I feel that this case will help the right to repair movement, but only slightly. Seeing as the case ruled that repairing patented designs is fully legal, the remaining issue is sourcing the parts. The patent owners can make it impossible for repair shops to get new parts
I applaud this decision but I also agree with Lexmark.
I recently needed new ink for my HP printer and the helpful guy at Micro Center led me to their wall of refurbished ink cartridges. Much cheaper.
The only problem is the refills are terrible. They are brand new and every page starts out fine but runs out of ink by the time it gets to the bottom. I know that printer ink costs more than platinum by the ounce, but next time I will buy genuine HP cartridges. I can see how bad ink (or a poor not-by-a-factory-trained-technician repair) could damage a company's reputation.
But this America damn it! The Constitution gives us the rights to do a lot of not advisable things. Like being able to fix our own stuff without having 'bombs' that will brick a device when you open it.
My problem with Lexmark in this case, is that they and many other manufactures did not provide any alternative solutions to the cartridges. It was worsened when they jacked the price up on ink cartridges.
The consumer has a threshold on how much they will pay before looking for alternatives. When people are stuck between cheap refurbished cartridges and expensive first party cartridges, they will go with the cheaper ones.
Alternatively Lexmark could have created a refill mechanism and charged half the price of a cartridge to get an existing one refilled. Other than providing half price refills, Lexmark could have also licensed out the design of the cartridge to third party manufactures like Apple.
The main problem with printer manufacturers is that when you buy their printers they can artificially control the price of cartridges. Instead of creating alternatives (such as lowering the price or making refills cost just as much as the refurbished) for the consumer, they choose to sue the opposition.
In the end people will either go with the genuine version because of the horrible quality of refurbs or go with a refurb because they are willing to take the risk of the refurb crapping out.
A few years ago HP and Staples had a promotion where if you 'recycled' your empties at Staples you got a few dollars off on a new cartridge. The problems began because HP was selling the refilled cartridges as full priced new cartridges. If HP had sold them as 'genuine HP refurbished cartridges' at a discount, that would have been cool.
But since when has a for profit company ever done something cool unless there was profit to be had?
The real question is... Why are plebians still using ink based printers? I went toner and havent looked back. I dont do much printing but the damn toner cartridge that came with the printer lasted me well over a year and the replacement was only about double what the ink equivalent is. The printer it self (brother) was only slightly more expensive than the mainstream ink equivalent. Even if you bought a new printer every time the toner went out you'd still be saving money in the long term.