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Printer United States Your Rights Online

Copyright Office Rules Against Lexmark 359

Posted by timothy from the bout-time dept.
SparkyTWP writes "'The United States Copyright Office has ruled in favour of Static Control Components, of Sanford, N.C., saying that its microchips do not contravene the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.' This was in regard to SCC making microchips that imitated Lexmark's in remanufactured printer cartridges. It appears Lexmark won't be able to do anything about third-party cartridges."
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Copyright Office Rules Against Lexmark More

Copyright Office Rules Against Lexmark

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  • Doh! (Score:5, Redundant)

    by eln ( 21727 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:40PM (#7339143)
    Well, this is going to do some serious damage to the business models of virtually every printer company out there.

    • Re:Doh! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rootofevil ( 188401 )
      only if generic cartridge manufacurers decide to stop putting the shittiest ink ever in their cartridges.

    • Re:Doh! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:43PM (#7339182) Homepage Journal
      Exactly, most printer companies, especially in the low end area, depend on making $$$ off of people when they buy their uber-expensive cartridges. Personally I would like to see a company make an easy-to-refill inkjet cartridge and sell me the ink at a reasonable rate, and would be willing to spend more on the printer (though again, they make less in the long run).

      • Re:Doh! (Score:3, Informative)

        by Quarters ( 18322 )
        Refilling works only to the point of the print-head wearing out. Inkjet cartridge printheads are design to last for only the approximate number of pages worth of ink in the cartridge. After that the print quality goes down dramatically.

        Refilling is not a panacea for the high cost of cartridges. True competition for cartridges, thus lower prices for consumers, is a much better solution. The ruling for SCC is very good news.

        • Re:Doh! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by dnoyeb ( 547705 )
          Of course. That is why one should replace his cartdridge when the cartridge wears out, not when the ink runs out. I don't buy for one minute that they happen at the same time. You can probably refill a cartridge about 10-15 times depending on the paper you use.

        • But a lot of printers do not include the printheads in the cartridge, making this argument invalid. Most Canon and Epson inkjets, for example.

      • Re:Doh! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by fireboy1919 ( 257783 )
        You can buy a LaserJet 4 on e-bay for about $50, with $40 in shipping.

        They're rated for approximately 500,000 sheets, and most that you buy used have about 100,000.

        Cartridges are about $80, and are rated to print about 35,000 sheets each. That comes out to about $.03 per sheet, compared to about $.20 a sheet for normal inkjets.

        Obviously, you don't have to change such printers as often. I print about 20 pages per week. By my estimate, I'll have to change the cartridge in a decade or so.
        • Great product. Just beware of the current drain when you power that monster on. Causes my UPS to switch on every time.
    • great point. this isn't software, where exact digital copies can be made at no cost. we're talking hardwre. lexmark is specifically selling the printer at a loss, to sell you the cartridges at a profit. otherwise, you'll be paying $500 for a simple ink jet. this is common practice in many industries. most autos are sold at a loss, money made up in finance, ext. warranties, etc. and think about the xbox. i don't think there is anything wrong with lexmark wanting to make you buy lexmark cartridges. i

      • Re:Doh! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @02:04PM (#7339415) Homepage
        Well, there's nothing wrong with them _trying_.

        The problem is that copyright -- which is what Lexmark was trying to use, and is a monopoly -- is not intended to protect them from this sort of competition.

        It is after all entirely possible that the razor/razor blade approach is not feasible with regards to printers. Lexmark should not be protected from fucking up; if they made a mistake with their pricing, it's their own damn problem.

      • Re:Doh! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bfree ( 113420 )

        most autos are sold at a loss, money made up in finance, ext. warranties, etc.

        What? So if you go to someone selling "autos" and they say "I'll give you this 10k auto for 300/month over 5 years with the 5 year extended warranty" you can't say "hell no, I'll give you the 10k cash thank you" and go on down your bank and get a 10k loan for 300/month over 3 years instead and hence stop them getting the extra 4.5k?

