US Supreme Court Protects Consumers' Right To Refill Ink Cartridges In Precedent-Setting Lexmark vs Impression Case (hothardware.com) 259
The U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday companies give up their patent rights when they sell an item, in a ruling that puts new limits on businesses' ability to prevent their products from being resold at a discount. The ruling is a defeat for Lexmark International, which was trying to stop refurbished versions of its printer cartridges from undercutting its U.S. sales. It's also a blow to companies like HP and Canon that sell their printers for a relatively low cost with the idea that they will recoup money on sales of replacement cartridges. From a report: Lexmark originally set its sights on Impression Products, a small company that specializes in remanufacturing print cartridges for resale at prices much lower than what a customer would pay for a "genuine" Lexmark product. These cartridges often have no noticeable difference in performance compared to genuine ink or toner cartridges -- the only real difference is that customers can save a lot of money by going the remanufactured route. This secondary market for cartridges not only has implications for regular Joes looking to save a buck, but also businesses that are always looking to cut costs.
All I have to say is (Score:5, Insightful)
good
Re:All I have to say is (Score:5, Interesting)
That was my initial reaction too, but this is doubtless going to be the decision that pushing them over to licensing/renting cartridges, rather than selling them. The decision itself says that if Lexmark wants to enforce these sorts of restrictions, it can't do so via patent law after the initial sale, but it can do so via contract law. Which is basically just a way of saying, "Lexmark, follow the software industry's lead if you want to screw customers".
Again, the decision was a good one, but I don't look forward to what comes next.
Re:All I have to say is (Score:4, Interesting)
That was actually my first thought as well. Business and consumers are both going to hesitate when required to sign a contract to buy a printer or ink cartridge I think. Hit the cash register and the cashier whips out a contract for you to sign? In this case I think free market principles will make that position untenable.
Re:All I have to say is (Score:4, Insightful)
Why sign a contract at the register, when you can just seal the cartridge in a bag that says, "Opening this seal constitutes agreement with the EULA"?
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Why sign a contract at the register, when you can just seal the cartridge in a bag that says, "Opening this seal constitutes agreement with the EULA"?
Lexmark actually does this. I bought a cheap Lexmark laser printer back in the mid 2000's and it had a tear-through agreement on the box that basically said you would not transfer the toner cartridge to any third party but would send it back to Lexmark for recycling. They leaned on their patent to support it, so I can't wait to see what they come up with now.
You can see the kind of text it had here: http://media.lexmark.com/www/doc/en_US/lexmark_end_user_license_agreement__2_.pdf [lexmark.com]
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Now the next logical step, if you're a sociopathic corporation, would be to sue the companies that provided the cartridges to the recyclers, alleging tortious interference with the contract between users and Lexmark. However, this won't yield significant financial wins, so the next step after that is to use the lawsuit to demand their customer list and start suing individual users. And the next step after that is Chapter 11, followed by Chapter 7.
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no returns on opened ink and you must sign the EULA on the printer when you put the cartage in.
Re: All I have to say is (Score:5, Insightful)
The main difference is that during a rent, all the risk is up to the person renting out the object. So if Tesla rents out a battery pack, Tesla has to maintain it in the usable condition agreed upon when signing the contract. Tesla does not rent out the electricity stored in the battery. You can recharge the battery whenever and as often as you like.
If Lexmark wants to rent out the toner cartridge, they rent out the actual cartridge, and still you can refill the cartridge whenever you want, and Lexmark has to repair it or replace it whenever it stops printing. Only if Lexmark instead provides "printing services" for rent, it's up to Lexmark to either refill the cartridges or put new ones in, if the old ones are empty.
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This is crazy, I know, but I don't mind the price of a printer being what the printer costs to make plus a reasonable markup.
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Has anybody ever physically signed a paper contract to use Windows?
Or any other software...?
Re:All I have to say is (Score:5, Interesting)
Shrink-wrap licenses ostensibly use copyright law to force a contract, but I consider copying software from the distribution media to the computer, then into memory to run it, as fair use - that's the sole purpose of the software, and it would otherwise be useless.
