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Lexmark Invokes DMCA in Toner Suit
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.
This is very reminding of the recent article on Xbox keys, and how it restricts others from develping games without the MS overhead.
Lexmark, I dub thee the MS of printers!
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Free your mind.
Seems as though Lexmark has decided it wants all the pie when it comes to the printing world
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.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Lexmark claims that Smartek "mimics the authentication sequence" of Lexmarks printers. That is classic backward engineering by observing the effect and trying to re-create it. If Lexmark succeeds in this, what effect will it have on other backwards engineering efforts? Will Microsoft be able to sue the Samba project because it "mimics the authentication sequence" of NT/Win2000?
First of all, MS is the *only* console vender that loses money on its consoles: both Nintendo and Sony made profit for each unit sold.
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.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
I bought a Lexmark a few months ago, a E-320 (it's at home, I may have the last digit wrong, it's basically a low-end sub-$300 laser.) There was a seal on the supplied cartridge itself, which was in the printer but not installed (if that makes sense) with a note to the affect that if I broke the seal I would be agreeing to return the cartridge in the supplied box once I'd finished with it. Apparently Lexmark have two types of toner cartridge, one for users to keep and one "recyclable" that's "owned by Lexmark" that's cheaper. The one bundled with the printer is the latter.
As Lexmark hadn't actually supplied a box, I took the EULA to be nonsense and broke it anyway. If anyone at Lexmark reading this would like to contact me and send me a toner cartridge box as required per your licence, I'll happily return this 50c bit of plastic once I'm done with it. I don't do that much printing, so this'll be in a few years I guess, but you can wait that long can't you? ;-)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Many years ago I worked at a company that did large format inkjet printers/plotters. The ink bags (yes bags) had little Dallas Semi chips that we could identify and keep a count of ink usage.
... hmmm $100, $150, $1000, $1500. Which would you pick?
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,
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