        Now if you really want to look at "autos" you can say that Ford have no right to produce a vehic

    • Re:Doh! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Black Perl ( 12686 )
      Actually HP put the inkjet mechanism in their cartridges, and that is protected by patents. They've fairly effectively stopped the knockoff cartridge industry. Although this may have changed in the EU [theregister.co.uk].

    • How asinie is it to sell a product at below cost and lock people in to the highly marked-up and frequently replaced accessory products? I wouldn't mind paying $200 for a printer if the ink refils where like $10.
      • Gillette's been making money at it for years. They're quoted as having invented the model with "give away the razors and sell the blades". It's a successful business for them because they use patents to protect their blade designs and they come out with new ones before the old patents expire. The good news is that generally the new ones are way better than the old ones for them (i.e. their products evolve, perhaps even innovate).

        That said, I agree with you. I'd rather pay more for a non-disposable prin
      • Actually Gillette did this a long time ago. Their reasoning is that by giving a cheap razor away you can know how much each shave will cost (about) by the cost of the blades. People seemed to enjoy that more than buying an expensive razor with cheap blades.

        Is the price for the 3-4 blades on a Mach3 not unlike the price for Lexmark's ink refills? Both have crazy margins.

        • Which is why I buy the cheap Schick (heh) knock-off of the Mach3, which works well enough. When it comes to something that needs to last me a long time, I'll be glad to invest some money, but for everyday throwaway things like ink or razors, cut me a deal.

          It does make me think, however...on average an ink cartredge will last a while, so they're not always purchased that frequently. Therefore, in order to maintain enough cash reserves, this could mean that the price of ink will remain the same and printers
      • It's real asnine - but it's a money maker as a majority of the public don't give a damn about the printer or ink costs or quality as long as they can print full color pictures of the grandkids.
        I'm still using an old HP Deskjet 710C from 1997 - I keep looking at upgrading, but all the new printers seem so cheap now.
        I think a few people have actually said it, but it's almost cheaper (and some times a lot cheaper) to go out and buy 3-4 lexmark printers from Officemax when they come with rebates - use em unti

    • Re:Doh! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dogbertsd ( 251551 )
      Not necessarily. The ruling does not find Lexmark guilt of attempting to stop the third party cartridge manufacturers, nor does the finding state that printer companies have to fashion their printers to facilitate circumvention.

      The ruling is that Lexmark can't hide behind the DMCA by using "encryption" to prevent otherwise legal reverse engineering.

      Essentially nothing has changed in the printer market except Lexmarks lost their latest defense against third party printer cartridges (which have been availa

  • No more expensive cartridges (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drpentode ( 586437 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:42PM (#7339161)
    I guess HP won't be raping me for cartridges anymore. But I think this will raise the price of printers.
    • Do you want to buy a new car for 100 quid then pay 15 per gallon for petrol?
    • If so, then hopefully it won't subsequently raise the price of the cheap laser printers. One toner cartridge on my Samsung ML-1210 lasts me more than a year, compared to the Epson 777 I trashed earlier this year, whose color+b&w cartridges totaled $55 to replace, and lasted for a very, very short time (this was my first printer, and I was extremely naive).
    • HP's a different story. Unlike those of pretty much every other inkjet manufacturer, their cartridges actually contain the print head as well. I suspect they have any number of patents on their print head, so that would prevent third parties from re-implementing the cartridge. The plus side is that HPs are much less vulnerable to ink clogs; you can always just switch the cartridge if your print head stuffs up.
      • The plus side is that HPs are much less vulnerable to ink clogs; you can always just switch the cartridge if your print head stuffs up

        The minus side is, the other vendors have pretty much solved the ink clog problem anyway (Canon's print head is a removable cartridge into which all the ink tanks plug in, so you get the best of both worlds). I just retired an Epson 870 that I refilled the tanks on about 45 times total, and never had an ink clog.

