Cartridge Recycler Hit With Patent Claim

A printing cartridge recycling entrepreneur who started out decades ago working in his father’s typewriter business delivering ribbons is being sued by Lexmark, on a patent claim. IP attorney and free-lance writer Doug Kari makes the case this is a David and Goliath story, noting that Lexmark is a $3.8 billion dollar company with 12,000 employees, and comparing the defendant to “a lone Ukrainian trying to stop the Russian army.” Lexmark’s case rides on a shaky precedent, a 2001 case called Jazz Photo Corp. v. ITC, according to the writer. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has now agreed to revisit that case in light of the Supreme Court’s 2013 Kirtsaeng v. Wiley decision, and, he says, it could be a game changer.