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staples will lie about the contract and up sell you on an expanded warranty
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That was my initial reaction too, but this is doubtless going to be the decision that pushing them over to licensing/renting cartridges, rather than selling them. The decision itself says that if Lexmark wants to enforce these sorts of restrictions, it can't do so via patent law after the initial sale, but it can do so via contract law. Which is basically just a way of saying, "Lexmark, follow the software industry's lead if you want to screw customers".
Again, the decision was a good one, but I don't look forward to what comes next.
Problem here is enforceability. A one-sided contract - like a EULA - is a lot less enforceable than a two-sided contract in terms of forcing the party that can only sign to do what other party wants.
Software firms typically gets away with it for the AS-IS portion of the license; but if something more was needed then it'd be a problem for the software firms too. Software firms also accept a lot higher piracy than most, and more than LexMark would be able to do so in order to enforce this.
Re:All I have to say is (Score:4, Informative)
If lexmark does what you suggest, it will destroy their printer business.
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I have seen a UID as low as 54. I personally know the person as well. I haven't seen anything below that.
Has the DOJ even gone after Gillette? (Score:2)
I'm glad that the gouging of printer manufacturers' has been recognized and cheaper replacement ink options are being mandated.
The ink jet printer market has always followed the razor blade model - sell the handle at a loss and get 'em with the blades.
Which leads me to the question, has Gillette or any of the other shaving blade manufacturers been investigated by the DOJ or is it just that the gouging was so extreme in the printer market that people stood up and took notice?
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has Gillette or any of the other shaving blade manufacturers been investigated by the DOJ or is it just that the gouging was so extreme in the printer market that people stood up and took notice?
When Gillette starts using DRM to prevent you from changing out razor refills with a third party's, then you can complain to the DOJ.
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They do, by patenting the connector on the end of the handle.
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AFAIK, interfaces cannot be patented. This is why the robust market for aftermarket car parts exists.
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Of course they can be. The Gillette design uses a specific construction to make an easy to manufacture, easy to use (attach, detach) and reduced complexity connector. Really like the design, not the company.
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No, But they also haven't tried to crowd out Harry's or Dollar Shave Club, either. . . .And you pretty much always COULD buy generic razor blades for as long as I remember (going back to the 1970s. . .)
Gillette sued Dollar Shave Club (Score:3)
Gillette or any of the other shaving blade manufacturers been investigated by the DOJ or is it just that the gouging was so extreme in the printer market that people stood up and took notice?
No, But they also haven't tried to crowd out Harry's or Dollar Shave Club, either.
Yes they have. Gillette sued Dollar Shave Club in December 2015 [washingtonpost.com].
Not exactly the same (Score:2)
For the price that you pay for Gillette blades, you can buy dozens of cheap complete razors. All the magic is in the blade. The handle is just a hunk of plastic.
I have tried many other razors, I have tried non-Gillette blades on my Gillette razor handle. They all suck.
I really do not like Gillette or how much I pay for Gillette blades, but I buy them anyway because they are the best.
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I'm glad that the gouging of printer manufacturers' has been recognized and cheaper replacement ink options are being mandated.
The ink jet printer market has always followed the razor blade model - sell the handle at a loss and get 'em with the blades.
Which leads me to the question, has Gillette or any of the other shaving blade manufacturers been investigated by the DOJ or is it just that the gouging was so extreme in the printer market that people stood up and took notice?
AFAIK Gillette does not prevent you from sending your used cartridges to a 3rd party for refurbishment and resale. Not that anyone does that. Nor do they have a rip-through license agreement on the packing like Lexmark did, forcing you to accept a EULA for them (http://media.lexmark.com/www/doc/en_US/lexmark_end_user_license_agreement__2_.pdf [lexmark.com]).
They are allowed to charge what they want and patents are still a valid thing. This case was about what the consumer did with the product after they purchased it.
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I think that the GP post was wondering why no one had made new refills that were compatible with the Gillette handles.
