Lexmark loses printer toner cartridges lawsuit; DMCA dives, consumers win big

• Until earlier this week, some electronics companies were wielding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- a law that tries to curtail piracy of music and movies -- as a shield to protect their businesses from competition.
• But a couple of recent court rulings are taking away that protection.
• On Tuesday, a federal appeals court said printer maker Lexmark cannot prevent Static Control Components from manufacturing printer toner cartridges that operate with its printers.
• Lexmark had sued the competitor, arguing that Static Control had no right under the DMCA to circumvent electronics that prevented Lexmark printers from using anything other than Lexmark cartridges.
• And in August, a U.S. appeals court shot down a similar attempt by garage door manufacturer Chamberlain Group to use the DMCA to stop Skylink Technologies from manufacturing a universal garage door opener.
• Critics of the DMCA and consumer groups had argued that the law presented a danger because it would prevent competition and force consumers to pay artificially higher prices.
• But the recent rulings are narrowing the scope of the DMCA, preventing companies from using it to shut out competition.
• "We should make clear that in the future companies like Lexmark cannot use the DMCA in conjunction with copyright law to create monopolies of manufactured goods for themselves just by tweaking the facts of this case," wrote (.pdf) Judge Gilbert Merritt of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
• Lexmark officials were still reviewing the case Wednesday but issued a statement saying that "Lexmark will continue to vigorously protect its intellectual property rights in this litigation and in any other instance where Lexmark believes that its intellectual property rights are violated."