Couldn't Lexmark just have an EULA covering the firmware inside the chip on the toner bottle that has to be clicked through on the printer's UI when the bottle is installed which then restricts sale of the licensed firmware in order to prevent this?
Almost all toner these days has a chip attached, they just need to put something inside the chip which is copyrightable rather than patentable in order to "fix" this (from Lexmark's point of view).
Almost all toner these days has a chip attached, they just need to put something inside the chip which is copyrightable rather than patentable in order to "fix" this (from Lexmark's point of view).