My guess is that the Gillette mounting system has a patent, so anyone trying to making a blade that mounts to the Gillette handle would be sued unless their mount was significantly different while somehow remaining compatible.
Great (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, what will the SCOTUS say about the right to repair for farming machinery from John Deere (if I remember correctly)?
what about apples tricks to lock out 3rd party rep (Score:3)
what about thinks apples tricks to lock out 3rd party repair shops from getting parts / tools to fix stuff?
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John Deere uses software lockouts to ensure only authorized parts are used, supposedly to ensure the equipment meets emissions standards. Any potential lawsuit would be addressing copyright law (DMCA circumvention) rather than patents, and John Deere has a rationale beyond price gouging for their restrictions.
We can certainly argue that the owner would assume responsibility for emissions if 3rd-party parts are installed. This is already the case with automobiles---the EPA doesn't go after Chevy or Ford when
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What might get them is that even authorized parts can't just be dropped in. An authorized repair person has to enable each new part to operate in a particular tractor. If it was JUST for emissions, each partt's firmware being correctly signed would be good enough.
Lexmark got dinged... (Score:2)
Finally, an 8-0 ruling! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is great. Even better is that it was 8-0 (or 7-1 on some parts, as mentioned in the article). It's wonderful to see something as basic to our society as the idea that "sold products are not owned by the seller after the sale" be confirmed unanimously by the supreme court. This will send a very real message to other industries as well, and likely result in even peripherally associated industries looking for other ways to mitigate their perceived losses other than expensive legislation and punishing their customers.
Truly excellent, and will have invisible benefits for years.
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Yeah, filing thousands of penny-ante lawsuits worked out so well for Prenda Law [popehat.com].
John Deere (Score:5, Insightful)
Good call. Now let's get to work on John Deere while you're in a giving mood. [securityledger.com]
"companies give up their patent rights..." (Score:5, Insightful)
"... when they sell an item..."
This may be a precedent-setter in the cases of the farmers who save seed and are then sued for by "patent infringement" by Monsanto.
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This ruling does not mean all recourse is gone. From the opinion:
The single-use/no-resale restrictions in Lexmark’s contracts with customers may have been clear and enforceable under contract law , but they do not entitle Lexmark to retain patent rights in an item that it has elected to sell.
So this just means the Monsantos of the world would have to sue the farmers under some other theory like breach of contract instead of patent infringement.
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That depends on whether they bought the seed, or actually agreed to a binding contract to not save seed knowing what they were signing.
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This may be a precedent-setter in the cases of the farmers who save seed and are then sued for by "patent infringement" by Monsanto.
That's pretty unlikely. The issue with saving seeds isn't that you're saving them, it's that you're growing a bunch of new plants.
A loose analogy to printer cartridges would be if you bough one cartridge and then claimed the right to make and sell thousands more. That's a whole different thing than just refilling the existing cartridge with ink from another source.
Trump (Score:5, Funny)
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interestingly, tRumpF has been referred to as the uber-Dunning-Kruger. He is exploring heretofore undiscovered Dunning-Kruger territory.
some force distributors not to sell under MSRP (Score:2)
some manufacturers force distributors not to sell under MSRP and you can't can't buy from the manufacturers on your own.
Wait, people still use inkjets? (Score:3)
Re:Wait, people still use inkjets? (Score:4, Informative)
Sure cheap lasers are great for text, they don't do a good job of photos though ;) I personally have a brother laser sitting right next to my large format inkjet photo printer.
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What he said. Moreover, if you do need higher resolution or better color than your laser can provide, you can always go to a high end print shop and have it printed there. I think consumer inkjet printers is a dead industry that just doesn't realize it yet. Like cable TV. Moving forward on inertia only.
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Inkjet printing is still the standard for photographs, since color laser requires halftoning and the result, while suitable for business graphics (and comparable to offset press), is not up to the level of quality that can be produced by inkjet printers with more than CMYK inks.
