US Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments Over Your Right To Refill Ink And Toner Cartridges

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US Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments Over Your Right To Refill Ink And Toner Cartridges
by Brittany Goetting — Sunday, March 26, 2017
http://hothardware.com/news/us-supreme-court-hears-oral-arguments-over-your-right-to-refill-ink-and-toner-cartridges

Printers are expensive. Recycling and selling used/refilled printer ink cartridges has often been seen as a way to recoup the money that often gets sunk into the cash cow of the printer business - the ink itself. The ruling of Impression Products, Inc. v Lexmark Int’l, Inc, a recent and rather obscure court case, could potentially change how printer ink cartridge items are used, recycled, restored and resold, once they have been purchased by a customer.

Impression Products is a small business that specializes in buying and re-manufacturing used printer cartridges. Lexmark International, Inc. recently decided to add the company to a list of other business that they had decided to sue as a result of this practice. All of the other companies settled outside of court, however, Impression Product stuck it out for the long-run. The case has now reached the Supreme Court, which is now struggling to understand the specifics of the claim and its ramifications on precedent, as well as make a final decision.

Lexmark offers a “shrink-wrap license” in which customers can purchase cartridges at a discounted rate if they agree to not resell or reuse them. The customer essentially accepts the agreement once they have opened the cartridge’s packing. Lexmark argues that customers cannot resell or reuse the cartridges because the item technically never belonged to the customer.

Impression Products is fighting back with the concept of “patent exhaustion.” This is a patent law doctrine specifically states that a manufacturer loses their rights to control the fate of their products once they have been sold to a customer. If a customer purchases an item, they may reuse or resell it.

...

Both of these court cases, however, went against most of the Supreme Court rulings since 1850. The Supreme Court has generally ruled that a patent holder exhausts their patent rights at the time of sale. If Lexmark wins the case, this could mean developers, manufacturers, and customers looking to resell their goods would need to trace and protect the patent rights of every item they purchase. No final decision is expected until at least June 2017.

Excerpt.  Read more at http://hothardware.com/news/us-supreme-court-hears-oral-arguments-over-your-right-to-refill-ink-and-toner-cartridges

[driftdiver]

I may go get a lexmark printer cartridge and then charge them a storage fee.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Man...

They still make dot matrix printers. Good ones too:

http://www.okidata.com/

This stuff pisses me off so much.

[Fishrrman]

From the article:
"If Lexmark wins the case, this could mean developers, manufacturers, and customers looking to resell their goods would need to trace and protect the patent rights of every item they purchase. No final decision is expected until at least June 2017."

This sounds like something that would be all-but impossible to enforce in the real world.

Could one even sell a car?

[Smokin Joe]

Man...

They still make dot matrix printers. Good ones too:

http://www.okidata.com/

This stuff pisses me off so much.

Me, too. I would print well logs using an inkjet printer, one that cost 30 bucks with the cartridges when I bought it. In fact, the cartridges cost more than the whole package, so I bought five printers while that deal was going. I wore three out--I still use one. But the cartridges would only print one fifty page banner, and while there was a lot of ink left over, it wasn't any good to me. I bought ink and syringes, and through trial and error, became proficient at filling my own. Instead of buying a fresh cartridge for every log I printed out, I'd get through print runs of 20 logs with one, maybe two black cartridges (the print heads eventually clog), and a couple or three color cartridges (which clog easier). The end result was that instead of spending $770 to do a print run, I'd end up spending about $125 for the cartridges and ink, and still have (the last two) usable cartridges to do little jobs with.

No wonder they are whining, but it isn't something everyone wants to do.

Buying 'refilled' cartridges, which I often had quality issues with (bad printing anywhere in the log was enough to make it unusable, a waste of paper, time, and money), was somewhere in between.

[endicom]

If you have but occasional need for prints or copies and are near a library then go there.

I recently had to sign and submit a legal document and couldn't wait for snail mail delivery but could submit it via email. I went to the library, made a couple of copies of the document and scanned it to a thumb drive. That cost me about 50 cents. From the thumb drive I emailed the document and that was that.

[Smokin Joe]

If you have but occasional need for prints or copies and are near a library then go there.

I recently had to sign and submit a legal document and couldn't wait for snail mail delivery but could submit it via email. I went to the library, made a couple of copies of the document and scanned it to a thumb drive. That cost me about 50 cents. From the thumb drive I emailed the document and that was that.

For occasional use, that'll work. Mine was anything but. In fact, I was considering buying a bigger, better, printer that only cost 200 times what that little inkjet cost when oil went south, price wise, and my rig was laid down. It would have printed what ordinarily took a week to do (with the little printer and running odd hours round the clock) in an afternoon with time left over.
I still have one of those multifunction printers I can fax with, and the cartridges in those do well, remaining viable even after sitting idle for a month or more. 

[Frank Cannon]

If you have but occasional need for prints or copies and are near a library then go there.

Libraries ain't free. They suck money from taxpayers so you can get your cut rate office needs met.

[Smokin Joe]

Libraries ain't free. They suck money from taxpayers so you can get your cut rate office needs met.

If you use it, you get your money's worth. If not, we who do thank you for your contribution to literacy. Besides, the local one here has meeting space, and when/if our Congress critters screw up enough courage to speak face to face with real people again, that's where those 'townhalls' are held.

[geronl]

I buy cartridges from a place that refills them, it's much less expensive. Plus I give them back the old cartridges.