Keurig's Coffee DRM Already Cracked By Competitors; Will There Be A Lawsuit?
from the wait-and-see... dept
Earlier this year, we wrote about Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, maker of the infamous Keurig single cup coffee makers, and its plan to DRM its next generation coffee pods. The original pods were going off patent, and competition was rising. So, of course, the solution is to come up with something new... and lock it down to make it less useful for consumers. When that story went viral, Team Keurig tried to spin the story, claiming the DRM would provide "interactive-enabled benefits" and would improve users' safety. Of course, when the system finally started showing up a couple months ago, people quickly realized it had nothing to do with safety, and the "interactive-enabled benefits" seemed to consist mainly of being able to distinguish a carafe-sized pod from a single cup-sized pod. Oh yeah, and to block out competing pods so that Keurig pods can be priced artificially high. Interactive! Enabled! Benefits!Except... as RomanOnARiver alerts us, it appears that Keurig competitors have already figured out ways to crack the DRM. TreeHouse Foods very quickly announced that it would be able to break the DRM. Meanwhile, Mother Parkers' RealCup has just announced that its pods are compatible with Keurig's DRM. It's a little unclear from the press release if Mother Parkers cracked the DRM or came to a deal with Green Mountain, though it sure sounds like it was internal work:
"We are very pleased that our focus on innovation, quality, and freedom of choice has led to new technology that will produce authentic tasting coffee and tea products in all K-Cup type single-serve brewers, both old and new styles," said Bill VandenBygaart, Vice President of Business Development for Mother Parkers. "Standard size capsule brews, as well as larger carafe and multi-serve formats, will soon be available for independent brands of single-serve capsules. Consumers will be the ultimate winners by having the best tasting coffees and teas available."TreeHouse had already sued Green Mountain over the new DRM, but the bigger question is if Green Mountain would try to stop anyone from reverse engineering and cracking the new DRM. That would present an interesting legal fight...
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Filed Under: coffee, drm, keurig, pods, realcup
Companies: green mountaint roasters, keurig, mother parkers, treehouse foods
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Your favorite roast fresh ground and brewed is far superior to the pod coffee and it's less expensive. Not sure why this is considered illusory or smug.
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No one disputes the ability of anyone to prefer one way of brewing coffee or source of coffee over another. The issue is with compulsion to state the preference when you aren't asked about your preferences.
The psychological reasons are based in his own emotional needs rather than meaningful contribution to the discussion.
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The smug is strong in this one.
It's nice to have options and not be one of the drones from the 1984 Apple Macintosh commercial.
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I actually use my ninja blades in fast motion to breed my beans.
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Current system: 5 cents of grounds in a 10 cent cup == 1 cup of coffee for about 50 cents a cup.
New (DRM) system: 5 cents of grounds in a 10 cent cup with a 40 cent chip == 1 cup of coffee for about $1 a cup.
This is progress?
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To make as much coffee with a Keurig would require a $120 machine and 780 coffee pods at ~55 cents a pop. That's $430, or $550 total to make as much K-offee as I make for $30. It may be "better" coffee, but there's no way in hell it's 18 times better.
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Plus, you have the flexibility to just buy better coffee for your machine if you wish. You can buy any coffee you wish, and even if you went really high-end (better than anything in a K-cup), you'd still pay less.
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I bought a higher end espresso machine, no pods. Love it, I can use any type of coffee I want, and still get the fancy coffee drink at home.
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Seen this before...
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I never predicted that coffee would be DRM'd. Somehow I totally missed that one.
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Of course it was the same story six months ago, when for that printer I asked for one using the same toner cartridges as the three ordered six months before THAT.
This means fewer potential customers for a given third-party cartridge, so it doesn't pay to make them. The alternative to DRM.
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The DRM may be weak, but I wonder if Keurig has set things up for a patent lawsuit over the ink, rather than going some other route.
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It would be hard to patent "apply fluorescing ink in surface x in location shown"
....but not impossible.
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If the machine is looking for a Keurig logo in some special ink that it understands, it is difficult to get around copyright and trademark violations.
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It would be hard to patent "apply fluorescing ink in surface x in location shown"
....but not impossible.
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What makes you think they can't copyright/patent ink?
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Breaking the DRM
Not to say that it would be convenient, but it would defeat the DRM.
