US Supreme Court rules in favour of the "right to tinker", against patentees rigths over reselled goods

[matias93 7,535]

In what could become a landmark case, the US Federal Supreme Court ruled that patent-holders have no rights to regulate the use of their patented products, and that remanufacturers can manipulate and resell those patented products legally, opening the door to the so-called right to tinker. Consumer groups consider that this case is relevant in times when increasingly more products are offered as licenced services, defending the consumer rights to resell, manipulate, operate, modify or even destroy their property without copyright constraints by the patent-holders.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. extends on the implicancies of the judicial resolution by exposing an analogy with an used-car shop:

Quote

Take a shop that restores and sells used cars. The business works because the shop can rest assured that, so long as those bringing in the cars own them, the shop is free to repair and resell those vehicles. That smooth flow of commerce would sputter if companies that make the thousands of parts that go into a vehicle could keep their patent rights after the first sale.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which presented an amicus curiae brief to the FSC, arguments that this ruling enables consumers to demand a series of radical changes on the market of complementary supplies --the so-called 'razor and blades' business model, which they extend to other technologies, as IoT devices that currently need a subscription to work, or cheap game consoles that only are useable with expensive games.

On a further extension, this proposed right to tinker would be appliable to the compiled code of copyrighted software, as the sold copies of software applications are the legal private property of their buyers, a condition that would expire the intellectual propietary monopolic rights given to them by the copyright, in the same way the private property of a toner cartrigde expires the patentee monopolic rights given to them by the patent. This eventual consequence would be crucial for the modding communities of diverse proprietary softwares, as they would be legally entitled to modify and even redistribute the modified compiled code without the express authorisation of the original creators. 

In any case, the current ruling doesn't extends so far, just giving some vague jusrisprudencial basis for further cases to be held in behalf of modding rights, for which this new interpretation shouldn't be taken as a legal one.

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

While I don't understand much of the legal aspects of anything, it seems to me that the ruling for use of patented physical objects is going to be completely different than the copyright of compiled software. I'd guess copyright (which was originally created for the written stuff) would not allow minor alterations and then allow distributing the result. The court ruling says I can put a different motor or such in my car and sell the derivative work, but I imagine if I changed a few words out of the Gettysburg Address and tried to publish that as my own, I'd get in trouble.

So while I personally contend I could (if I were smart enough) completely reverse engineer a software game, modify it, and then play it myself for my own personal use that still would not be something I could sell (or even give away free).

 

[APSMS 1,892]

@CorinaMarie It's still an improvement over what went before, where previously even trying to modify said game or other piece of software, or, in fact, even looking at said code, was deemed illegal.

The article linked also has a link to another report where a manufacturer of diagnostic tools created a device to read the computer printout codes that are stored in your car's computer, and accidentally opened a number of copyrighted files (the "accidentally" part is that the data they were looking for was minimally encrypted, and contained near that data was a number of proprietary files--without further encryption--which were illegal to even access or view).

Obviously decrypting and rewriting game code is difficult to detect or prosecute if you only ever keep the game to yourself, but of course that would not stop companies from trying. In fact, one of the things I look forward to with this ruling is how it may affect genetic modification, specifically in the agri-business, and how it relates to their closely-held patent monopoly and their worrisome quest to patent everything, including organisms that they did not develop (there has been a growing movement to patent naturally occuring species, for instance, not to mention the patenting of naturally occurring genes that are found in people with special resistance to disease or other unique properties).

For software and game code, at least, what this looks toward is perhaps a change in the way that DRM-specific game/software licenses are written (because the Supreme Court upheld Lexan's right to pursue contracts about this kind of behavior), perhaps to more reflect the ability of people to resell or otherwise distribute content that they have purchased in a purely digital form.

Notably, purchasers of physical copies of SC4 could always resell that copy, but people who have purchased a digital-only copy can never resell it, not least because of the limitations of the DRM or purchase agreements (I think there's a clause in GOG's user agreement that prohibits resale), but also because the distributor can retain ultimate control over distribution of their product. You can never properly share a game with a friend, and so on (Microsoft's initial limitations with sharing Xbox games comes to mind).

I would, personally, be horrified if I discovered that I could no longer work on my car. Increasingly it's already the case that personal repairs are prohibitively expensive and difficult due to the amount of work involved, and the special equipment that is increasingly required, particularly on newer cars. Of course, generally speaking any such limitation like that would probably be ignored by myself and many others, but it would make finding help in fixing such problems very difficult (inevitably the accessibility of the internet is a double edged sword by which lawsuit seekers can just as easily find targets for copyright infringement or violation as the violators can find assistance; not that I advocate breaking the law, but clearly the threat of lawsuit is often more than enough to stifle even a pushing of the envelope--as it were--among most individuals who are too poor to even afford a consultation, much less a full-blown lawsuit over something that they have no vested long-standing interest in).

Now perhaps as a patent holder I would be less than thrilled about this ruling, but then again I would hope that if I held a patent that it would be over something solid and sensible so that a case like this would have proper merit, rather than the obviously vacuous claim that the supreme court recognized it as.

Anyone know how the vote split?

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

13 minutes ago, APSMS said:

Anyone know how the vote split?

