I think that this might be related to the "patent exhaustion" argument being put forth also by the EFF towards Lexmark's case against a cartridge refilling company. Essentially the idea of patent exhaustion is that a product, once sold, has paid it's patent holder for their invention and so there aren't any further rights or protections to be conferred. With that argument, the EFF claims that "Impressions v Lexmark" was incorrectly ruled by a lower court in favor of Lexmark.[1] [1] Impressions bought quantities of used Lexmark cartridges, refilled them and resold them.