mniej więcej o to chodzi, być może istnieje jakieś lepsze określenie ale teraz nic nie przychodzi mi do głowy :(

System lock-in. Cisco and Microsoft exemplify this strategy by making the cost of switching to another competing supplier prohibitively expensive for customers. In a system lock-in strategy, a proprietary product, such as a computer operating system or microprocessor hardware architecture, becomes the standard for a given industry. In this case, both buyers and sellers want their products to be consistent with the standard to benefit from the large network of users that have adopted it. The high cost of changing from one company's product to another's can be demonstrated in different ways. For example, customers that choose to buy or sell products on an auction service other than eBay lose access to the vast community of buyers and sellers who use only the eBay site. Customers that switch from a Microsoft Windows computer to an Apple Macintosh lose access to many application programs that run only on the Windows operating system.

http://www.optimizemag.com/issue/028/management.htm

In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, lock-in, or the Pottersville pattern, is a situation in which a customer is so dependent on a vendor for products and services that he or she cannot move to another vendor without substantial switching costs, real and/or perceived.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in