Lexmark Invokes DMCA in Toner Suit 530
Rhyas writes "Seems as though Lexmark has decided it wants all the pie when it comes to the printing world, as they are suing a company that does reselling of chips that allow third party toner cartridges to work in Lexmark printers. Cindy Cohn, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said she expected more cases like the one brought by Lexmark. 'We have long said that the DMCA's potential use as an anti-competitive tool has been great,' Cohn said. 'Now we're seeing it happen.'" The European Union is taking action against the practice of embedding chips in printer cartridges which make it difficult for third parties to sell refills.
Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Lexmark, I dub thee the MS of printers!
Hang on a minute... (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't this fair? I don't know if it's a fair lawsuit under the DMCA, but it's fair for Lexmark to try and protect their interests. Lexmark is not a printer monopoly, and it certainly does not have 'all the pie' in the printing world.
The reason Lexmark is pissed is because it sells its printers as a loss leader, and then makes money on the ink cartridges.
This is not new. All console makers do the same thing. The XBox costs more than $149 to make, but MS sells them as loss leaders so they can make money on the games. Sony does the same. Nintendo does the same.
Yet most people would agree that hacking/chipping consoles so you can play stolen games is illegal, even if you don't think it's unethical.
What's different about the printer industry? They're just trying to make their money in the best way possible. After all, it's consumers who have forced them to offer printers as loss leaders rather than having expensive printers and cheap ink.
Too bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I have to balance the ethics of supporting them.
In other news (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hang on a minute... (Score:1, Interesting)
Copied games = ILLEGAL therefore they would have a right to sue anyone selling them under criminal law.
Third Party toner = LEGAL
By your example a toilet roll holder manufacturer could take action against anyone else making toilet roll.
WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
I like Lexmark printers, but knowing they're chipping their carts is going to keep me from buying or recommending them to others.
I hope this gets thrown out of court and whoever passed the DMCA into being a law (so loosly written and obvious that it'd be used for the greater good of corporations) get voted out of office.
Trying to prohibit backwards engineering? (Score:5, Interesting)
anticompetitive tool (Score:4, Interesting)
Notice how regioning makes it (for practical purposes) impossible for USians to mail-order e.g. European/region 2 movies, TV shows, etc., over the internet, for absolutely no good reason?
Re:Hang on a minute... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not new. All console makers do the same thing. The XBox costs more than $149 to make, but MS sells them as loss leaders so they can make money on the games. Sony does the same. Nintendo does the same.
Thats their choice as a manufacturer to set up their profit structure that way. If it doesn't work out for them, tough for them. Try a different structure! :p
Holy shit, I'm gonna sell HDTVs, at a major loss to my company, then if you try to watch any other channel that doesn't generate Ad revenue for my company (so I can re-coup my losses, not your fault, and you OWN the TV and all) I'm gonna kick and scream and sue,SUE,SUE!
Just because Sony,Nintendo,MS do it to, doesn't make it a sound model for everyone
I just have to say... (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, if Lexmark let consumers know that only their toner cartridges worked with Lexmark printers, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But they don't. In fact, I'd bet they even tried to supress the lawsuit beacuse of the bad publicity it causes them.
Finally, consumers haven't forced them to do anything. They chose their own business model, and now they have to lay in it.
Re:Terms of Agreement? (Score:2, Interesting)
(My italics)
So if they decided that a copycat cartridge stuffed up your printer they may try to wriggle out of fixing it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Please, don't buy a Lexmark. (Score:1, Interesting)
I've gone through a few Lexmarks in my time, and let me tell you -- they absolutely suck. The most recent one I've used is a total bitch to work with. Slow, requires almost 100 megs of free hard drive space (yeah, that's right, a 100 megs for printer software), has a bunch of custom widgets and window controls... It actually has Skins for gods sake! Printer software with skins? WTF??? It also has
Anyway, I guess DMCA business is just another reason to hate Lexmark. Get a Canon, or an Epson, or whatever, but please don't get a Lexmark.
These products need to be... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying I agree with them, just that if they wish to conduct business in an underhanded fashion, consumers should know about it upfront.
I think I may go back to a dot matrix printer for most of my junk printing, yeah they can be slow with graphics (I don't print graphics too often), but you don't need to worry about paper for sometime if you buy the big box. A reinker for the cartages is fairly cheap as well.
Isn't this against some sort of law? (Score:1, Interesting)
DMCA not needed -- been there done that (Score:5, Interesting)
I suggested that we burn in "Copyright xxxxx corp" into the chips, and make the software look for it. If you weren't xxxxx corp and you made a copy chip, then you would have to copy a copyright notice that wasn't yours.
As has been said by others, the printer companies don't make money on printers at $150 (or less) per unit. If you wan't to pay $1500 for the same printer (think of all those cartridges) and buy your ink just anywhere, that's a possibility. I wouldn't take bets on that as a viable business model, though. Can you imagine walking down the aisles at Comp USA,
Re:This has very serious implications. (Score:4, Interesting)
Software is a set of instructions and the explanation provided above is a set of instructions, therefore making it illegal because it has now become evident how to bypass the car manufacturers anty piracy protection.
Your argument makes no sense. We the consumer are loosing our legal rights. We are no longer sure if we purchased or rented a product. We have completed our legal obligation (PAYMENT) only to find out after the FACT that the terms of the contract were not those which were presented upon the sale of the product.
