[10][11] On the copyright claim, the court found that: On the DMCA claims, the court found that the SCC microchip circumvented Lexmark's authentication sequence,[19][20] and that the reverse engineering exception to the DMCA did not apply, because it only covers the independent creation of new programs that must interoperate with existing ones, and SCC did not create any new program.

[23] "Lock-out" codes—codes that must be performed in a certain way in order to bypass a security system—are generally considered functional rather than creative, and thus unprotectable.

We should make clear that in the future companies like Lexmark cannot use the DMCA in conjunction with copyright law to create monopolies of manufacturer goods for themselves[...] He opined that even if the programs involved were more complex (and thus more deserving of copyright protection), the key question would be the purpose of the circumvention technology.

[32] On the DMCA counts, Feikens agreed that Lexmark had not established a violation with regards to the Toner Loading Program, but for a very different reason than that found by the majority opinion.

[34] Lexmark filed a request for the full Sixth Circuit to hear the case en banc.

The Sixth Circuit's judgment became final for all purposes when the 90-day period expired without Lexmark filing a cert petition.

The Sixth Circuit's decision is noteworthy for at least two reasons: Lexmark 2004 is also consistent with subsequent jurisprudence in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in The Chamberlain Group, Inc. v. Skylink Technologies, Inc., and therefore emphasizes that the DMCA was intended to create a new type of liability — not a property right — over durable goods incorporating copyrighted material.

[35] Before the Sixth Circuit's ruling, Static Control initiated a separate action in 2004 seeking declaratory judgment under federal copyright laws and the DMCA that its newly modified chips did not infringe Lexmark's copyrights, and Lexmark counterclaimed raising patent infringement, DMCA violations, and tort claims, and added three remanufacturers as third-party defendants.

Lexmark renewed its earlier request for a judgment as a matter of law and also filed a motion for a retrial on its patent inducement claim, both of which the district court denied.

In a unanimous ruling, the district court's findings were affirmed, except for its dismissal of Static Control's counterclaims under the Lanham Act and North Carolina state law.

[42] However, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's ruling in Lexmark Int'l, Inc. v. Impression Prods., Inc. reopened the issue.

[49] On March 25, 2014, the US Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Sixth Circuit's holding that Static Control did have standing to sue under the Lanham Act.

But when a party claims reputational injury from disparagement, competition is not required for proximate cause; and that is true even if the defendant's aim was to harm its immediate competitors, and the plaintiff merely suffered collateral damage.

In those circumstances, there is no reason to regard either party's injury as derivative of the other's; each is directly and independently harmed by the attack on its merchandise.