Brand protection is a tricky game. Companies often walk a fine line between maintaining a reputation for quality and angering consumers by shutting out competition. Intellectual property lawyers have observed that balancing act in a number of markets, from auto parts to printer ink to (most recently) single serving coffee pods. In these cases and many others, manufacturers have employed a mix of technological and legal tools to limit third parties from providing parts or services for their products.
But when limitations become too aggressive, the market tends to reject them regardless of their legal foundation, and they have to be modified or eliminated. For example, in the early 2000s, printer manufacturers added identifying microchips to their ink cartridges and installed software in their printers that locked out third-party cartridges. Competitors who copied the chips and sold compatible cartridges at a lower price were sued under the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Cases were brought in different federal courts with different results—but the market’s response was universally negative. These days, the ID chips still exist, and your printer will warn you if you use an off-brand cartridge. But the litigation has largely ceased.
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