Admittedly, photo inkjet printing is a small market, and it has gotten even smaller as a result of the increasing popularity of online photo printing services. But for the immediacy of being able to print something and see the resul
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HP LaserJet 4000 series (Score:2)
HP LaserJet 4000 series are good
Re:Wait, people still use inkjets? (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the black laser printers are somewhat affordable, but I've never seen an affordable color laser printer and even the black laser printers usually cost more than most color inkjets. Ink still has a place until that changes.
The cost of the unit itself is pointless to discuss when it is the cost of the consumables that actually make the difference.
I've yet to find an inkjet cartridge last anywhere near as long as laser toner.
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The cost of the unit itself is pointless to discuss when it is the cost of the consumables that actually make the difference. I've yet to find an inkjet cartridge last anywhere near as long as laser toner.
If you want a color laser that can print proper photos and not just colored pie charts it's not the consumables that make up the bulk of the cost anymore, not unless you're an avid photographer that wants everything in print.
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Some of the black laser printers are somewhat affordable, but I've never seen an affordable color laser printer
Really? I bought a Samsung CLP-300 for about $250 ten years ago.
The Holy Grail (Score:4, Insightful)
I like the ruling, but I think the day of the inkjet cartridge may finally be coming to an end regardless. For the past few decades the "paperless office" has been the Holy Grail of IT, but we were never quite able to reach it. I can remember seeing a statistic about 15 years ago stating that paper usage actually increased because of the ease of printing....If you needed to take something away from your desk, you just printed it and carried it with you. Now that mobile devices are pretty much ubiquitous, you can just carry it on your phone/tablet instead of having to print it.
Good decision, but there's some dishonesty... (Score:5, Insightful)
...in the discussion. I used to repair printers. To say that there is no difference between remanufactured cartridges overall and OEM cartridges is a joke. Yes. there are some excellent remanufactures out there that produce outstanding products. There are also plenty of shoddy ones that sell leaky ones that crap up your printer and / or use substandard ink / toner that produce lesser (or awful) pages. In most cases, the consumer has no idea and buys on price. From a patent standpoint, Lexmark's case was stupid, petulant, and ridiculous. However, if they wanted to make an argument about voiding your warranty for using remanufactured cartridges then they would probably have a valid point. Really, the whole printer industry is in a prisoners' dilemma where they have to keep the printer prices down in order to sell printers and then they make it up on consumables. This eases up a bit in the enterprise space where you occasionally have more sophisticated buyers that have enough experience to understand that efficient purchasing covers the entire lifecycle of the device. Hopefully somebody will be able to break this cycle, but it will probably take some very good marketing to convince consumers to be less price-sensitive with the initial purchase.
Re:Good decision, but there's some dishonesty... (Score:5, Informative)
I agree. I used to work for a major printer and print-engine manufacturer, as a senior support tech for laser printers. ("Senior" as in "if I have to escalate your issue, I call the product engineers directly.")
For one thing, not the difference between refilled and remanufactured cartridges. A refilled cartridge has just had more toner added; a remanufactured cartridge should have had the optical photoconductor (OPC) drum replaced as well (but too often, does not). While it's likely that the OPC will last much longer than one fill of toner, it's not guaranteed. In fact, if you have a laser printer for occasional printing at home, chances are you replace the toner cartridge when the OPC wears out from age and starts causing image defects, not when the toner runs out. If you send that cartridge to a place that refills it, the next user will inherit those image problems.
The remanufacturers don't use the same quality toner and OPC, either. The xerographic process is... finicky. Everything has to be just right for it to work well. The entire print engine is designed around specific physical and electrochemical properties of the toner. If your reman'd cartridge uses toner that's got a different charge, or melts at a different point, or was ground too thick or too thin... it's not going to work as well. If the replacement OPC isn't well-matched to the wavelength of the laser in your printer, it's not going to work as well. If the replacement OPC has a too-thin coating... Well, you get the picture.
If you're using a laser printer for light-duty work, you're absolutely better off going with OEM cartridges. If you don't print enough to use up the toner, chances are the cartridge will have a practical lifespan of about five years. The extra cost of the OEM cartridge over five years is negligible. The chances of an aftermarket cartridge failing, working poorly, or lasting a fraction of that time are pretty good.
