The details in the patent story is like a submarine; you only see the conning tower while the destructive power remains below the surface:
“Patent owners can prevent you from owning anything” is the headline.
The issue is that Lexmark was selling its patented cartridges with a stated restriction of “single use only.”
That means, according to the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, you can buy the cartridges and use them, but you can only return them to the patent owner. You cannot recycle them as many do.
Surprise! You bought it, but you don't own it
Posted By Bob Unruh On 02/21/2016 @ 3:31 pm
Surprise! You bought it, but you don’t own it
Staying with my analogy, ink cartridges are torpedoes while the computer itself is the submarine.
Everybody knows they do not own real property because the government can confiscate property for not paying property taxes. More recently, offend an EPA bureaucrat and you will find out real fast who owns “your property.”
Years ago I posted a few messages about others using my a computer after I paid for it. Even then, I never felt that I owned my computer. Spam mail enters my home without my permission. The US Postal Service does the same thing through the mailbox, but junk mail is not offensive in that you do not have to pay for anything that is unsolicited. I throw most junk mail in the recycle barrel. More often than not I return the “no postage required” envelopes. In that way the junk mail hustlers pay the freight both ways. I have not figured out a way to make computer spam hustlers pay.
In addition to spam, it really annoys me when a mysterious hand “upgrades” my computer. Nothing annoys me more than a stranger telling me “Please do not turn off your computer.”
The concept of selling something while retaining ownership is not new.
Crooner/bandleader Rudy Vallee (1901 - 1986) owned the rights to the song As Time Goes By. The song was a big hit for Vallee in the early 1930s:
"As Time Goes By"- RUDY VALLEE
Vallee sold the rights to Warner Brothers Studio for the movie Casablanca. The studio hoped to make big profits selling sheet music, etc.
Rudy Vallee was known for hating a nickel because it wasn’t a quarter; so when the movie and the song turned out to be big hits Vallee approached Jack Warner (1892 - 1978 ) and asked for an additional payment. Warner replied “Would you have returned my money if the song was a flop?” or words to that effect. Jack was nobody’s fool.
I was reminded of the Vallee/Warner story after reading this some years ago:
“. . . the California Resale Royalties Act, requiring anyone reselling a piece of fine art who lives in the state, or who sells the art there for $1,000 or more, to pay the artist 5 percent of the resale price.”
Every movie mogul was dancing in their graves especially since one of them observed that the motion picture business was the only business where you sell a product and still own it. In the land of screwballs who think their state is a giant artist colony makes sense for California to have a Resale Royalties Act.
In California the number of kooks per thousand has reached critical mass. If the oceans had as much mercury in them as California has kooks every fish would be dead. The kook factor is worse in California than it is in every other state because every kook combines their weird beliefs with the certain knowledge they are artists. It all started in the motion picture industry passing off its product as art.
I always wondered if a screwy law will find its way to the US Supreme Court should a secondary seller object to paying the 5 percent?
To my way of looking at it an artist who sells his work is no different than an author who sells his copyrights. Once sold, he has no claim to any profits made by the new owner.
I have ten lithographs adorning the walls of my home. Each one is signed, dated, and numbered by the artist. Remind me not to sell them in California lest the artist’s heirs come out of the woodwork and demand a piece of the action.
https://www.antiquesnavigator.com/ebay/images/2010/120573156694.jpg
The biggest drawback in buying art, antiques, rare books, or even Bossons Heads is the amount of money your investment would have earned had it remained in the bank. I’m not talking van Gogh and Picasso. Very few people in the world have the money, or the inclination, to buy art by the masters. Most of us buy “art” because we enjoy looking at it, or we need a wall decoration to brighten up blank space.
Assuming you will keep your treasure(s) for decades —— turning a profit is not the goal when buying nor should it be. My first litho cost $400 dollars in the early ‘70s. Were I to sell it today I would have to add unrealized interest to the original purchase price just to break even.
Customers
Every time an “expert appraiser” on the Antiques Road Show prices an item in the thousands and tens of thousands, I shout “Where are the customers?”
The appraiser always adds “If sold at auction.” which tells me what that show is all about.
Private sales are not all that common when the asking price goes into the hundreds. Forget about it when it comes to thousands. Check eBay and you’ll see that most items sell for less than $200. Were I to sell my prints at auction the auction house would take a big bite out of the proceeds. In effect, auction houses never invest a penny; so every item they sell absorbs the interest you never got. That is a clear profit made from your investment. They call it a sales commission.
Dealers are not much better. They pay so little for an item they make a bundle out of your investment. I can always spot a dealer who bids on a litho like the ones I own. They never bid more than the original purchase price; more often than not they bid a few dollars less.
Anyway, selling valuable art in California or anywhere else has to be a crap shoot because resale laws are just getting started.
Congressmen Propose National Resale Royalty Act for Artists
by Jillian Steinhauer on February 26, 2014
Congressmen Propose National Resale Royalty Act for Artists
I can see the day when Florsheim comes after me for a taste if I sell a slightly used pair of shoes at a garage sale.
Incidentally, photographers do not need a law. They can run off a few copies as long as they own the negatives. I’m not sure if photographers are entitled to some dough after they sell the negatives. In any event you have to be one dumb dude to a buy photograph without getting the negative, or at least see it destroyed before handing over the money.
Here is an interesting “art” situation.
World War Two ended 71 years ago. So what happens when art the Nazis stole show up after no one is left who was alive in WWII? How many generations of heirs can make a claim? Presumably, courts in different countries will make different decision?
Here’s another on that does not involve art. How come the government claims 90 percent of the gold recovered from European sailing ships that sank hundreds of years ago? Remember that there was no USA when those ships went down in what is now our territorial waters. So how come Spain, France, etc. have no claim? Better still, how come the countries where the gold was mined cannot make a claim?
Frankly, I think the whole damn concept should be abolished before the United Nations claims jurisdiction over everything.
Finally:
Put the issue in perspective with one question: Did Nazis judges have the Right to order Picasso to paint their morality rather than paint his own in Guernica?
Judges & Tea Party Conservatives