        HP's resistive ink bubble system is pretty much DESIGNED to
    • I just did a quick review of HP's SEC filing for 3Q 2003. Some interesting results:

      Personal Systems Group, $56M Loss on $4.9B Revenue
      Enterprise Systems Group, $70 Loss on $5.2B Revenue
      HP Services, $337M Profit on $3B Revenue
      HP Financial Services, $18M Profit on $442M in Revenue
      Imaging and Printing $739M Profit on $5.2B in Revenue

      So, the HP machine is driven by Imagining and Printing. What fraction of that $740 profit do you think is generated by printer cartridges versus printers?

      Printer cartridges are
      • > What fraction of that $740 profit do you think is generated by printer
        > cartridges versus printers?

        I'd have to say the order from most to least profitable is as such:
        1) laser printers
        2) ink jet ink
        3) toner ink
        4) ink jet printers

        Oh yea, the gap between #1 and all the others is about tripple as well.
        I'm sure they will feel it, but it wont be the worst thing to happen to HP.

        When you need a color laser that can photocopy and print from the network, a $10k HP wont compare to the inkjet market/problems

  • Telling quote (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:42PM (#7339164) Homepage
    "Lexmark filed its suit against SCC in December, 2002, saying the DMCA shields itself from competition from the remanufacturing industry."

    Could there be a more appropriate quote that shows how the DMCA is ultimately an anti-competition and anti-capitalist tool?

    • Re:Telling quote (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Evil Adrian ( 253301 )
      But Lexmark lost...

    • Re:Telling quote (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jfengel ( 409917 )
      Anti-competetive, pretty much, yeah. I don't think that any lawyers would disagree with you there. Copyright is a monopoly, by definition.

      The intent of copyright is to grant a monopoly to encourage people to create and innovate. Whether that's a good idea, and whether the implementation of that idea in US law is effective, I'll leave to the many other discussions already on slashdot.

      Anti-capitalist I'd disagree with. Copyright favors those with capital. Again, that may be self-defeating, but the inte

    • Re:Telling quote (Score:3, Insightful)

      by yintercept ( 517362 )

      Could there be a more appropriate quote that shows how the DMCA is ultimately an anti-competition and anti-capitalist tool?

      It is an anti-competition tool, but is not an anti-capitalist tool. Stop confusing capitalism with the free market. Capitalism is system where capital is used to create more capital. The DMCA defends the capital of the megacorporations...so it is pro capitalism. Owning a political organization or a set of laws is like owning any other capital asset. You invest x amount in elected of

  • Thank goodness... (Score:3)

    by Incongruity ( 70416 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:42PM (#7339166)
    I was starting to worry that everyone else was crazy and the whole country, the legal system especialy was just out of touch with reality.

    Small victiories...make everything work.
  • It must be owned by Halliburton to get such preferential treament from the Bush administration!

  • I have a Lexmark printer ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GFW ( 673143 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:44PM (#7339188)
    and I just needed a new cartridge (black). This was my first replacement, and what I discovered was that in ordinary retail channels, you can't buy third party. You have to go to the web for that (which means you have to plan ahead). I hope this ruling makes third party cartidges more available, but I suspect that Lexmark has leverage over typical places like Office Max (Don't sell third party ink, or you can't sell our printers).
    • the margin on branded cartridges is higher for both the manufacturer and for the store, so i doubt generics will have much of a chance of making it into a large store, with the exception of bestbuy which sells basix ink (which is a bestbuy brand, and sucks immense donkeynards).
    • That the retail chains had leverage over Lexmark, not the other way around!!

      "Oh, we can't sell third party ink for your printers? Well then I guess we'll have to remove all your products and tell customers they should return the ones they bought recently which we'll ship back to you at your expense, as per our contract..."

