Microsoft in an IP deal with manufacturer that brought DMCA case

Early this afternoon, Microsoft and printer maker Lexmark jointly announced that they had entered into a cross-licensing agreement, which gives both companies access to each other's portfolios. Their statement basically said that such agreements are necessary in tough economic times, in order to shorten their own development lifecycles.

Conceivably, Microsoft could use this deal to craft better printer drivers for Windows, especially drivers that are capable of testing such statistics as cartridge fluid level, without relying on printer manufacturers to craft the software for themselves. Notoriously, Lexmark's biggest competitor Epson produces its own printer drivers, but to this day has yet to resolve issues concerning its photo printers and 64-bit Windows Vista.

Long-time readers of Betanews will still have raised eyebrows, though, for historical reasons: Lexmark was the company that used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in its own defense earlier this decade, arguing that anyone who makes replacement cartridges for Lexmark printers is actively circumventing copyright and subject to criminal prosecution. Legal arguments during that chaotic time likened small ink producers such as Static Control to cyber-terrorists. The US Supreme Court had to rule that Lexmark couldn't use the DMCA to protect its printer cartridges.

Today, the printer maker doesn't appear to have much problem sharing these intimate details with Microsoft, which probably won't use them to make ink cartridges anyway. But since Microsoft's interoperability protocols with respect to crafting printer drivers, or producing little LCD screens using Windows SideShow, are published publicly, exactly what Lexmark gets out of this deal may remain a mystery for some time.