US Supreme Court Protects Consumers' Right To Refill Ink Cartridges In Precedent-Setting Lexmark vs Impression Case (hothardware.com)

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.

Comments

All I have to say is

[Anonymous Coward]

good

Re: All I have to say is

[Sique]

That's a completely different case.

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.

Finally, an 8-0 ruling!

[cfalcon]

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.

John Deere

[Weaselmancer]

Good call. Now let's get to work on John Deere while you're in a giving mood.

"companies give up their patent rights..."

[MrKevvy]

"... 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.

Good decision, but there's some dishonesty...

[ErikTheRed]

...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.