Could you imagine having to pay the architect who designed your house a royalty when you sell it because you have sold his intellectual property. Or that the builder of the car you just sold claims that you infringed on ther Copyrights because you painted the car Pink when that car does not originally come in pink.
Everything we build is based on a set of instructions (software) therefore your argument applies to all and everything.
Once the SALE, and note I did not say RENTAL, is finalized, the manufacturer of the product no longer has a say in what I do with his product.
A legal precedent to go after Lexmark. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not the toner, but the chips. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Car industry tried the same tactics (Score:2, Interesting)
>>and then afterwards cash in on the required consumables
You can thank King Gilette of disposable razor blade fame for this business model.
Sell the razor itself cheaply then soak people for replacement blades.
Mind you, almost immediately some enterprising soul started making a machine ( my G'dad had one ) to resharpen the "disposable" blades
Of course there was no DMCA back then.
This isn't like them. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry to see that Lexmark has decided it no longer wants geeks' goodwill.
Re:Car industry tried the same tactics (Score:5, Interesting)
Just one quibble: this is a tried and true business model. It's also a model that works very well for consumers since it allows them to spread the cost of the purchase over the lifetime of the base unit that's sold as a loss-leader.
In the traditional razor-and-blades model, there's no reason why you need to buy blades from the same company you bought your razor from. Many people do, so it generally is a good buisness model. But you can only charge so much, or people defect to off-brand blade makers.
The problem is that makers of consoles and inkjet printers are using technological measures to artificially inflate the profit they can make from the consumables. That's the problem, not the business model itself.
-Esme
Re:Hang on a minute... (Score:3, Interesting)
> except there's no way to get a patent on their ink-cartridges probably.
That's so right, you should win a medal. Essentially there's no limit to the applications of this approach. Any sort of consumer behaviour that is completely legal can be curbed by grafting on some IP that would result in abuse of the IP from that behaviour.
So did a guy named Gillette (Score:2, Interesting)
Gillette was also a pioneer in lock-in. Once the patent expired on the disposible razorblade, the only way to keep competitors from selling blades was to continually change the interconnection between the handle and the blade, a practice which continues in the modern razor business.
Gillette also was one of the first pioneers of the now time-honored technique of achieving marketing dominance by selling to the U.S military. He got a contract to supply the entire U.S. Army with Gillette razors in WWI, thereby cementing the sales after the war.
So, it's an old, old game. I guess the difficulty is in determining what sorts of lock-in are ok, and what aren't. Is razorblade lockin ok, but car dealership lockin not ok? I'm not sure exactly what the difference is.
Re:Car industry tried the same tactics (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it to be totally fair (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Copying a copyright notice (Score:3, Interesting)
Sega vs. Accolade (Score:4, Interesting)
The court ruled that since Sega had intentionally placed their mark in the way of Accolade's legally protected right to interface with Sega hardware, Sega couldn't turn around and sue Accolade for infringement on that trademark.
Sega played with fire -- and got rather burned.
Caveat: IANAL, and it's been a long time since I read about this case.
--Dan
Re:Hmm (OT) (Score:4, Interesting)
The theory is that trademarks aren't descriptive or functional. You can't trademark "camera", or "press play". If you make your trademark either descriptive (let people use it for the generic class of product like kleenex or escalator) you will lose it, if you make it functional, you lose it as well.
Doing anything that requires use of your trademark makes it functional, so requiring it in the boot code of a CD or ROM means you'll lose it as a trademark.
So the company was told by the judge how the same would come out... "If you continue to push this, you'll succeed in making your trademark a functional part of the spec. And _Sony_ and _Playstation_ won't be trademarks anymore. You choose."
And supposedly companies now rely on trade secrets they can sue over having released, or cryptography, because of this trial and the fairly obvious outcome, if you think about it.
why not fight the buisness model ? (Score:2, Interesting)
the printer should work for: 5 years
average color usage in %: 10
average pages you want to print a day: 23
Lexmark Model X: $$$
HP Model Y: $$$
[now someone wants to do it ?]
if the consumer would get a chance to estimate the REAL PRICE of a product EASILY than the companies would gain nothing by making unnecessary complicated and more expensive buisness models (like chips in cartridges)...
health care products (Score:2, Interesting)
The difference here is that there is a contract involved. Ivac's distributers and the hospital sign a contract. If the hospital finds a cheaper solution, they tell the supplier, who comes to round up their equipment.
I am pretty sure I never signed a contract with HP when I bought their printer, locking me into using only HP consumables. I would just about bet the hair on my head that Lexmark purchasers don't remember signing such a contract, either.
HOOOOOOORAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Please, as many companies that can possibly do this need to. Please, if you own a company and can use the DMCA for anti-competitive reasons do it! MORE MORE... WE NEED MORE!
The anti-competitive use of the DMCA brings it into the limelight. This is the fastest track to DMCA reform! Using it like this will bring about reform YEARS sooner than our complaints of it blocking fair-use rights. This stepps on people's toes... sooner or later someone will use it against a company who makes large campaign contributions and BAM! We will have reform. I don't care why they reform it, as long as they do.
Have you noticed the MPAA and RIAA have been VERY CAREFUL to only invoke the DMCA against small companies and individuals, people they can defame into pirates even if they aren't. It's because they KNOW uses like this will put thier ace-in-the-hole in danger...
This is a good thing folks... a very good thing.
Phoenix
This Reminds me.... (Score:2, Interesting)