If this article is about the same ruling then the vote didn't split. It was unanimous.

Edit: The attached PDF there shows this is something else, but is another good ruling by the court.

[SecretMbr_735754 2,157]

Are you guys honestly convinced there is such a thing a supreme court of anything anywhere on this Earth?   Are you kidding? Gimme power, gimee money, gimee, gimee, gimee,   There is no authority of any integrity or moral virtue anywhere in inhuman society.  Money is the absolute dictator and power is the absolute Godhead of all inhuman culture and civilization

Actual Human civilization is something entirely more real than this inhuman gimme, gimme , gimme world full of constant violence and rape and psychotic fixation on objects and abstractions.

 

[Fantozzi 4,064]

I think @CorinaMarie is right and patents and copyright must be distinguished. Patents apply on constructions, copyright on intellectual property.

It's easier when you think of written language. The written language - a poem f.e. - may contain intellectual property but this isn't dependend on the paper or the html-code or the typeface. The material side of your intellectual property (intellectual -> non-material) you had to protect with a patent.

You have no intellectual property on making headlines but on the meaning of this and that headline. To protect how the headline is done and where it is placed - therefore you would need a patent. So a patent covers a kind of ownership not covered by copyright. Patents cover inventions, fabrications - copyright covers intellectual creations (it has mostly a non-material sense, it covers the idears, the findings, the thinking). 

So the descision will be more interesting regarding 3D-printing.

On software this difference will remain as a problem. You have a product but this product contains also - in written, encoded form - intellectual property which is still covered by copyright even if you are allowed to modify the product to make it work or to repair some bug.

You had to separate the code from the meaning of the code (function), which doesn't really work - to separate the product from the intellectual property.

Or you could take a newspaper. To buy the newspaper you aren't bound to use it for reading you could use it for something different - cover yourself f.e. because someone stole your swimming trunks. This isn't a violation of the intellectual property contained in the newspaper.

On software it doesn't work the same way - you can't distinguish product and intellectual property the same way. Reengineering without touching the intellectual property contained in the software - I don't think this will work.

Second difference you would have to make between 'licence to use' and 'ownership'. On Simtropolis f.e. the big difference is very clear - I'm a user not an owner of the site. I think that's the thing on the cars - you don't have only a permission to use it, you own it - and an owner has much more rights than a user. And therefore industries tries to make us users instead of owners. It's about to cut down rights.

 

In my personal opinion - the licence model on games and literature and any kind of cultural objects is a damage to culture and therefore not a legal but a cultural/political matter. Just imagine if the books of Aristotle had been only be available for a short period of time in history because they were only licenced to read but not to be owned by the buyer. Distributing knowledge or art or any kind of cultural achievement on a licence basis harms society clearly. Just think of libraries how they conserve knowledge through the ages, there is no authority telling what to keep and what not and therefore science can be free. The licence model changes this - it prevents public cultural goods. You have this on SC4 - people saying after all this time it should become public domain. There was always a sort of evolution how knowledge would become public domain during time, becoming knowledge you learn in school. This evolution has come to end with distributing cultural goods on licence only. The decision, what to keep, isn't free to society anymore. And the life cycle of cultural goods become shorter and shorter as industries wants sell faster - just look how the word 'old' changes its meaning if you talk about books or games - and culture becomes a gas.

 

[rsc204 21,804]

16 hours ago, matias93 said:

On a further extension, this proposed right to tinker would be appliable to the compiled code of copyrighted software, as the sold copies of software applications are the legal private property of their buyers, a condition that would expire the intellectual propietary monopolic rights given to them by the copyright, in the same way the private property of a toner cartrigde expires the patentee monopolic rights given to them by the patent. This eventual consequence would be crucial for the modding communities of diverse proprietary softwares, as they would be legally entitled to modify and even redistribute the modified compiled code without the express authorisation of the original creators. 

The reason that this rationale is flawed comes from the way you buy a digital product. When you buy a physical item, you own the item you buy. But, when you purchase software, movies, music and other media, what you are purchasing is not the product, but a licence to use the product. That licence governs what you can and can't do with the product and has been upheld many times. You have a right to re-sell it (at least in Europe), you can tinker all you like with it personally, but you don't have the right to modify and resell. I'm fairly certain this judgement (in respect of used printer cartridges being refilled and re-sold), has no effect on software.

5 hours ago, APSMS said:

Notably, purchasers of physical copies of SC4 could always resell that copy, but people who have purchased a digital-only copy can never resell it, not least because of the limitations of the DRM or purchase agreements (I think there's a clause in GOG's user agreement that prohibits resale), but also because the distributor can retain ultimate control over distribution of their product. You can never properly share a game with a friend, and so on (Microsoft's initial limitations with sharing Xbox games comes to mind).

In Europe we have a law that says you must be able to resell a digital product, much like you would be able to do with a physical copy. That said, forcing the sellers to let you to do this is less than easy. Modification is less opaque but so long as you don't re-distribute it, you'll probably be fine. One other important consideration here is that when you buy one used printer cartridge, you only have one to sell on after modification. In a similar way, were it ever the case that you could re-distribute/re-sell modified code, you'd need a licence for each one you wanted to sell onwards.