On Sep 2, 8:23 pm, Barry Watzman wrote:

The printer manufacturers have a RIGHT, within certain limits, to create
printers that can only use that manufacturer's consumables.

And we, as consumers, have a RIGHT .... not to buy them.

Printer manufacturers don't have this right.

If they did, then you are locked into buying supplies from a
manufacturer, at their prices. Starbucks has no right to require you
use Starbucks coffee in their coffee/espresso makers, GE can not
require you use their lights in their lamps, Toastmaster has no right
to require you put their toast in their toasters. This is not to say
these companies can't offer consumables, but this can not be a
condition to purchase or use their products.

Apple got away with this for a while to some degree... in order to use
apple utilities on CD-roms and hard discs, for a time you had to buy
apple labeled hard drives. They had NO right to prevent me from
buying something identical from someone else, but during the system
7/8 days I would have to buy 3rd party software to format and mount
the drives.

We as consumers have the "choice" to buy products, and use them how we
please. Use of 3rd party ink is a form of protest, until such time as
the printer manufacturers understand that they need to adjust their
business model.

The whole purpose of patents is to keep competitors from making a
product that you invented and patented. That design is your
intellectual property, and you have every right to keep someone else
from making it. Monopoly? EXACTLY ... that is the whole purpose of the
patent law, to grant a LEGAL (but temporary) monopoly to someone who
invents something.

You can patent a type of ink. But you can not patent ink it self, ink
is a prior invention. You can create a better ink, but that does not
prevent a company from manufacturing another type of ink.