I'm not as familiar with inkjets, but I do know that ink isn't just ink. Your inkjet is designed for ink of a particular viscosity, with a certain chemistry, and the software assumes that the ink will be a certain precise color. If you use an aftermarket "close enough" ink, it may clog, run, smear (because it dries too slow), or result in screwed-up colors in your photos.
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In almost all the cases I can replace the whole printer with a newer model for less than the cost of replacement cartridges even taking in consideration that the cartridges which come with the printer may have less toner in them.
All I can say is just read the fine print whenever you purchase anything.
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Hopefully somebody will be able to break this cycle, but it will probably take some very good marketing to convince consumers to be less price-sensitive with the initial purchase.
I doubt it will happen in our lifetime. Just look at the cell phone market. You buy a phone for near nothing and the only real change in 10 years is your paying for it over the course of 3 years rather than a "contract" fee for leaving the agreement early. I know its different in Europe but in the states its almost universal. HP and Cannon dug this hole and they will have to find some way out of it and I don't think any kind of marketing will change the way we buy printers for atleast 20 years.
It took t
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Anyone who's tried shopping for a replacement battery for their laptop or camera knows what a cesspool that market is. Some of them are indeed ethical and trying to build a reputation. But there are hundreds of off-brand vendors of "refurbished," "remanufactured," or "compatible" batteries, which invariably turn out to be crap. Good luck telling the difference when shopping on Amazon.
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However, if they wanted to make an argument about voiding your warranty for using remanufactured cartridges then they would probably have a valid point.
If I'm not mistaken this is outright illegal under the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act [taftlaw.com] and that the manufacturer would have the burden of proving that the "unauthorized" cartridge was at fault.
Ink printers are a disaster (Score:2)
If I need to print something in color, I step out into meatspace and do it at a place that sells that service.
exploiting the Gillette business model, in the past I have bought an ink printer on clearance, printed color on it until it ran out, then thrown it in electr
Provided the buses are still running (Score:2)
If I need to print something in color, I step out into meatspace and do it at a place that sells that service.
Then you had better hope that your city's public transit isn't in the midst of a 60-hour scheduled downtime, as Fort Wayne Citilink was from about 6 PM Saturday to 6 AM this (Tuesday) morning.
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If I need to print something in color, I step out into meatspace and do it at a place that sells that service.
Printing photographs at Walgreens or Costco is so dang cheap, I have no plans to ever own a photo printer again. Just log in to the web page or send the photo from your phone via their app, then go to the store in an hour or so at your convenience and pick up the prints. I can't buy ink jet photo paper that cheap, and at the rate I print photos, the jets are all clogged up by the next time I want to print one.
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It's even worse than that. A recent install of a new HP printer for my friend wanted to AUTOMATICALLY purchase replacement ink when it ran low. So now, a child can print out a huge waste of ink and your credit card will be charged WITHOUT YOUR ATTENTION! Boy, is that greedy, or what?
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I don't understand why people put up with it. A decent laser printer is similarly priced to a garbage printer
How many laser printers have built-in scanning capabilities (I'm talking about for home use, not enterprisey stuff)? I can tell you that the only reason I own an inkjet printer is because it has a scanner. You don't see too many standalone scanners these days, unless you really shop around.
The Federal Circuit court keeps getting it wrong (Score:5, Informative)
One might even feel like the court, with it's unanimity is trying to tell the Federal Circuit that it really wants to stop having to hear all these patent cases. The opinion was delivered by the Chief Justice who spared no words in telling the Federal Circuit that it needs to do a much better job.
This venerable principle is not, as the Federal Circuit dismissively viewed it, merely "one common-law jurisdiction's general judicial policy at one time toward antialienation restrictions."
And
The Federal Circuit reached a different result largely because it got off on the wrong foot.
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Oooo, burn!