      But even though it seems like that's how things should be, I have to agree with your view being how things really are. I just can't understand where the leverage is coming from.
    • Don't sell third party ink, or you can't sell our printers


      Three words: "Restraint of Trade".


      Who's the doughboy afraid of?

    • I don't think OfficeMax cares about Lexmark. If Lexmark tried to pull that on OfficeMax expect OfficeMax to call their bluff and just stop selling LexMark printers, while still selling ink. HP, Epson, Brother, Panasonic, and Cannon all come to mind (and I know I missed a few) as companys that make printers they could go to. Last time I was at one of those big office stores they didn't have all brands of printers, but had ink/toner for all types. Most of both house brand and the OEM.

    • Office Depot was running a promo for a while.. bring in an empty ink cartridge for "recycling", get a free ream of paper. I've seen collection bins at staples and other places. Obviously, they resell these to places that make remanufactured ink cartridges, and the printer makers don't seem to care.

    • Target sells third party carts for Lexmark. That's where I got mine. They are Data Products brand [dataproducts.com]. I've had very good luck with them. Very high quality and reasonably priced with a 100% guarantee. I believe Wal-Mart also carries them.

      Be careful buying on the web. The fear mongering stories the manufacturers tell you can sometimes be true. I had a third party cartridge completely destroy an Epson printer for me a few years back due to really low quality ink.

    • Re:I have a Lexmark printer ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @03:37PM (#7340307) Journal
      Actually, it is the other way around. Places like Best Buy and OfficeMax enjoy the healthier margins on the brand-name ink. Heck - they even get the printer makers to omit the USB cable so that they can charge $20 for a part [bestbuy.com].

      A while ago (when USB printers first became the dominant style), I had some real fun. I loaded up a cart with thousands of dollars worth of computer stuff (that I was legitimately going to purchase) and a printer was part of it. When I found out that the *cheapest* USB cable in the store would cost me $20, I just left the salesmen standing there with their thumbs in their asses.

      I ordered a *hundred* USB cables for a dollar and I keep them in my trunk. Now, Best Buy is a necessity for me at times because it is convenient. Whenever I go, I stop by the printer aisle and give a cable or two away to anyone who mich need one. It saves them $20 and makes me feel a little better about actually spending my money at such a crooked store.

      The interesting thing is that Lexmarks are sold *with* a USB cable at places like RiteAid and other convenience stores.

  • woohoo laissez faire (Score:3, Interesting)

    by igotmybfg ( 525391 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:44PM (#7339193) Homepage
    I just love it when the government actually does what it's supposed to, namely, protect free markets instead of encroach on them!

  • YAAAY! (Score:4, Informative)

    by idontgno ( 624372 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:44PM (#7339194) Journal
    Now printer companies will be honest in their product pricing models. No more low-ball piece-of-crap printers and highway-robbery refills cartridges. A little competition in the expendables market will be awesome. Let quality and price drive the market, not consumer lock-in.

    Does anyone know if Lexmark has any legal recourse beyond this ruling? Can they appeal somewhere? Or is this the done deal?

    • Re:YAAAY! (Score:2, Funny)

      by PurplePhase ( 240281 )
      Wait, so you're saying you want really expensive piece-of-crap printers??

      8-PP
      • Wait, so you're saying you want really expensive piece-of-crap printers??

        Yes. No. Damn.

        I'm hoping that I can find the ONE non-piece-of-crap printer in the entire universe and buy it, secure in the knowledge that I'm not lowering my family jewels into the open vise of their expendables pricing policy. It's all I can hope for, but I suspect there is a tiny niche market for those contrarian manufacturers who chose to compete on quality. I hope.

  • I say good! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DragonMagic ( 170846 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:45PM (#7339200) Homepage
    I'll say this is good because NO company should ever try to lock people into propietary accessories by selling the initial main product at, close to or below cost, hoping to make up their profits by selling the locked-in accessories for a larger portion of the profits.

