Arch Your Eyebrow At Impression Products V. Lexmark International

March 28, 2017 by Jenny List 63 Comments

When it comes to recycled printer consumables, the world seems to divide sharply into those who think they’re great, and those who have had their printer or their work ruined by a badly filled cartridge containing cheaper photocopy toner, or God knows what black stuff masquerading as inkjet ink. It doesn’t matter though whether you’re a fan or a hater, a used printer cartridge is just a plastic shell with its printer-specific ancilliaries that you can do with what you want. It has performed its task the manufacturer sold it to you for and passed its point of usefulness, if you want to fill it up with aftermarket ink, well, it’s yours, so go ahead.

There is a case approaching the US Supreme Court though which promises to change all that, as well as to have ramifications well beyond the narrow world of printer cartridges. Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc. pits the printer manufacturer against a small cartridge recycling company that refused to follow the rest of its industry and reach a settlement.

At issue is a clause in the shrink-wrap legal agreement small print that comes with a new Lexmark cartridge that ties a discounted price to an agreement to never offer the cartridge for resale or reuse. They have been using it for decades, and the licence is deemed to have been agreed to simply by opening the cartridge packaging. By pursuing the matter, Lexmark are trying to set a legal precedent allowing such licencing terms to accompany a physical products even when they pass out of the hands of the original purchaser who accepted the licence.

There is a whole slew of concerns to be addressed about shrink-wrap licence agreements, after all, how many Lexmark owners even realise that they’re agreeing to some legal small print when they open the box? But the concern for us lies in the consequences this case could have for the rest of the hardware world. If a precedent is set such that a piece of printer consumable hardware can have conditions still attached to it when it has passed through more than one owner, then the same could be applied to any piece of hardware. The prospect of everything you own routinely having restrictions on the right to repair or modify it raises its ugly head, further redefining “ownership” as “They really own it”. Most of the projects we feature here at Hackaday for example would probably be prohibited were their creators to be subject to these restrictions.

We’ve covered a similar story recently, the latest twist in a long running saga over John Deere tractors. In that case though there is a written contract that the farmer buying the machine has to sign. What makes the Lexmark case so much more serious is that the contract is being applied without the purchaser being aware of its existence.

We can’t hold out much hope that the Supreme Court understand the ramifications of the case for our community, but there are other arguments within industry that might sway them against it. Let’s hope Impression Products v. Lexmark doesn’t become a case steeped in infamy.

Thanks to [Greg Kennedy] for the tip.

Lexmark sign by CCC2012 [CC0].

Will Your CAD Software Company Own Your Files, Too?

February 6, 2017 by Jenny List 91 Comments

We’re used to the relationship between the commercial software companies from whom we’ve bought whichever of the programs we use on our computers, and ourselves as end users. We pay them money, and they give us a licence to use the software. We then go away and do our work on it, create our Microsoft Word documents or whatever, and those are our work, to do whatever we want with.

There are plenty of arguments against this arrangement from the world of free software, indeed many of us choose to heed them and run open source alternatives to the paid-for packages or operating systems. But for the majority of individuals and organisations the commercial model is how they consume software. Pay for the product, use it for whatever you want.

What might happen were that commercial model to change? For instance, if the output of your commercial software retained some ownership on the part of the developer, so for example maybe a word processor company could legally prevent you opening a document in anything but their word processor or viewer. It sounds rather unreasonable, and maybe even far-fetched, but there is an interesting case in California’s Ninth Circuit court that could make that a possibility. Continue reading “Will Your CAD Software Company Own Your Files, Too?” →

One Hundred Weeks Of Legal Car Hacking

November 10, 2016 by Al Williams 33 Comments

There is a scene in the movie “Magic Mike” where the lead character — a male stripper — explains to a room of women the laws against having physical contact with a performer. Then he intones, “… but I see a lot of lawbreakers up in this house.”

We know if we could look out through the Web browser, we could say the same thing. There’s a lot of gray zone activities considered commonplace. Have you ever ripped a CD or DVD to take with your on your phone? Gray; we won’t judge. A lot of the legal issues involved are thorny (and I should point out, I’m not a lawyer, so take what I say with a grain of salt).

Do you own your car? Well, probably you and the bank, but certainly the deal you made involves the idea that you own the car. If it is paid off, you can do what you like with it, including — if you wanted to — stripping it bare for parts. Back in the day, your car was some wheels and some mechanical devices. These days, it is a computer (actually, a few computers) and some I/O devices that process gasoline into rotary motion. Computers have software. Do you own that software?

