Lexmark loses, good news for printer owners

Lexmark lost a bid to have a court injunction reinstated that would prevent a third party company for making cartridges that work in its printers. Lexmark has small chips in their ink cartridges that are there basically to make sure that you have to use Lexmark's own ink. Another company made cartridges with a chip that will work in Lexmark printers and so, in true American fashion, Lexmark sued, apparently thinking that Americans are going to get screwed if they can buy an ink cartridge for their inkjet printer for less than $20. What a tragedy! Lexmark was making the argument that this is covered under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). Another article on the same sight (this is from the RegisterUK, a British source) says that printer ink is actually by volume more expensive than Dom Perignon. Yikes!

The court fight is not over yet, you can read this article (which also has links to several related articles about this) at the link below:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/22/lexmark_dmca_update/