Epson court decision

[Michael Graves]

Jeez, Epson invented something, patented it and people are infringing on their patent. If you go along with this infringement, you shouldn't mind people using your photographs at will and ignoring your copyright...EC

I 100% agree with this statement. Where I am confused from the posting is whether or not Epson is going after companies that specialize in refilling cartridges, if they are only targeting third-party manufacturers of new cartridges, or both. Prosecuting third-party manufacturers of new cartridges is fully within their rights as a patent holder.

I DO take exception to them going after those refilling existing cartridges. I don't see any patent infringement there, because they are not manufacturing any new hardware. From the standpoint of physicall property, that would be the same thing as prosecuting me for buying Staples paper to go in my Office Depot 3-ring binder. From an intellectual property standpoint, it is no different than the colleges who sell textbooks over and over again without compensating the author or publisher for lost royalties. As far as I can see, there is room for additional legal debate here.

[Ken Lee]

From an intellectual property standpoint, it is no different than ...

There's the rub. That's where lawyers and judges come in. Is it like this, or is it more like that ? That's all these guys think about all day, and they have centuries of prior rulings on which to base their decisions.

The number of analogous cases is probably vast, and I seriously doubt that this one represents a milestone in Intellectual Property Law.

I have a Patent lawyer in the family. I will ask when I get a chance.

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Damn, I hate lawyers. They have so irreparably fucked up our economy, just about as bad as realtors and the insurance 'industry'. Even worse, they make most of the money you spend.

[walter23]

Jeez, Epson invented something, patented it and people are infringing on their patent. If you go along with this infringement, you shouldn't mind people using your photographs at will and ignoring your copyright...EC

I'll concede that there may be some innovations in the ink delivery system, itself but as pointed out it's pretty trivial to patent refilling the ink cartridges or whatever.

I don't buy devices that force you into proprietary consumables though and are useless without them. And Epson already has a track record of extremely dirty dealings with their ink delivery system; I can't bother to look for the link, but it was revealed a couple of years ago that they had a date logic chip in the ink system that would cause it to report empty ink after a period of time (6 months or something maybe) even if the cartridge was still perfectly usable and full of ink.

Patenting and locking a system is Epson's choice; refusing to buy into it is mine.

[Brian Ellis]

I guess I'm a little cynical but I find it amusing that the people who are so upset about the way the patent laws have been applied in this case are the same people who would be screaming (and rightfully so) if they held a copyright on one of their photographs and an unauthorized person used the photograph in violation of the copyright laws. And I wonder what Jon Cone would do if he had a patent on his ink formulas (which he may have for all I know) and a third-party figured out the formula and started selling duplicate inks at half the price? I don't see anything particularly noble about any business, large or small, that's built on the unauthorized use of another company's patents, it's all just one company's profit motives against another company's profit motives, with customers unfortunately caught in the middle. I should add, however, that I haven't read the ITC decision and maybe there's more to the case than there appears to be just from reading comments about it here and other places.

[walter23]

I guess I'm a little cynical but I find it amusing that the people who are so upset about the way the patent laws have been applied in this case are the same people who would be screaming (and rightfully so) if they held a copyright on one of their photographs and an unauthorized person used the photograph in violation of the copyright laws.

Perhaps a better analogy would be a reframer taking photos in battered up frames and matting them again and putting them in fresh frames.

Look, if I buy something - it's mine. I can do with it as I see. If I want to pour someone else's third party ink into it - that's my business.

If I want to modify it to take a continuous ink system instead of refillable cartridges - that's also my business.

Imagine if cars were built in today's climate of patent law. Chrysler would own the right to wheels and would sue Toyota. Toyota would have a patented "engine lubrication system" and instead of just dumping oil in your engine at the pumps you'd have to bring it in to Toyota's service center for Toyota's proprietary "thick hydrocarbon lubricant" (identical incidentally to motor oil, but copyrighted). Ford would have a deal with Shell and sensors at the fuel intake to look for micromarkers in the fuel and shut off the engine if gasoline other than Shell's was in use (and would sue customers for modifying the Ford engine to bypass this Shell-fuel sensor so that other gasoline could be used) - the patent, incidentally, would be on this shell fuel sensor, and patent infringement would be cited if you bypassed it or put an additive in your regular gas to make it work. At some point patent law becomes a ridiculous model to lock customers into your business instead of allowing economics (supply, demand, innovation) to take its course. If the third party manufacturers can make ink and supplies for a quarter the price, Epson is obviously using the law to fix its pricing and soak the customers by shutting out fair competition.

One of the reasons I love old large format cameras is that I can mount a lens made by any company on the planet, and use any manufacturer's back and shoot any film! I figured there'd be more sympathy for this sentiment on LFinfo

[Bob Salomon - HP Marketing]

Imagine a manufacturer of enlargers trying to tell people which brand of paper they are allowed to make prints with or which chemicals to develop them in.

But an enlarger is quite different then an ink jet printer. Beseler, Omega, Durst, Kaiser, Devry, Speedmaster, Homerich, LogE, etc. never were made to be used with their inks, dyes or papers. In fact, chemistry and papers were rarely put directly into an enlarger.

(granted there are automatic printers from companies like Durst and minilab printing components that take chemistry in cartridges, pellets, cubetainers, etc. but these are generally not referred to as an enlarger).

[Bob Salomon - HP Marketing]

look at Polaroid!

Look at what? Instant photography vs digital?

Fuji and Kodak also made "Instant film" Polaroid was not unique. What killed Polaroid was digital. Not a "closed system".

[tim atherton]

it's not really about patents at all, it's about using patents as a tool to enforce a restriction on trade and limit competition.

Hasn't the EU gone the opposite direction and forbiden manufacturers from embedding any chips that prevent third parties from refilling ink cartridges? etc

[AJSJones]

But if anyone had made film that would fit into a Polaroid camera and used patented Polaroid technology, Polaroid would have gone after them for patent infringement. Fuji and Kodak deveoped their own Instant Systems. Ergo, if a 3rd party made cartridges that would "fit" into Epson machines but didn't use their patented system, they couldn't have been sued . The cartridges also wouldn't have worked, because of the chip thingy. Epson sneakily, but apparently legally, made the cartridges as "replaceable parts" of a patented system. The chip/reader system makes it infringement to make something that works with system that requires the chip! Selling inks and equipment to e.g. refill or reset the chips in Epson's cartridges so the user can replenish, would not seem to be covered by these exclusion/cease and desist orders, because the cartridges are not imported or sold. Perhaps a business model is viable where you could send old (legally purchased) cartridges to a company that "modified" them for you to fit back into your machine but allowed CIS with inks of your choice. They would therefore not be making or selling Epson compatible cartridges..