    Look at the Playstation 2. It's locked-in (you must have Sony approve of and produce your game in _most_ instances), yet they make their profits on the game system whether or not you buy any games.

    Let's see how long before other companies discover ways to break the models of these lock-ins and force the main company to rethink their strategy of selling short and hoping for bigger profits as time goes on because no one else can sell the accessories at reasonable prices.
    • Except you're not going far enough!

      This is the classic "razors and razor blades model"

      I'd like to see some "compatible" Mach-3 cartridges....
    • Look at the Playstation 2. It's locked-in (you must have Sony approve of and produce your game in _most_ instances), yet they make their profits on the game system whether or not you buy any games.

      Um, Dude, Sony (and the other manufacturers) lose their frickin SHIRT on hardware sales. When they were selling the PS2 for ~$300 at launch they were taking a loss!

      The whole game industry is built on this idea, that you should spend the majority of the money on the software you want, not to be able to play that
  • It's about time someone finally did something that made sense in this messed up DCMA ruling.

  • Justice... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ibix ( 600618 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:46PM (#7339209)

    Nice. It's been said before here - the courts usually do the right thing, you just need the staying power (read: money) to get there.

    I liked the quote at the end:

    "We are examining the documents and devoting a large amount of time with our economists and attorneys to calculate the damages that we feel we are entitled to from Lexmark because of their serious misdeeds," SCC CEO Ed Swartz said about the ruling.

    I read that as "My turn now..."

    I

    • not just lawyer bills (Score:5, Insightful)

      by morcheeba ( 260908 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @02:20PM (#7339601) Journal
      It's not just lawyer bills... The injunction [scc-inc.com] has halted the sale of SCC's smartek chips since feb 8... Nine months of lost sales for SCC and the cartridge remanufacturers who buy SCC's chips.

      What kills me is that, in granting the preliminary injunction the judge had to consider the potential for damages (page 48)... he found that Lexmark would suffer "irreparable harm" in terms of lost sales and money. Excuse me, but I think those can be repaired with money. On the other hand, if SCC had been put out of business under a load of bogus legal bills it couldn't survive, I think it would have suffered irreparable harm.

  • Nelson (Score:2, Funny)

    by cyb0rg ( 580354 )
    Ha-Ha!

  • Which printer to buy? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:47PM (#7339229) Homepage
    Linuxprinting.org [linuxprinting.org] has a vendor score card [linuxprinting.org] to show you which vendors deserve yor support.

    Their recommendation (and HP's work writing opensource drivers [sourceforge.net] that support all the features of their printers) was the reason that I purchased a PhotoSmart 7260 from HP and I haven't regretted it - even the integrated card reader works [sourceforge.net].

    Not surprisingly they rate Lexmark inkjet printers as useless.
    • HP imposes artificial limits on toner mileage, too.
      • Cite? I have a LaserJet 1100. The original toner cart that came with the thing 4.5 years ago is going strong (yeah, I don't kill trees unless I need to).

        Of course, this may be a recent development in HP laser printers. However, I'd appreciate a source to your claim.

        • Of course, this may be a recent development in HP laser printers. However, I'd appreciate a source to your claim.

          The newer toner cartridges come with those chips, too. Apparently, you can ignore "low toner" warnings if there's still enough toner (i.e. the printer doesn't refuse to print), and the chips are just there to make things harder for the refilling competition.

    • Re:Which printer to buy? (Score:3, Informative)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      To be fair to Lexmark (Ouch! Ooooooo, make it stop) they also rate Lexmark's Optra line of business printers as excellent with 100% support for free software.

      Lexmark seems to take good care of its corporate customers while pounding Joe User up the ass.

      Not that I consider that any sort of inducment to buy any of their products, mind you.

