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Supreme Court Sides with Consumers–Affirms Your Right to Repair Stuff

nationaleconomicseditorial.com

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Re: Supreme Court Sides with Consumers–Affirms Your Right to Repair Stuff

#11
post #10

Which Judge voted against it?

Seems like a "partial" disagreement from Ginsburg, leading to a 7-1-1 split.

> Six other justices concurred with Roberts in full, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg concurred in part, saying she agreed Lexmark patent rights ended when the cartridges were sold in the US. For foreign sales, she said Lexmark’s patent right was not exhausted. Here, “patent rights” refers to restrictions Lexmark placed on the cartridges. The newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, didn’t take part because arguments were heard last year, before he was confirmed and seated.

[0] https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/250050-supreme-court...

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Consumers–Affirms Your Right to Repair Stuff

#12
post #2

I expect we will only have a license to operate printers/ink cartridges at some point in the future, rather then owning them.

Well, this Supreme Court opinion says the exact opposite, so your expectation probably wrong for points in the short- and medium-term future.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Consumers–Affirms Your Right to Repair Stuff

#13
post #9

Here is the ruling if anyone is interested (the opinion starts on page 6): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1189_ebfj.pdf I think this article is taking what the ruling says and bringing it a bit far. Essentially this suit was about Lexmark suing a "remanufacturer", Impression Products, Inc., that takes used ink cartridges and refills them, instead of the consumer returning them to Lexmark, for parent i…

You're right - without fixing the copyright loop hole you don't have the right to repair things with software lock outs.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Consumers–Affirms Your Right to Repair Stuff

#14
post #11
post #10

Which Judge voted against it?

Seems like a "partial" disagreement from Ginsburg, leading to a 7-1-1 split. > Six other justices concurred with Roberts in full, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg concurred in part, saying she agreed Lexmark patent rights ended when the cartridges were sold in the US. For foreign sales, she said Lexmark’s patent right was not exhausted. Here, “patent rights” refers to restrictions Lexmark placed on the cartridges. The…

[deleted]

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Consumers–Affirms Your Right to Repair Stuff

#16
post #5

Man, if only they'd made the cartridge play a little tune when the chip is disabled. Then they could do the full DMCA game. Seems like the key to modern security is to have something copyrighted behind a terrible lock

TrackIR uses a shitty poem as part of its initialization routine so it will fall under copyright so the makers can control who writes software for it.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Consumers–Affirms Your Right to Repair Stuff

#19

Can't lexmark just change it to a rental agreement? Use these cartriges until they run out, and then return them. If you fail to do so, lexmark doesn't care -- the point is that they would avoid exhausting their patent rights.

That would make point of sale significantly more complicated.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Consumers–Affirms Your Right to Repair Stuff

#20
post #4

What does "stuff" mean? And what's a "right" in this situation? Does "stuff" include things like a Tesla Model S, and a "right" means that Tesla cannot remotely brick your car due to modifications? Does the "right" to repair only protect from prosecution or does it imply being given access to documentation and spare parts?

A challenge about journalistic summaries of court decisions is that the court decisions usually address only the application of one area of law. (Also, they are often not even making a final decision, although this particular decision is final on this issue.) Here, the Supreme Court was considering whether a patent holder can assert that a patent lets them prevent some activity with respect to a patented product even after the product has been sold (in this case, when a consumer sells a patented printer cartridge to a remanufacturer who refills it with fresh ink and resells it to another consumer). The court said that existing patent law does not, in fact, include a right to prohibit this activity.

However, this is not the same as finding a blanket right to repair things; there might be other legal reasons why manufacturers can try to restrict repairs. The court did not decide whether any of those other reasons are or are not valid. One example that comes up a lot and that some of my colleagues are actively working on is software copyrights, and particularly §1201 of the DMCA as applied to embedded software.

It's also worth remembering that most U.S. court decisions that examine parties' legal rights are interpreting statutes or contracts (whose text can potentially be changed in response to the court decision), not evaluating constitutional rights (which are difficult to change). So a lot of decisions that say a party has a right to do something mean to say that a particular law or contract did not prevent the party from doing it. But another law or contract—including a future revised version of that same one—might conceivably still prevent it.

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