Quote: (Originally Posted by
Genesis)
If you do not write a user manual that is sufficiently complete that a person ordinarily skilled in diving a CCR can use your product safely (thereby requiring no class specific to your unit), then I would argue that by definition you are intentionally participating in a scheme to constrain trade by causing an "immediate deprecation of value" to take place in the form of the "throw away" cost of the class required (the "tied sale") to make the purchase.
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Further, I do not believe that such a policy would withstand scrutiny should a critical mass of sold units be shipped that is sufficient to entice someone to take a run at you in the court system - at least in the US.
Can you clarify exactly what it is you are taking issue with. Is it:
1. Sale of a unit with training, such that once training is done, the unit is able to be used but not before? Nothing appears to be illegal in that.
2. Sale of a unit with additional hardware features that cannot be accessed, unless additional firmware and software is purchased and installed? Nothing illegal in that: software companies do it all the time, such as Cadence, Mentor, Synopsis when the packages run into millions of dollars per seat (ASIC design packages).
There is no question of the unit being sold without a manual that allows anyone to understand it full, if they study the manual sufficiently. One client is even considering an internet course.
Alex