      KFG
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • A major hit for "Intellectual Property" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:56PM (#7339320)
    This issue had no business involving copyright law. This should have been settled with patents (i.e. If Lexmark doesn't have any covering it's cartridge design, it's SOL). This was a perfect example of the concept of "Intellectual Property" clouding the distinction between copyrights, patents and trademarks. The fact of the matter is that Lexmark's business model is perfectly valid, and well documented, but they didn't want the time limitations imposed by patent law and they thought they could get around it. They should fire the legal team that gave them the advice that led them down this path, and wise investors should have left long ago after seeing all this money wasted on developing "protection" technology that depended on an untested legal concept to work.
    • No, a patent wouldn't keep third parties from refilling cartridges. It might be able to keep third parties from manufacturing them.
    • The problem lexmark had here was refillers patching the (somewhat convoluted) Si that came with the cartridges to say 'this is full again'.

      They probably couldnt use patent or copyright on the cartridge themselves as they were their own cartridges.

      I dont know anyone else who has tried to make refilling illegal, which is what this action was an attempt to do.

      Next question: did Dell put them up to it? Dell rebadge Lexmark printers, and only sell ink online, so may have more to lose...
    • This issue had no business involving copyright law.

      Patent = protection for 17 years.
      Copyright = protection for live of holder +, huge number of years for a corporation (95? >100? I don't remember - bunch more than for patents, though).

      They were counting on the software on the propriatary chip (the software is copyrighted) to prevent others making replacements. Reverse engineering is legal, so the chip itself could be replaced with something else with the same outputs, but if that output included a co
      • >Patent = protection for 17 years.

        17 years is so 20th century. Patents filed after 8Jun95 are given a term of 20yrs from the effective date of filing.

        This was done to normalize patent terms with other countries. One side effect is that it also nixed Lemulson-type "submarine" patents.
  • Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em with a stick. Fuck 'em 'till they turn purple. I've been refilling cartridges since I found a text on a BBS oh-so-many years ago (anybody remember 2400 baud external modems you could fry an egg on?). So now (well, for awhile now... I've got an epson currently) they've decided to toss "quality control" chips in/on their jewel-encrusted cartridges. That court ruling serves them right for the bait-and-switch practices they've been doing for years. Maybe someone will second this memory: in

  • No serious effect on the market (Score:3, Informative)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @02:01PM (#7339380) Journal
    People think that the price of laser printers are kept low because manufacturers sell toner at inflated prices. This is true for SOHO ink/bubble jet printers, but certainly isn't true when it comes to laser printers (I worked for a major manufacturer for years). Bundled/hidden with the price of the printer is potential service costs, the costs of marketing, what it took to train the service partners and uphold the contracts, etc. Printer manufacturers, when it comes to the corporate world, attempt to make as much of a profit as possible from both the sale of printers and the sale of toner/fusers/consumables.

    What the inclusion of third party cartridge resellers into the market place does is cause competition in the sale of a specific consumable (toner), and nothing more. Sure, it is going to cut into profits, but printer manufacturers have a very easy way of fighting back: if you use third party consumables, you void your warranty. And this is a perfectly reasonable tactic, because you can't expect a printer manufacturer to insure a product that is using components who's quality they have no way of controlling. And trust me, when it costs $450 dollars just to have a printer tech take a look at your machine, no one is going to willingly void their warranty.

    • if you use third party consumables, you void your warranty

      I'm sure you know what you're talking about, but maybe this has just never been challenged in court.

      Unless I'm mistaken (IANAL), this practice is known as PRODUCT TYING - and it's an illegal, monopolistic practice. This is like Ford saying you must use Motorcraft filters, oil, and gasoline or your warranty is void.

      It's encumbant on the warranty provider to prove, on a CASE BY CASE BASIS, that harm was caused by the use of non-recommended consuma
  • ...to force all these printer manufacturers to support their printers longer than the time to the next product cycle..

    I'd rather pay $300 for a printer and have it supported for 5 or 6 years across multiple generations of my OS, than have a $60 printer, with $60 cartridges that are 1/2 full and won't work on the next release of my OS.

