Since we've seen restrictive license agreements attached to everything from woodworking tools to tropical fish, there seems to be no limit as to what kind of product can be licensed, not sold. That's what one reader concluded when he discovered a EULA on a CO2 container used for making homebrewed soda drinks.
"I received an ad from a company called Sodaclub.com which sells a device to carbonate water and provides associated supplies," the reader wrote. "The idea is to make your own carbonated drinks and save money as well as the environment by reusing the containers. I was calculating what the actual savings would be to see if it was worth it when I noticed that there is a EULA associated with the containers of carbon dioxide. This licensing of everything has gone too far -- when will it stop?"
The Alco2Jet 110 "Carbonator" license says that the container remains the property of Sodaclub, even though it's a necessary part of the soda-making set-up the customer buys. By opening the valve seal on the original Carbonator container shipped with one's soda maker, the customer becomes bound to the terms, including:
"You may hold and use this Alco2Jet Carbonator in a suitable home soda maker until empty or for a maximum period of 5 years, whichever is the sooner and then it must be returned by the holder without delay in good condition to Sold-Club USA, Inc. or to one of its authorized retailers ... Any misuse of the Alco2Jet Carbonator including, inter alia, defacement or removal of any of the trade marks applied on it or its labels, its sale, rental, lending, leasing, abandonment, alienating or refilling will automatically entitle the Carbonator Owner or its representative to the immediate right of possession and unconditional return of it without any payment or reimbursement by the Carbonator owner."
All that for a canister of gas to make soda pop? The requirement to return the device after five years even if it's not used up is particularly interesting, since elsewhere on the website customers are encouraged to buy extra containers as the CO2 "will remain fresh and usable indefinitely." But the real purpose of the EULA is obviously to make re-filling the containers by anyone other than Sodaclub a violation of the license.
If something about what Sodaclub is doing strikes you as familiar, that's probably because it is very similar to what we saw Lexmark do with its "prebate" license agreement on toner cartridges. And since Lexmark got away with it there, I guess there's no reason Sodaclub shouldn't be allowed to do it too. But as our reader asks, where will the sneakwrap licensing of hard goods stop? Only when our courts begin to realize that just because a vendor says its product is licensed, not sold, shouldn't necessarily make it so.
Read and post comments about this story here.
9:32:46 AM 
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