Lexmark loses DMCA ink cartridge case

MAJOR PRINTER company Lexmark has lost a case in a US court in which it tried to deploy the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to prevent other companies making cartridges that work with its printers.

A lower court had imposed an injunction preventing the sale of Static Control Component chips which would allow any cartridge to work with Lexmark printers.

But that decision was toppled by the Sixth Circuit Court today.

The ruling means that competitors can now use the SCC chips with cartridges, but the central plank of Lexmark's case was that such chips breached the controversial DMCA legislation.

The original idea of the DMCA was to protect copyright infringement on the Internet, but, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), companies have used loopholes in the law to prevent after market competition.

Lexmark - which you probably recall was spun off as a printer firm by IBM - claimed SCC unlawfully reverse engineered its tech, and sued. µ