So, is the Keurig coffee maker an illegal product? What about HP printers with Prop cartridges? Or Burton Snowboards, with a prop binding connection?
Seems ridiculous...
“So, is the Keurig coffee maker an illegal product?”
I don’t drink coffee and know nothing about the operation of their coffeemaker, so I have no comment about them one way or another.
“What about HP printers with Prop cartridges?”
Hewlett-Packard has already been successfully sued for unfair competition in regard to their proprietary ink cartridges.
“Or Burton Snowboards, with a prop binding connection?”
Can’t comment, because I don’t know the product.
“Seems ridiculous...”
Not necessarily, because it depends on the facts of each case. In the example of Hewlett-Packard’s ink cartridges, the tie-up to Hewlett-Packard ink cartridges is not unfair competition when the need to guarantee operation of the printer in compliance with the warranty is taken into consideration. After Hewlett-Packard is no longer obligated to provide certain parts and services under its warranty, any further tie-up to Hewlett-Packard ink cartridges was deemed to be unfair competition.
With respect to the Apple case, the controversy concerns whether or not the tie-up is justifiable by an obligation to implement contractual DRM features in the Apple product. Even if such a tie-up can be justified by the contractual obligation to implement DRM features for the music, it remains to be seen whether or not the specific implementations of the DRM or the contractual DRM used are unfair competition. In other words, if DRM is not necessarily unfair competition by itself, a particular method of implementing the DRM may still be a form of unfair competition.