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 Appeals court rules against Lexmark
Posted on Saturday, October 30 @ 10:40:31 PDT by Paws
The decision this week by a federal appeals court in the US to stop Lexmark from closing down the market for third-party ink cartridge makers is therefore a breath of fresh air. Lexmark's desire to create a stranglehold is understandable: a year ago the company made $641m from sales of printer consumables, compared to $430m from sales of the printers themselves, in one quarter.
Nobody disputes Lexmark's right to make a profit from sales of consumables -- printers are ridiculously cheap after all. But shutting out competitors was not the intention of the DMCA, yet that is effectively what Lexmark attempted with its practice of using the DMCA to stop companies -- in this case Static Control Components (SCC) -- circumventing the technology that identified Lexmark cartridges to a printer.
The court said that "lock-out" codes in software that's designed to control or limit interoperability is not covered by the original-expression intentions of copyright law. Furthermore, said the court, SCC's reverse engineering was not a circumvention of Lexmark's Toner Loader Program but a replacement of it, so even if the code had been covered by copyright, SCC's implementation would have been allowed under the fair-use doctrine.
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Average Score: 5
Votes: 1
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Re: Appeals court rules against Lexmark (Score: 1)
by thetazman (jjasonfisher@netscape.net) on Sunday, October 31 @ 05:43:19 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | | I'm not sure if I should applaud Lexmark for tring to close down cometition by using the DMCA or spit on Lexmark for trying to make people pay more for ink cartrages. They cost too much now! |
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