I saw first hand a situation where a local municipality did a public procurement for printer ink, and since there are no software patents in law, the best offer

I saw first hand a situation where a local municipality did a public procurement for printer ink, and since there are no software patents in law, the best offer that won was for a compatible (non-oem) ink. This ink worked fine at the time of purchase, but after a software update to the printers (a few weeks later) stopped working.