Misuse Trademark Law To Stop Competition And You May Owe Lost Sales
from the oops dept
Back in April we wrote about how label printer company Dymo kept forcing eBay auctions offline from a seller promoting "Dymo-compatible" labels. Dymo claimed that saying Dymo-compatible was a violation of trademark law -- which seems like a complete misuse of trademark law. It's factually accurate to say that the labels were Dymo-compatible -- and the only reason to have eBay take them down is not to protect Dymo's intellectual property, but to stop the competition. Apparently Dymo has finally recognized this. Greg Beck from Public Citizen, who was handling the lawsuit on behalf of the seller writes in to let us know that: "Dymo has backed down, reimbursed our client for lost sales, and promised not to do it again. Note for companies that wish to abuse intellectual property law in the future: you may have to pay for the damage you cause."Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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re: good for Greg Beck
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either you make money selling cartridges or you make money by suing the printer mfgs when they try to stop you from doing business.
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Re:
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Re: Re:
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Cost of ink by William WIlliams
Sure, we could have $5 ink (instead of $30) but we could also have $300 inkjet printers (instead of $50 ones).
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Re: Cost of ink by William WIlliams
The long-term savings, if you keep your printer around for any real amount of time, would WAY outshine the extra cost of the original printer
so, say a 50$ printer goes to 300$
and the 30$ ink cartridge drops to 5.
after your tenth cartridge, you'll have saved as much as you spent extra on the printer, every time after that you're saving 25bucks PER!
to equal out the difference... you'd have to take the difference in cartridge price, times the life span, IN NUMBER OF CARTRIDGES, and add it to the original sticker...
so, if they wanted the same profits a printer that had an avg lifespan of 5 years, at 5 (2.5 of black and color) cartridges a year, is a 25 cartridge lifespan....
25 cartridges times 25 dollar difference per equals 675 dollars of difference in profit to make up..
would YOU pay 725 for cheap lexmark?
no.
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seriously
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I gave up...
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The way I do it...
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re: missing the point
This is about a company that decided someone couldn't use their name to sell a compatible product.
It was a company deciding to control the secondary market. The guy didn't sue to make money, he sued to be able to continue his LEGAL business.
The guy wasn't selling ink cartridges. He was selling labels that fit a certain printer.
Could you see Dymo going after Xerox if Xerox said "our paper fits in Dymo, HP and Epson printers"
No. But this guy was selling his labels on eBay and Dymo decided that since eBay makes it so easy to shut down a listing they would go after him there.
They KNEW they didn't have the right to do so, they probably only did it because they never expected to be sued.
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Re: re: missing the point
No, these guys are right on target. Here's why:
"Hi. Would you like to buy these GT-Direct Printer Cartridges? They are compatible with HP model XYZ printers."
Exact same thing. The only difference would be if I stole HP's patented methods for producing the carts. And if I backwards engineered my carts to fit their ports, I'm not even "copying" their carts. I'll just make the tops round or something and BAM... different item.
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Doesn't Surprise Me...
eBay is also a bit hypocritical, since it is still in the midst of lawsuits over intellectual property that eBay allegedly stole from at least two different companies.
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