Could this create precedence for right to repair? (Score:2, Insightful)
Refurb ink and electronics repair aren't exactly the same, but an argument could be made for repairing an iphone with 3rd party parts is comparable to refilling an ink cartridge with 3rd party ink. At the least, I hope it indicates the court would lean towards consumer rights in a future right to repair ruling.
It was getting bizarre. (Score:3)
The business plan for liquid-ink printers was starting to get bizarre. I mean, if you were patient enough to wait for a sale at one of the geek warehouses, it was cost-effective to just throw out the printer and buy a new one, rather than mess around with replacement cartridges. A big advantage is that you'd get a new print head each time, which cured a lot of printer-related problems.
I've been recommending to customer to only use laser printers with dry toner (color or B/W as necessary) for internal use, (they've gotten very affordable) and outsource high resolution color printing. Dry toner cartridges last a very long time, and there's no print head clogging or cleaning cycles to worry about. ("Outsourcing" in this case means to a local print shop, not overseas.)
Outsourcing your "wet" print jobs, besides having the advantage of not having to fool around with gummed up print heads or cartridge replacement, also has the advantage of using such printers the way they "want" to be used -- shorter downtimes between jobs, and less chance for the ink to dry up.
At home, even though I make part of my living as a photographer, I have an inexpensive laser printer I use for most stuff. (Mostly flyers and misc printing.) The toner cartridge is something like $100 but in 7 years of use I have yet to buy one. For my photography, I have coveted one of those large carriage continuous feed 8 cartridge printers, but realistically, I don't need one, when the photo store a mile and a half away has the same model and will print photos up to poster size for much less than the per-print cost of owning one of the damned things. Even if someone gave me one for free, I probably couldn't afford to keep it going.
So although I really appreciate the decision, and have a private fantasy that it'll perhaps mean higher cost but higher quality printer hardware, in the final analysis, it doesn't matter, because liquid ink printers are a bad choice for most consumers in the first place.
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Maybe printers will go back to being expensive devices that not everyone has, but can be maintained and repaired [by a qualified technician]. If I was a printer manufacturer I'd focus on selling my printers to businesses and having service contracts that bring in revenue. Leasing plans would also be an option when doing B2B, as sometimes the accounting rules are favorable for both parties. One party avoids tying up money in a capital investment and shift it over as a reoccurring expense, and the other party
I once worked for a refill outfit (Score:2)
When I was a younger man, I held job as a "tech" at an inkjet refill place. Some carts needed extra steps to keep the pressure equal (lexmark I think) Some needed to be shorted against a little piece of tech that somehow reset the little DRM chip, and some just bled ink all over the costumers desk and ruined their day. I was shocked by how easy and cheap it was to refill the carts. I was convinced that this was going to be a giant market as soon as the everyman noticed. I bought a refill kit from myself th
Re:What about other copyrights? (Score:5, Informative)
Both format shifting (ripping) and making backup copies have long been considered legal under fair use in the US. You just have to make sure to delete any copies if you resell the original. You also cannot share the copies you made with anyone else.
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Patents and copyrights are completely different things, with a UID as low as yours I'd expect you to know that.
Practically speaking the answer to your question is mostly yes, legally speaking I don't care, seriously, who gives a 4star.
Re:What about other copyrights? (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry but a 6 digit UID is not "low"... with a UID as high as yours I'd expect you to know that :-)
Re:What about other copyrights? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Sorry but a 6 digit UID is not "low"... with a UID as high as yours I'd expect you to know that :-)"
Also, based on my recollection of the level of discourse in Slashdot's early days, I wouldn't assume a low UID is a sign of wisdom...
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+1
Wishing I didn't use ISPs given email back in the nineties.
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I think there's something to be said for low UIDs :-)
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U don't say??
/ some of us never left
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I think there's something to be said for low UIDs :-)
Yes. Below a certain point, they indicate those who gave into the call to create logins before it was necessary.
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Thank you! That's why mine is so high.
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Sorry to bother you elders. But is it necessary now?
Yes, if you don't want to post from "Anonymous Coward" with starting score of zero.
