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U.S. Court: Lexmark Can Tie Rebates To Refills
SteveOU writes "Lexmark won a favorable judgement in its attempt to prevent competitors from refilling its cartridges. The judgement, issued by Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was a big loss for 'the rest of us,' reading in part "Because of its patents, Lexmark has the right to impose conditions on the sale of its patented product. It may restrict a purchaser's ability to repair it, which is what in essence the single-use condition does." What now? Will GM prohibit unauthorized repairs of its patented car components?"
The only problem with your argument is that most people DON'T realize they can just chuck the printer. Your average user just isn't that comfortable with hardware or messing with their system. They dutifully go out and buy the official cartridges, as directed in the manual, because they are afraid to do anything else.
It's just like all those people who insist on buying actual Aleve? Brand Pain Reliever instead of the generic Naproxen Sodium. You can sit there and explain to them for hours, it's the exact same thing, the FDA verifies it's an identical formula, there is no difference whatsoever besides the lack of sugar coating, and they'll STILL buy the brand stuff because the idea has been set up in their mind that something must have a Name Brand attached to it to be good. (I had this argument once. Some woman saw me loading up my basket with generic meds, thought she'd 'warn' me they weren't safe. Nothing I said managed to puncture the shell that the Brands had erected around her.) Exact same goes on with most computer parts - for every enlightened geek who knows they're identical, there are 5 lusers who have been convinced their computer will burst into flames if they don't use the EXACT RIGHT brand of ink.
Totemism, alive and well in the 21st century...
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
The quality of courtrooms depends on the quality of the judges (and other public officials) that get appointed. People who would vote for a Bush or a Schwarzenegger don't think about this, and they wind up with Ashcroft, and judges like Rehnquist or Scalia, or any of a hundred Pete Wilson-appointed California judges (Arnold is a front for Pete Wilson's people), and then they bitch and complain when the Lexmarks and State Farms of this world win all the court decisions.