Keurig CEO Blames Coffee Pod DRM For Falling Sales

In what amounts to a win for the anti-DRM crowd, Keurig CEO Brian Kelley said the 23% drop in sales came from his move to prevent coffee lovers from using unofficial K-Cups. After the company’s patent on the K-Cup expired, the company added a lock to its new machines to prevent the use of refillable cups and cups from outside manufacturers. Users also filed a lawsuit after the company introduced the new cups.

The share price also dropped 25% since the beginning of 2015.

“Quite honestly, we were wrong. We underestimated the passion the consumer had for this,” said Kelley in an analyst call.

The new 2.0 machines required a specially coded coffee pod, thereby locking competitors out of the coffee pod game. One pod maker, the Rogers Family Company, fought back by offering a free plastic clip that simply convinced the machine that it was perpetually using the correct pods.

The company will ship a hack for its cups so users will be able to drink coffee from unofficial sources and they are also hard at work at a presumably non-DRMed cold brewing solution.

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