The Planet Money podcast recently did an episode about this case: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/31/522226226/episo...
SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
221–230 of 319 posts
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be interesting if food was sold this way. Instead of an upfront purchase of atoms and molecules, you license their use and pay a monthly fee. It would be a bit hard to tell which exact atoms came from each food consumed with current tech, but one could do estimates of the expected half-lives of various atoms and molecules in the human body and have people agree to pay according those rates. This would defini…
Until you reach a point where most of your atoms come from them, and you are their property now. Great! Why do people here propose the most obtuse and shitty dystopian scenarios for everything?
Because they didn't propose anything, they outlined an interesting satirical scenario.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#223If you want to learn about a really interesting aspect of the "first sale doctrine" and how it applies to software, you should have a look at "Vernor vs Autodesk" in the USA and compare it to "Oracle vs UsedSoft" in the EU. Basically, in the USA the courts determined that if a company sells you software, but in their terms & conditions claim that they are merely granting you a license, then you can't resell the softw…
I do hope EU gets on top of Apple/Google/Netflix/HBO/etc soon. It's supposed to be One Market, yet these all impose territory restrictions where content in Spain is not necessarily available in France and vice versa.
No government should force that. It should be up to the company on where it's goods are sold etc.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#224That's a fascinating judgement and the hypothetical case that they use to illustrate things seems interestingly chosen:
>But an illustration never hurts. Take a shop that restores and sells used cars. The business works because the shop can rest assured that, so long as those bringing in the cars own them, the shop is free to repair and resell those vehicles. That smooth flow of commerce would sputter if companies that make the thousands of parts that go into a vehicle could keep their patent rights after the first sale. Those companies might, for instance, restrict resale rights and sue the shop owner for patent infringement. And even if they refrained from imposing such restrictions, the very threat of patent liability would force the shop to invest in efforts to protect itself from hidden lawsuits. Either way, extending the patent rights beyond the first sale would clog the channels of commerce, with little benefit from the extra control that the patentees retain. And advances in technology, along with increasingly complex supply chains, magnify the problem. See Brief for Costco Wholesale Corp. et al. as Amici Curiae 7–9; Brief for Intel Corp. et al. as Amici Curiae 17, n. 5 (“A generic smartphone assembled from various high-tech components could practice an estimated 250,000 patents”).
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do hope EU gets on top of Apple/Google/Netflix/HBO/etc soon. It's supposed to be One Market, yet these all impose territory restrictions where content in Spain is not necessarily available in France and vice versa.
No government should force that. It should be up to the company on where it's goods are sold etc.
Sure, if your only goal is to maximize profit extraction and wealth consolidation.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do hope EU gets on top of Apple/Google/Netflix/HBO/etc soon. It's supposed to be One Market, yet these all impose territory restrictions where content in Spain is not necessarily available in France and vice versa.
No government should force that. It should be up to the company on where it's goods are sold etc.
Corporations have rights, true. But consumers also have rights.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would also add that the original intent was to remove government-imposed barriers to trade between the members (elimination of duties, regulation, etc). Whereas the unavailability of certain content based on location is almost certainly the result of a contractual arrangement between content makers and distributors rather than a government-imposed limit.
The scope of the Single Market is broader than that - it includes standardization of weights and measures, standardization of product names, etc. - rules that apply to private companies, and are meant to break down extra-legal obstacles to trade.
> The scope of the Single Market is broader than that - it includes standardization of weights and measures, standardization of product names, etc
Well historically individual states had their own regulations regarding weights/measures and product names, and that authority was transferred to the new market when it was created. These types of regulations ensure a level playing field between buyers and sellers, and are an important function of any regulated market. You know what you're getting when you buy a 750 mL bottle of Chateauneuf.
It doesn't necessarily follow that the maker of the Chateauneuf ought to be required to distribute it in a particular geographic territory.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a consumer, I will never purchase subscription software. If a new version has a feature I need or because of OS upgrade, I'll purchase the new version or an upgrade if offered.
The physical goods model for software is much more consumer friendly. You don't need every single upgrade, you can choose how much to spend on an ongoing basis. If an "upgrade" is less suitable for you than the original, you can skip it or look for a substitute. It's scary to contemplate a world where the software you rely on every day can change out from under you without your control or even knowledge. See the anim…
We're in that world, to a large degree. By default, phone apps auto-update. OSes auto-update. Websites arbitrarily change behavior, as suits their owners. All but the last can be disabled (mostly), but it's still a pain.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no particular reason to make it a rental. They can still put whatever contractual restraints they want on a sale, they just have to enforce those under contract law, not via patent law. The entire reasoning for bringing a patent lawsuit is that it allows them to sue the refillers/resellers, instead of having to sue millions of individual customers who might have violated a shrink-wrap contract with Lexmark. G…
With a rental wouldn't purchasers of used cartridges essentially be knowingly buying stolen property? (Which seems very straightforward in terms its legal ramifications compared to other options.)
IANAL, but I think you'd have to prove that, ie identify the chain of custody for the device and prove that the lease was broken.
Re: SCOTUS: Patent Rights Over a Printer Cartridge Are Exhausted When It Is Sold
#230If you want to learn about a really interesting aspect of the "first sale doctrine" and how it applies to software, you should have a look at "Vernor vs Autodesk" in the USA and compare it to "Oracle vs UsedSoft" in the EU. Basically, in the USA the courts determined that if a company sells you software, but in their terms & conditions claim that they are merely granting you a license, then you can't resell the softw…
That sounds a little better than the ridiculous Autodesk decision, however it sounds trivial to circumvent by simply putting a 'term of license' clause in the EULA. I'd go so far as to say I don't think EULAs should be considered a valid legal instrument.
A surprise contract that most don't pay attention to and severely limits the rights of the target human is an American standard.