take that, DMCA!
The DMCA suffered a blow today!
Lexmark, if you recall, incorporated a security chip in its printer cartridges so that when the inevitable happened*a third-party company reverse-engineered the printer cartridge so they could make less expensive, competing cartridges Lexmark would be able to defend themselves with the DMCA. Enter Static Control Components (SCC).
So, Lexmark sued SCC using the DMCA as their weapon of choice. It didn’t work! Lexmark appealed, and that brings us up to date. The Sixth Circuit Appeals Court threw out their appeal today, on grounds that 1) their ‘lock out’ verification code wasn’t something that they could copyright in the first place. And 2) the DMCA is not a tool for creating monopolies. Check out this juicy quote from the ruling:
A monopolist could enforce its will against a smaller rival simply because the potential cost of extended litigation and discovery where the burden of proof shifts to the defendant is itself a deterrent to innovation and competition. Misreading the statute to shift the burden in this way could allow powerful manufacturers in practice to create monopolies where they are not in principle supported by law.