The answer has, legally, been no. However, a recent decision by the US Copyright office allows car owners to legally analyze and modify their vehicle software (with some limitations) for the next two years. After that? We’ll see.

Continue reading “One Hundred Weeks Of Legal Car Hacking” →

Don’t Like The FAA’s Drone Registration? Sue Them!

September 26, 2016 by Elliot Williams 49 Comments

When the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began requiring registration of quadcopters (“drones”) in the US, it took a number of hobbyists by surprise. After all, the FAA regulates real 747s, not model airplanes. [John Taylor], an RC hobbyist, has done what you do when faced with a law that you believe is unjust: he’s filed a lawsuit in the DC District Court, claiming that the FAA has overstepped their mandate.

Which one is the "aircraft"? — Which one is the “aircraft”?

The lawsuit will hinge (as legal battles often do) on the interpretation of words. The FAA’s interpretation of quadcopters to be “aircraft” rather than toys is at the center of the dispute. Putting hobbyists into a catch-22, the FAA also requires recreational RC pilots to stay under a height of 400 feet, while requiring “aircraft” to stay above 500 feet except for emergencies, take-off, or landing. Which do they mean?

The editorial staff at Hackaday is divided about whether the FAA ruling makes no sense at all or is simply making hobbyists “sign their EULA“. This writer has spent enough time inside the Beltway to know an expanse of a mandate when he sees it, and no matter which body of the US government is to blame, regulating toy planes and helicopters as if they were commercial aircraft is an over-reach. Even if the intentions are benign, it’s a poorly thought-out ruling and should be revisited.

If you agree, you now have the chance to put your money where your mouth is. The DC Area Drone User Group is putting together a legal defense fund to push [Taylor]’s case. Nobody would be cynical enough to suggest that one can buy the legal system in the US, but, paraphrasing Diamond Dave, it sure as heck can buy a good enough lawyer to get the law changed.

How To Set Up And Run A Makerspace

June 16, 2016 by Moritz Walter 34 Comments

A bunch of people who share a large workshop and meet on a regular basis to do projects and get some input. A place where kids can learn to build robots instead of becoming robots. A little community-driven factory, or just a lair for hackers. The world needs more of these spaces, and every hackerspace, makerspace or fab lab has its very own way of making it work. Nevertheless, when and if problems and challenges show up – they are always the same – almost stereotypically, so avoid some of the pitfalls and make use of the learnings from almost a decade of makerspacing to get it just right. Let’s take a look at just what it takes to get one of these spaces up and running well.

Continue reading “How To Set Up And Run A Makerspace” →

All Prior Art

April 21, 2016 by Elliot Williams 31 Comments

Disclosed herein is a device for gauging medication dosage. The method may include displaying first, second and third navigation controls. A switch is connected in parallel to the relay contacts and is configured for providing a portion of the input power as supplemental load power to the output as a function of back EMF energy.

We’ve had patents on the mind lately, and have been reading a fair few of them. If you read patent language long enough, though, it all starts to turn into word-salad. But with his All Prior Art and All the Claims websites, [Alexander Reben] tosses this salad for real. He’s got computers parsing existing patents and randomly reassembling them.

Rather than hoping that his algorithm comes up with the next great idea, [Alexander] is hoping to nip the truly trivial ones in the bud. Because prior art — the sum of all pre-existing ideas — is enough to disqualify a patent, if an idea is so trivial that his algorithm could have come up with it, it’s sooner or later going to be off the table.

Most of the results are insane, of course. And it seems to be producing a patent at a rate of about one per 10-15 seconds, so we’re guessing that it’ll take quite a few years for these cyber-monkeys to come up with the works of Shakespeare. But with bogus and over-broad patents filtering through the system every day, it’s not implausible that some day it’ll prove useful.

[Via New Scientist, thanks Frank!]

Hackaday Terms Of Use (aka: The Lawyers Are Coming!)

January 31, 2014 by Mike Szczys 203 Comments

Hackaday has posted Terms of Use and Privacy Policy documents which you should read. These can also be accessed through the Policies Page which is linked in the footer. We’ve edited this post to take up less room since it will be sticky for a few days. Original text and updates after the jump.

Continue reading “Hackaday Terms Of Use (aka: The Lawyers Are Coming!)” →