Camera & Cell Phone Batteries = Next DMCA Frontier?

First, they came for the after-market printer cartridges. Then they came for the garage door opener remotes. Now, they may come for the cell phone and camera batteries.

NEC announced yesterday that they are introducing "a new software for microcontrollers that detects counterfeit battery products in mobile phones and digital still camera batteries":

"The growing number of worldwide incidences involving inferior counterfeit batteries is a considerable source of concern for manufacturers and customers alike. NEC Electronics' authentication software offers a highly effective yet affordable solution to help detect such unauthorized products and prevent the damage caused by them." said Kazuo Nakamura, General Manager, Device SI Division, NEC Electronics.

Preventing damage is one thing, but stiffling competition is another. Who's to say that NEC won't use this authentication as an excuse to sue "unauthorized" after-market competitors under the DMCA for making compatible replacement batteries? After all, in order to be compatible, wouldn't these products would have to mimick the authentication codes of the original batteries? Such practices are exactly what got Static Control and Skylink sued in the printer cartridge and garage door cases mentioned above.

And the fun doesn't stop there:

The software will be introduced in Japanese digital cameras by year's end and is expected to be used in 50 million units by 2007. The software is ideal for use in mobile phones and batteries, but NEC Electronics is also considering extending this technology to "smart" keys, printers and ink cartridges, as well as bundling the technology into hardware options.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, software-based authentication is the wave of the future. And now, with the DMCA, a near-monopoly! Future, here we come.

Update Engadget reports "Sony is planning to add something like this to their laptops, and that if the laptop detects a non-Sony battery it will simply refuse to work and prompt the user to insert an original one."

Comments

[Anonymous Peon]

"It's the liability, stupid."

Rechargeable lithium packs can be rather... volatile. Cellphones are having this nasty habit of bursting into flame and taking their users' cheeks off. The manufacturers are quick to blame aftermarket packs already... but how often does that stand up in court?

There are, in fact, degrees of safety to such battery design; Valence's Safion is one such improvement that recently made TheInquirer, and probably does deserve wide adoption. This said as a user with an interest in not having his face blown off, so it's a shame the innovation is proprietary, and thus can't be immediately adopted industry-wide... and noting the irony that, given same, batteries using it will likely only be available in the third-party form that this new development seeks to block.

[tpelt]

I remember way back in the days of BIG BELL, "The" phone company -- since broken up into "baby bells" and now apparently re-conglomerating again.

One of the stupid things BIG BELL did was to never, never, never SELL phones to customers, they only RENTED the "equipment."

Their logic / reason / excuse ? The phone company infrastructure was so delicate that "off brand" equipment could damage the entire phone system.

When the courts broke up that trust / monopoly, that was one of the lies that was thrown out. Now, of course, you can buy touch-tone phones for $4.99 at Walgreens Drug Store...

So, pardon me, "delicate equipment" / "damage" MY FREAKIN' ASS !!!

Why don't we make one highway per vehicule brand ?
If they were concerned by user safety, they could just add a sticker or drop a red paragraph in the notice.

[immoked]

but isn't the chipmarker secure enough to not have to remove it?