For the first few years, Slashdot didn't have logins. You just entered whatever you wanted on the From: line.
Then logins were available but not required. You could still enter whatever you wanted on the From: line.
Finally, posts from non-logged in users became "Anonymous Coward" with zero starting score.
I moved pretty quickly to create a login after the Anonymous Coward change but I still ended up a five digit UID.
I had be
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I think there's something to be said for low UIDs :-)
Yes, definitely there's something to be said: low UIDs are overrated!
Re:What about other copyrights? (Score:5, Funny)
So what does count as a "low" UID these days? Is anyone even still signing up? This place is a shell of it's former self.
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You should really see my ICQ number, now that is impressive. ;)
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So what does count as a "low" UID these days? Is anyone even still signing up? This place is a shell of it's former self.
+5 Funny. Should be +5 SadButTrue
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One digit, obviously.
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If you buy a movie on a disk can you make an mp4 and put it on your phone?
Yes, you can. However, Your question is not about patent, but it is about copyright. The content of the disc (movie) is copyrighted. Thus, you could be sued for the copied.
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IANAL, but I believe the answer to that has already been established: "Yes." You're allowed to do whatever you'd like to do with the data on that disk--for your own personal use. I can buy a book, take a picture of each page, run it through an OCR reader and make my own version of the book which I could then put on whatever device I'd like.
The issue comes up when you then distribute that data to other people. You've now stepped outside the bounds of "your own personal use."
That's not to say that the peo
Re:What about other copyrights? (Score:4, Insightful)
That depends on which part of Title 17 you read. One section says you can't break the encryption. Another says you can, for purposes of cross-compatibility. This conflict has never been resolved.
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If you want to learn about a really interesting aspect of the "first sale doctrine" and how it applies to software, you should have a look at "Vernor vs Autodesk" in the USA and compare it to "Oracle vs UsedSoft" in the EU. Basically, in the USA the courts determined that if a company sells you software, but in their terms & conditions claim that they are merely granting you a license, then you can't resell the software b/c you aren't considered to own it. In the EU however, if a company sells you a per
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If you want to learn about a really interesting aspect of the "first sale doctrine" and how it applies to software, you should have a look at "Vernor vs Autodesk" in the USA and compare it to "Oracle vs UsedSoft" in the EU. Basically, in the USA the courts determined that if a company sells you software, but in their terms & conditions claim that they are merely granting you a license, then you can't resell the software b/c you aren't considered to own it.
This varies by federal district. The Central District of California ruled in SoftMan Products Co. v. Adobe Systems Inc [wikipedia.org] that (among other flaws in Adobe's argument, but this is the important one) a one time fee for indefinite use constitute a sale of goods, not a license, regardless of what the printed license says.
So far as I know, this is the first time this issue as gotten to SCOTUS. It's limited in scope, but combined with long established case law surrounding the first sale doctrine, it's promising.
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The Central District of California is part of the 9th circuit. The Vernor decision was made by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, so Vernor effectively (and, IMO, incorrectly) overrode the precedent in Softman.
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Why are you asking him to sign such an agreement? He never asked you to sign anything; he claims you agreed by magic, in secret without you ever being a party to the agreement, and despite you never doing anything that could be construed to having agreed to whatever his terms are.
If you claim that the other party agreed to something, then they agreed to it, period. That's how magic contracts work. We don't need no stinking signatures!
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Incoming? Soon? This has been a thing for nearly a decade. HP cartridges have DRM chips. No chip, no printing. 3rd parties started salvaging the chips from genuine cartridges (and they farmed them from their customers via the "send your old one to us" recycling programs). Then HP started doing expiration dates. I'm not sure what the current situation is. I haven't owned a printer in many years.
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Actually, this started when Lexmark put DRM on their cartridges, and somebody reverse engineered it. This isn't the first ridiculous lawsuit Lexmark as lost.
Re:Incoming DRM on your ink cartridges (Score:4, Informative)
Lexmark tried that and lost. Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components, 387 F.3d 522.