Everybody has heard of the Gillette model of business: give the razors away* and make your money on the blades. Of course, sellers of hygiene products are certainly not the only ones to love this model. Take printers, or specifically, Lexmark inkjets.

Lexmark thought they had a good thing going: they managed to engineer software that would interrogate a cartridge to determine if it was “genuine”, which in this case means “sold by Lexmark.” This procedure effectively killed the market for third-party cartridges, until somebody figured out how the system worked and created cheaper replacements.

So Lexmark sued the vendor, claiming the new cartridge infringed on their copyright. This, folks, is breathtaking audacity. Lexmark wants to sell you hardware and then electronically prevent you from using it unless you continue to pay them money.

All of this played out some time ago, and fortunately a District Court judge smacked them around in October of last year, vacating the injunction against the upstart, SCC. (The story is back in the news because Lexmark’s request for a re-hearing was denied.)

The fact remains, however, that we need to seriously re-examine copyright and other “intellectual property” legislation. And this time, let’s try to balance the public’s needs as well.

* I got a “Sensor” in the mail on my 18th birthday. Thanks, G.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Law & Politics.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.