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It IS all about convenience
As for the DRM, it's not that it's complex or difficult, it's that pesky circumvention clause on the DMCA. THAT will have to be tested in the courts, but on the face of it, circumvention - by ANY means - is illegal.
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Re: It IS all about convenience
Circumvention of protection of a copyrighted work. You can't copyright coffee, so I don't think that's going anywhere.
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It's possible, but my impression is the sensor is only looking for a particular flourescence, not recognizing a particular pattern. Besides which, that would be difficult to get a durable (would hold up in court) copyright on. Trademark, yes, but the DMCA doesn't protect trademarks. Of course, this all might be good enough to get someone to settle / cease and desist, even if it wouldn't hold up in court.
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Re: It IS all about convenience
It's not at all clear that this matches the definition of an "access control device" in the sense that was part of the legislative intent (prevention of unauthorized duplication of copyrighted material).
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I don't drink coffee, but I know a couple people with Keurig machines. They're going to be pretty annoyed if the new pods aren't compatible with them and they phase out the older ones.
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DMCA?
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Re: DMCA?
Copyright applies to words, not coatings. The coating may be patented, but I don't think it can be copyrighted; therefore, the DMCA is not applicable.
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So now, everyone who wants this convenience has a Keurig or a Tassimo - already. here comes a new, more complicated machine, whose selling point is "it will make more than one cup of coffee at a time". How many people are going to buy it? Unless there are more than 2 people in the household who drink coffee (at the same time) then the added feature is a waste of time.
I think the new machines will enjoy limited sales. Then the consumer will become even more annoyed at them because half the time they buy single-cup servings and thy don't work.
Or, the form-factor for the cups is different. (Commercial suicide - change the market-accepted cartridge shape) Then we have a format war - does the grocery store carry the cups with the 50% market share, the 45% market share, or the 3% market share? I suspect we'll see difficulty finding the new cups, only the first two will be carried. What good is a coffee maker where you have to hunt all over for cartridges, versus one where the grocery stores are fighting for your dollar?
CD's replaced vinyl and cassettes because they were light-years ahead in convenience and quality of sound. MP3's replaced CD's for the convenience and "price". Ditto, DVD's replaced awkward and bulky VHS very quickly with extremely better quality video. Blu-Ray acceptance was slower because DVD quality was pretty good. Flat-screen TV was immensely better than tube or rear-projection TV in many respects.
So what's this new format got going for it? Better cup of coffee? How? Cheaper? Obviously not. Your current machine is obsolete? No. (How often do coffee-makers die?) Demand? By now the coffee-maker market must be close to saturated.
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What a waste of money
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FUCK KEURIG !
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dude.....
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interoperability
There is wording and spirit in DMCA to permit reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability, however the wording is currently such that it can be interpreted in a way which prohibits this.
Which is unfortunate - RevEng for purposes of consumer freedom (i.e., interoperability) should be specifically and broadly sanctioned...
Mike your thoughts on this part of DMCA?
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Re: interoperability
I don't pretend to know how a contest between patent law and the DCMA would work out -- but patent law has been established a much longer time and has a much larger body of precedent behind it.
I suspect that this is a major reason why Keurig didn't make it's trademark/logo a part of their DRM scheme -- even in the current "Intellectual Property" regime, it was just too risky to expose their trademark that way.
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Re: Re: interoperability
Sega v. Accolade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
SEGA didn't lose it's trademark, but since use was necessary to run Genesis-compatible games, the court found use of the trademark for such "functional" purposes to be permissible.
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Interoperability, DCMA and the CAFC
Unless making coffee is a "copyrightable process", I think that Keurig is going to have a really hard time invoking the DCMA with regard to their new cups.
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Permanent fix / hack to allow usage of ANY K-Cup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPIQVjusFmQ
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On the plus side
But Keurig, to their credit, stand behind their product. (Because they want you to buy the pods.) The first Keurig B40 I bought, failed after six months. It may have been hard water, but cleaning didn't help. I called Keurig and then sent me a brand new replacement B40 at no charge. The replacement lasted nine months (so now past a year from when I bought the original) and they didn't care, they sent a replacement for that one as well. AND, told me the replacement has a full year warranty too.
I suspect that this sort of customer service on the machines themselves, is at least partially paid for with profits from the sale of the coffee pods.
Just, "food for thought". The alternative would be to charge a lot more for the coffee makers. (And I think they're too pricey as it is.)
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