Program were copyrightable, the defendant’s use of it on its chip was a fair use, principally on
the ground that the first fair use factor heavily weighed in the defendant’s favor “because
Lexmark does not even rebut that [the defendant’s] purpose for copying the [Toner Loader
Program] was solely for the purpose of enabling interoperability between remanufactured
Lexmark cartridges and Lexmark printers, not for the allegedly-expressive, hypothetically-
copyrightable content contained therein.”^1225
(ii) Chamberlain Group, Inc. v. Skylink Technologies,
Inc.
In this case, the plaintiff Chamberlain was the manufacturer of a garage door opener
(GDO) system which contained a feature known as “rolling code” designed to protect against
burglars equipped with “code grabber” devices. A code grabber allows a burglar to capture and
record the coded radio frequency (RF) signal sent by the transmitter device to the GDO, which
can then be used to open the GDO at a later time to enter the house.^1226 Chamberlain’s rolling
code feature was designed to defeat code grabbers by changing the expected transmitted RF code
each time the GDO was activated. The feature was implemented by two copyrighted computer
programs owned by Chamberlain – one in the transmitter of the GDO and the other in the
receiver of the GDO that activated the motor to open the door. Each time the transmitter was
activated to open the door, the computer program in the transmitter would cause the next rolling
code in sequence to be sent to the receiver where it was stored, which code the receiver would
require the next time the transmitter was activated, or the door would not open.^1227
The defendant sold a universal transmitter device that was capable of opening
Chamberlain’s GDO, although the opener code transmitted by the defendant’s door opener was
not a rolling code. The defendant’s door opener was able to bypass Chamberlain’s rolling code
feature by mimicking a certain “resynchronization” process of Chamberlain’s rolling code
software.^1228 Chamberlain characterized that portion of the computer program in the receiver
that verified the rolling code as a protective measure that controlled access to Chamberlain’s
copyrighted computer program in the receiver, and argued that by circumventing the rolling code
feature and gaining access to the receiver computer program to open the garage door, the
defendant was in violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of Section 1201(a)(2).^1229
Rulings by the District Court. The district court denied a motion by Chamberlain for
summary judgment on the anti-circumvention claim, analyzing a number of defenses raised by
the defendant. The first defense was that because the defendant’s universal transmitter was
capable of operating a number of different GDOs, it was not “primarily” designed to circumvent
the access control measure of Chamberlain’s GDO. The court rejected this argument, noting that
(^1225) Id. at *38.
(^1226) Chamberlain Group Inc. v. Skylink Technologies Inc., 292 F. Supp. 2d 1023, 1026-27 (N.D. Ill. 2003).
(^1227) Id. at 1027-28.
(^1228) Id. at 1029-32.
(^1229) Id. at 1028, 1033.