Re: Pirates and Counterfeiters of Epson Ink Cartridges

[Robert L Krawitz <rlk@alum.mit.edu>]

   From: "Bruce Roorda" <possum1@softhome.net>
   Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 22:00:50 -0600

   Epson gives away its intellectual property (patented printers) for
   next to nothing in the expectation that they'll make up for it with
   ink (not their intellectual property) sales.  Their intellectual
   property is patents.  If you're not infringing the patent, you
   aren't stealing their intellectual property.  Epson chose their own
   marketing strategy.  Further, one purpose of granting patents is
   disclosure of how something is done, in the interest of spurring
   further innovation.

   Epson should probably try to switch to some sort of licensing
   arrangement where users pay Epson a certain price per print.

In other words, where people didn't own their own printers.  That
would indeed be unfortunate.

Chipped cartridges could actually have very real value-add for end
users.  The chip could, for example, contain profiling information
about the ink, so that the driver could make minor adjustments between
batches of ink.  This would allow Epson to adjust ink formulation
without having to replace the entire driver.  Third parties could also
use this to electronically label cartridges as containing quadtone
inks.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rlk@alum.mit.edu>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf@uunet.uu.net
Project lead for Gimp Print/stp --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton
-
Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate
subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions.