Slashdot Mirror
Refilling Ink Cartridges Now a Crime?
Eric Smith writes "The Ninth Circuit has created box-wrap patent licenses. Now the label on the box that says "single use only" is given force of law, and if you refill the cartridge you are liable for patent infringement."
So can I still fill up used bottled water bottles with my tap water if it is labled '1 liter'?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Conservatives have been screaming for about a decade about hot the 9th circuit is insane.
Now that one of their decisions will effect soccer moms and art students, maybe something will be done about it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's your lump of plastic and assorted trace metals. However, it's their patented technology which you need a licence to use legally.
You know, there was once a time when most people owned very little. The average European owned no land; instead he rented patches of land from the local lord, and paid most of his produce to that lord in rent.
We're heading back that way now. It's not land any more, no, it's intellectual property. The way things are going we geeks won't be free to invent as we always have done any more; we'll have to pay massive dues to our feudal overlords who own patents on everything.
The best thing is, the libertarians won't care. It's not the government that's pissing all over us, it's private enterprise. And that makes all the difference, doesn't it?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
In this era of population explosion, global resource exploitation, potential global warming, etc., it is insanity to intentionally dictate that easily re-used items be turned into "single-use" consumables that thus fill landfills on one end of the chain while consuming additional resources and energy for the manufacture of identical new items (and packaging, too) at the other end of the chain-- all when the existing item(s)are perfectly fine and completely functional.
This is the insanity of capitalism: we are running out of oil; we are filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses as the result of our energy use; we are clear-cutting; we are running out of easily habitable (without extra energy consumption for climate management, water movement, etc.) space; and yet the only measure with which we as a society are concerned is the measure of capital and the individual "freedom" to acquire it (by and large a lie propagated by those who hold it-- how many billionaries are in your family?), even as we consume ourselves into a planetary grave.
It's not just conceptually consumable items like ink cartridges that could easily be re-used; it's even big-ticket items like cell phones and automobiles--millions of them end up in landfills each year while they're still perfectly good, either because they're artificially locked/behavior-controlled or because manufacturers refuse to continue to support them so that they can sell new models to individuals who demand them in part after succumbing to the forces of marketplace psychology in advertising and in part because of the real social (and thus capital) benefits that such appearances (i.e. a new auto; a new cell phone) provide as a result of the marketplace.
The "marketplace" is merely the aggregate of individual greed and it mechanistically ignores problems that any single individual feels to be "bigger than themself" and their own desires. If you let the "marketplace" dictate environmental and social policy, you are asking for a system that (like its component individuals) completely ignores the realities of the very survival of our species in favor of giving everyone a better-tasting cola in the run-up to the planetary apocalypse.
It is time to stop capitalism and corporatism now.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Christ, does *every* Slashdot headline have to be misleading and sesationalistic?
To answer the question in the headline: No, it's not illegal to refill your Lexmark ink cartridges. What's illegal is for a company to buy up empty "one-use" cartridges, fill them back up, and resell them.
Whether it was warranted for the court to uphold this or not, the decision does not mean what the Slashdot editors would like you to believe.
Slashdot: News for the Gullible. Stuff that insults your intelligence.
Every time something crazy comes out such as this I pray for more of the same.
The only way deep change will come about is when people are told that they can't modify their cars with non-GM parts, when people are told that they can only wear nike shoes with nike pants, when people are prohibited from buying an oral B tooth brush with some Crest toothpaste unless they sign a contract where they promises not to use the 2 products together.
Let the crazy come cause the crazy can't stay, they can just hassle us for a while.
I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
No.
Slashdot, the Fox News of Patents, has vaguely summarized a short article and omitted details that would significantly diminish the outlandish headline.
You can infinge every patent in the world so long as you do it for your own purposes. However, you cannot do it for business. There's nothing in the article OR the licensing agreement that describes what you can or cannot do with the printer cartridge for personal use. Be creative.
This judgement says that you cannot engage in the business of refilling "one use only" cartridges, which apparently includes selling your used cartridges back to a refilling company. I personally find that bizarre, because you could easily "sell your junk" to a third party, who "sells his filtered junk" to a cartridge refilling company, and enforcing this judgement would be nigh impossible. Regardless, this has nothing to do with how you use or refill your printer cartridges - for personal use.
What have I been telling you people for at least the last ten years? Why haven't you been paying attention?
To the apologists who claim that a contract is created between Lexmark and the purchaser, I ask: Where is the informed disclosure? Where is the manifestation of informed assent? Where are the signed copies of the "contract"?
The reason retail markets are so valuable is because a regular set of rules that is common to all states governs how transactions in the market take place. This regularity is what enables an accelerated transfer of goods and services, which lets money flow around the economy that much faster, benefiting everyone. If you want special terms or conditions you, by definition, are not trading in a retail market. For you to sell your goods in a retail venue is therefore, at best, misleading ("bait-and-switch," anyone?).
If you want special terms and conditions, get a signed contract. Oh, that's too much trouble? Well, tough shit. And if you try sneaking a contract in under the radar, well, that doesn't prove you have any kind of rights or moral authority, all it proves is you're sneaky.
This is a crap decision, following on twenty years of previous crap decisions (ProCD vs. Zeidenberg being but one of them).
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Actually, people talk all the time about "voting with your wallet" and all that but that rarely works unless you can create a groundswell of public support that even a Presidential candidate would envy. And it only works for a while because we have short memories. Short of that, there are only a couple of tried-and-true methods that can be used to influence corporate behavior: lawsuits, and public embarrassment. Those two are often intertwined.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.