend this offer in the future. Care to point out where it became illegal?
They denied the theory that patent law could be used as a means of putting legal muscle behind these conditions; but that’s in no way making them ‘illegal’.
You are correct. My understanding was that they ORIGINALLY tried to enforce this deal (cheaper cartridges if you promise not to refill them) as a contract, which was struck down already (though i admit, i am finding it hard to find citations for this right now, i could be wrong).
As a simple contract between two parties, no-resale seems perfectly legitimate (e.g. concert tickets), and i wonder why they didn’t just go with that…
I’m betting that has to do with enforcement of the contract. The buyer is the party who made the purchase and accepted the agreement not to refill the cartridge.
That means you’d have to go after individual purchasers as they violated their contract by sending the cartridges to get refilled. It would be much easier to target refilling services and shut them down. But they can shift blame to the consumer by offering up that they informed the consumer and that consumer went ahead anyway.
That means you are targeting consumers instead of the groups that facilitate the act which means you’ll always be behind when trying to handle the violations.
But when you shift cost of your product onto the consumables for it this is what you get.
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?
No it won’t. Lexmark probably priced the cheaper variety as high as they possibly could (without hurting the volume sold) and tried to charge a premium for the “priviledge” to refill the cartridges.
All this is gonna do is short term hit on their bottom line. It might force em to cut cost somewhere at some point down the line. Hard to see where that will come from as that stuff is already sourced dirt cheap somewhere in China. This might even godforbid make em invest in real innovation.
This is landmark decisions. Maybe now groups will be able to convince the Supreme Courts to strike down the hold that Farm Equipment Companies have on America’s Farmers. At this time, farmers CANNOT repair, modify, or run their own tractors and farm equipment WITHOUT PERMISSION of the Farm Equipment Companies (Deere, General Motors, Ford, etc.). If the Farmers do anything like that, those companies Will and HAVE Bricked the Farm Equipments’ software! Basically those companies are arguing the same point…that buying doesn’t mean owning…it merely means you are indefinitely leasing the equipment and the companies still OWN them. Those companies are holding America hostage!
All except the sanely priced refills by lexmark’s competitors, that is.
And the ‘cheap cartridges’ was marketing newspeak. They had ‘normal priced cartridges’, which you couldn’t refill. And as a diversion from the fact that they tried to tell you what to do with stuff that you bought you could pay them ‘protection money’ by buying the even more exorbitantly priced ‘restrictionless’ cartridges.
One thing that never got mentioned in “Futurama” as far as I can remember is that in 2999, hospitals and doctors will still be using pagers and fax machines.
I don’t think this decision mandated that all cartridges have to be refillable and that non-refillable ones are not illegal. It’s saying that we now have the choice to refill.
I’d suggest that most people probably don’t print all that much and rarely change their ink on their printers as a result. I’d guess most people are going to go with the cheaper option, because of that.