    • Canon seem to do quite well on this. My printer is a BJ-10SX, about 10 years old. It has worked perfectly well on every OS I've ever use it with, from Win3.0 to WinXP to Linux. They still make the ink cartridges for it, which is about all the support from them it needs.
  • although an administrative agency ruling like this carries a lot of weight, Lexmark is free to ask the federal courts to review this issue, and federal courts may well take a different view. Of course, courts typically defer to administrative agency interpretations, they don't always do so, particularly where they find that Congress clearly intended a different result.

  • more info @ scc's website (Score:5, Informative)

    by morcheeba ( 260908 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @02:04PM (#7339410) Journal
    Here's SCC's webpage on the case [scc-inc.com]. They have a Press Release (pdf) [scc-inc.com] and a link to the official ruling site [copyright.gov] (but I don't see the ruling there yet).

    I've been watching this case closely, and I'm glad it's been thrown out like the Garage door opener case! [eff.org]
  • Why couldn't Lexmark just use a strong crypto authentication protocol--one resistant to man-in-the-middle attacks? Sure it would cost more to put a real chip with math functionality in each cartridge, but they could make it up by just raising the price. Change the key with every generation of printers and they've probably bought themselves enough time to keep out competitors.

  • Great! (Score:5, Informative)

    by retro128 ( 318602 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @02:08PM (#7339464)
    This can only be a good thing. Not only does it put Lexmark in their place, but it also tells other companies that they can't cloak their anticompetitive practices behind the DMCA.

    There was a similar case where the Chamberlain Group, a garage door opener manufacturer, sued Skylink Technologies over a universal garage door opener using the DMCA by saying that the program that interpreted the signals from the garage door remote was being exploited by Skylink, and thus fell under the circumvention article in the DMCA. Skylink has won this case. The judgement is here. [eff.org]
  • I hate how laws like the DMCA require many court battles to figure out what effect they actually have. The DMCA is so far-reaching, there will be lots more lawsuits like this one, each one hammering out a specific precedent for a specific situation.

    With a situation like this, you will always need a lawyer to advise you on what effect the DMCA might have on you.

    I'd really rather just see the DMCA gone. I hate seeing long, drawn-out court battles that burn time and money and just peck around the edges.

    It

  • Buy Canon (for windows users) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jridley ( 9305 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @02:15PM (#7339537)
    Canon doesn't support free software very well, but if you're running Windows, Canon is still in the old school for ink; their ink carts are translucent plastic boxes with ink in them. Trivial to refill. I just last week bought an i960, and I love it. The ink boxes hold 15ml of ink per color, which lasts forever it seems, and it looks like refilling is as simple as "pop a hole in the top, squirt in ink, reseal." Each color has its own ink box so you only replace what's empty. They have an optical low ink sensor so it tells you when the ink is REALLY LOW, not "the counter says you should be out of ink, so I'm not printing anymore."

    The i960 prints photos very fast, as well, and the 4x6 drop-down tray is very cool if you're using the printer to print photos and regular stuff every day. The photo quality is excellent.

    They do charge $200 for the printer; if it was from Lexmark I think it would be $100, but they'd be selling you locked-in ink carts for $30 each.

    I had an Epson before, and between bottom fill refilling leaking ink onto my hands, sponges that got air-saturated so you couldn't get them full anymore after a few fills, chips that you had to buy reprogrammers for to reset them, etc, etc, I was fed up.
  • It will raise the prices of printers..

    Time will tell if they raise them to the point of penalizing us users..

  • Similar case (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sowbug ( 16204 ) * on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @02:25PM (#7339637) Homepage

    The facts sound roughly similar to Sega v. Accolade [harvard.edu], a 1992 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case in which Sega (whom you all know) sued Accolade, who made Sega Genesis-compatible games without obtaining a license to do from from Sega.

