Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday March 23 2017, @03:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the and-copyright-while-you're-there dept.

Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could allow companies to keep a dead hand of control over their products, even after you buy them.  The case, Impression Products v. Lexmark International, is on appeal from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, who last year affirmed its own precedent allowing patent holders to restrict how consumers can use the products they buy. That decision, and the precedent it relied on, departs from long established legal rules that safeguard consumers and enable innovation.

When you buy something physical—a toaster, a book, or a printer, for example—you expect to be free to use it as you see fit: to adapt it to suit your needs, fix it when it breaks, re-use it, lend it, sell it, or give it away when you're done with it. Your freedom to do those things is a necessary aspect of your ownership of those objects. If you can't do them, because the seller or manufacturer has imposed restrictions or limitations on your use of the product, then you don't really own them. Traditionally, the law safeguards these freedoms by discouraging sellers from imposing certain conditions or restrictions on the sale of goods and property, and limiting the circumstances in which those restrictions may be imposed by contract.

But some companies are relentless in their quest to circumvent and undermine these protections. They want to control what end users of their products can do with the stuff they ostensibly own, by attaching restrictions and conditions on purchasers, locking down their products, and locking you (along with competitors and researchers) out. If they can do that through patent law, rather than ordinary contract, it would mean they could evade legal limits on contracts, and that any one using a product in violation of those restrictions (whether a consumer or competitor) could face harsh penalties for patent infringement.

If you refill the ink in your printer cartridges, you will go to jail?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @08:47PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @08:47PM (#483386)

    There is no reason why there must be a monopoly on violent enforcement of a contract. Indeed, it seems quite obvious that a monopoly would be a BAD thing; better to have competition (a separation of powers, if you will) when it comes to the service of enforcing contracts.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday March 23 2017, @08:55PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday March 23 2017, @08:55PM (#483393)

    Start a war between my Contract Enforcer and your Contract Enforcer?

    "Today, 5 more buildings were burnt down as the dispute over Alice or Chris paying Dominic for the pizza enters its second month."