Regardless of the details of the 9th Circuit's decision, the ire that it raises is a further incentive for the open source hardware movement. The tighter the intellecual entitlements monopolists squeeze, the more will slip between their fingers.
We've seen this with Linux and OpenOffice vis-a-vis Microsoft. We are starting to see this with the music, movie, and textbook industries. If other companies follow Lexmark's example, we'll see it in the computer hardware realm.
In a competitive market, price approximates marginal cost; i.e., the cost of producing the next unit of output. A monopolist can charge a premium above production cost; copyright, patent, and trademark are monopoly rights.
However, the existence of monopoly profits creates an incentive to innovate and bring substitutes to market. Monopolists are limited by entrepreneurial opportunism.
Lexmark and all the other printer companies can create all the legal restrictions that they like, irksome as that might be. Don't lose too much sleep over it, though. There will be that one printer manufacturer that takes advantage of the situation, and builds a marketing campaign around the user's freedom to use whatever printer cartridges he or she likes.
Even if no one seized this opportunity, you can be sure that an underground market in open source hardware printers will have come into existence long before talking monkeys start riding horses and the Statue of Liberty gets buried up to her armpits in sand.
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Regardless of the details of the 9th Circuit's decision, the ire that it raises is a further incentive for the open source hardware movement. The tighter the intellecual entitlements monopolists squeeze, the more will slip between their fingers.
We've seen this with Linux and OpenOffice vis-a-vis Microsoft. We are starting to see this with the music, movie, and textbook industries. If other companies follow Lexmark's example, we'll see it in the computer hardware realm.
In a competitive market, price approximates marginal cost; i.e., the cost of producing the next unit of output. A monopolist can charge a premium above production cost; copyright, patent, and trademark are monopoly rights.
However, the existence of monopoly profits creates an incentive to innovate and bring substitutes to market. Monopolists are limited by entrepreneurial opportunism.
Lexmark and all the other printer companies can create all the legal restrictions that they like, irksome as that might be. Don't lose too much sleep over it, though. There will be that one printer manufacturer that takes advantage of the situation, and builds a marketing campaign around the user's freedom to use whatever printer cartridges he or she likes.
Even if no one seized this opportunity, you can be sure that an underground market in open source hardware printers will have come into existence long before talking monkeys start riding horses and the Statue of Liberty gets buried up to her armpits in sand.