    Sega sued the crap out of them, alleging among other things trademark infringement. Basically, the Genesis console has a bit of code in the bootloader that checks that the game cartridge has the word "SEGA" in a particular location. That triggers a display that says "PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM SEGA ENTERPRISES LTD" for a few seconds on the screen.

    Sega was trying to be clever. If you manufactured a game cartridge without the "SEGA" code, it wouldn't run. And if you manufactured one with it, then you caused the display to appear. And if that statement was false (because you hadn't actually obtained a license), Sega could sue you for trademark infringement! Hehehehe.

    The court told Sega to get a life. Trademarks are a limited monopoly allowing the holder exclusive use of certain aspects of words, pictures, or phrases. They certainly can't be used to tie monopoly purchases to nonprotected things, thereby extending the limited monopoly to them. If you could, then every manufacturer would have monopolies on everything they manufactured, as well as every replacement part, or compatible product, etc. etc. etc. They'd simply manufacture a patented, copyrighted, or trademarked doodad and then make sure that their entire product depended on that item to operate.

    This sounds like what Lexmark was trying to do -- they had some sort of computer chip that verified that things were legit, and then they sued anyone who needed to copy that chip in order to make replacement parts. The lesson from Sega v. Accolade is: don't do this.

  • do people think this will make a difference? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lpq ( 583377 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @02:28PM (#7339673) Homepage Journal
    How many companies other than Lexmark had tried such a tactic to protect their refill market? How long has the DMCA been a spector, seriously
    preventing 3rd party cartridge competition? The lexmark case -- isn't it less than a year old? Refill gouging has been going on alot longer than that.

    Printer companies can still use technological means to ensure cartridge loyalty, and only for the oldest printers are you likely to reap the benefit of reliable reverse engineering. Suppose your printer company has rotating encryption keys for the protocol that rotate twice a year for 10 years but only after 365 days of being 'on' with '5' days assumed usage out of '7'. Now you use your printer 3 days a week -- That would mean you rotate in .8-1.0 years. To crack all the keys, (assuming 256-bit encryption) they could make it very difficult to produce a reliable replacement. At the very least it would create a great deal of FUD around using 3rd party cartridges for years after a new printer came out. Now compare that with the useful life of a printer.

    HP places expiration dates in each printer cartridge -- which means if you buy a 3rd party cartdridge and if such encryption were employed, users could find their 3rd party cartridges quickly "expired".

    This legal decision does nothing more than release low-quality cartridge verification algorithms -- the easy one's to reverse engineer; it does nothing to prevent printer manufacturers from using ever more complex methods to protect their lucrative cartridge income.

    Only if state laws (some state out east was doing this?) pass "open replacement" requirements on printer manufacturers will this situation seriously change.

    There is also nothing to prevent printer manufacturers from secretly detecting foreign cartridges and setting a flag in the printer NVRAM to mark it as "tainted" and no longer available for support/warrantee. Makes perfect sense -- "we" (a printer manufacturer) "won't warantee our printers when used with 3rd party cartridges due to the lack of quality assurance in such cartridges. We can't be held responsible if a 3rd party cartridge damages or otherwise causes problems in your printer and won't be held responsible if 3rd party cartridges are used."....etc.etc.etc...blah blah blah. The DMCA is a tool of companies to protect against easily circumventable access controls.

    -lpq
  • Why does the Copyright office (an agency of the Executive branch) get to make a legal decision about the DMCA? Only a court can do that. Congress cannot delegate the authority to make judicial decisions because Congress doesn't have the authority in the first place. What am I missing?
  • This was not a court ruling, and actually does not even put to bed the Advers ruling SCC has already received. This is not the ruling of an administrative agency either. It is the ruling of the Copyright Office, part of the Library of Congress, which is under the Legislative branch (Congress). As part of the DMCA, they are obligated to conduct these triennial rules to determine if there are any uses that should be permitted that are not under the 1201 excemptions, and they have the power to add these. W

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