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from the seems-pretty-black-and-white-to-me dept.
A corporate squabble over printer toner cartridges doesn't sound particularly glamorous, and the phrase "patent exhaustion" is probably already causing your eyes to glaze over. However, these otherwise boring topics are the crux of a Supreme Court case that will answer a question with far-reaching impact for all consumers: Can a company that sold you something use its patent on that product to control how you choose to use after you buy it?
The case in question is Impression Products, Inc v Lexmark International, Inc, came before the nation's highest court on Tuesday.
As with many SCOTUS disputes, Lexmark is a devil-in-the-details case that could have wide-ranging implications for basically everyone who ever buys anything — so, all of us.
Here's the background: Lexmark makes printers. Printers need toner in order to print, and Lexmark also happens to sell toner.
Then there's Impression Products, a third-party company makes and refills toner cartridges for use in printers, including Lexmark's.
Lexmark, however, doesn't want that; if you use third-party toner cartridges, that's money that Lexmark doesn't make. So it sued, which brings us to the legal chain that ended up at the Supreme Court.
Source: Consumerist
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday March 27 2017, @05:46PM (8 children)
> open, patent-free standards are defined for printing hardware
So... Set the standards now, and wait for 20 years before using them, then.
You can be sure the incumbents would sue everyone they could to protect their business. They're sitting on piles of patents (more or less trivial/valid), just in case...
Most of us are fine with printing tech from 20 years ago. But the USPTO is so broken, if you make that old stuff now, it's probably covered under a "printer's plastics made with n% Fukushima radionucleids" patent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2017, @06:06PM (3 children)
There's enough printer users out there that a Consortium could raise enough money to buy those patents and essentially nullify them.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday March 27 2017, @06:35PM (2 children)
[meme-tag] Can't tell if serious... [/meme-tag]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2017, @07:14PM (1 child)
Money in hand now may be worth more to, say, Lexmark than hoping to milk patents in the future.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:52PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Monday March 27 2017, @08:15PM (3 children)
Fuck, I'm fine with an actual printer from 20 years ago. HP Laserjet 4000 with a JetDirect card allowing printing over the network. I was even at a GoodWill store a little while ago and spotted a extended toner cartridge for it at about 75% off, so you can get refill toner cartridges just about anywhere.
I don't understand why people fall for the inkjet mafia every year. I've been on laser printing for over 20 years now. Even in the stores a laser printer is cheap enough to be affordable without too many upfront costs. Replacing the toner is somewhat easier and less involved in a laser printer than a inkjet printer.
Only reason why I would care about inkjets is to produce photographs, and there are better printers for photographs than a generic inkjet printer, and they can be mobile too.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:48AM
I had the 1100, but it died pretty spectacularly. Not much I could do to bring it back. Some of us aren't lucky to have such good Goodwills around. I had to buy my laser printer retail. It's a pretty nice one, and color, but I'm sure Samsung is just as eager to put the hammer down on toner refill as Lexmark is here, and mine is a new enough to be directly affected by that. Guess I'll have to stock up while I can.
Inkjets are bullshit though. I totally agree. I switched my girlfriend's default printer away from her all-in-one to my laser printer. The first print she was pissed because she didn't know what I did. By whatever print she's up to as of about a month ago, I was pissed because she killed a toner cart. I can't imagine how much liquid gold she would have gone through though printing on that all in one. I guess it is nice to have a scanner once in a while though.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:11PM (1 child)
The problem with that old HP is that its standby power consumption is horrible. New printers are much better in that regard. But you don't need to go to Goodwill to buy toner for it, you can get dirt-cheap remanufactured carts for it on Ebay.
You don't need an inkjet to print photos. Color lasers do this too.
Personally, I have a new Brother color laser; the cartridges are pretty easy to refill using cheap toner from Ebay, and it doesn't use chips to prevent this. It also has WiFi so I don't need to mess with ethernet cabling. It does a pretty good job with photos too. However, no color laser will look as good as a good color inkjet for photos, so unless you're printing a lot of photos, I'd recommend just sending them to Walmart or Costco's photo-printing service if you really want high quality.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:20PM
> The problem with that old HP is that its standby power consumption is horrible
We print once or twice a week, so our printer is on the extension cord with a switch.
Adds one more step to the printing process, but provides fullproof DDoS/spambot firewalling.