At the root of this issue is the chip in the toner cartridge, or in most of the other printer consumables. Regardless of the merrit of such a device and the marketing gulag it creates, if the device is legally patented, the protocol patented, and the user license constrains the use to legal replacements, anyone infringing on the patents or circumventing the license is comitting a crime.

Npw don't hit me! I'm stating the legal obvious. If you don't want to pay platinum prices for little bottles of food coloring with a fancy anti-piracy chip, don't buy a printer that has this restriction.

Unfortunately, I believe, all major manufacturers incorporate some sort of anti-refill technology, or make their cartridges literally only useful for one cycle. Unless you want to get out an old dot-matrix, line printer or teletype, you're pretty much hosed.

The "correct" response is to follow the lead of the open source hardware community (already making unencumbered boot roms and other bits to prevent vendor lock-out of open source software in the future). Using public domain technology, an "open source" printer device needs to be developed and offered either as a kit or assembled unit. This would eliminate the problems associated with "bugged" ink or toner cartridges and bypass the license issues that would surround a "remanufactured" printer that has the lock-out chip removed.

Sure, the "open source" printer would cost more, but a decent design for the print mechanism (has the original Xerox patent expired yet?) would permit using any good quality ink or toner, offsetting the initial higher hardware cost. Especially for business where the cost of expendables far outstrips the hardware cost in short order.

Of course, we'll then see Canon, Lexmark, HP, etc. buy up the paper mills and incorporate a shrink-wrap license on all paper...oh, wait: paper IS in the publice domain...

Great idea! Let me know when you've whipped it up. I'll be happy to buy the first Chinese clone.

So because 3 other company CEOs failed to have the balls to stay the course and folded shamefully before the might or Lexmark's legal team, that has to be counted against SCC ?

Where is the justice in that ?

Anti-refill chips should simply be outlawed as they hinder the re-use of still viable materials. That would be a useful application of WEEE style legislation.

I remember a maths lesson in the 80s where we had to work out the weight of fountain pen ink (Parker ink IIRC.) It was a lot more expensive than gold then too - both catridges and bottled ink.

>> So because 3 other company CEOs failed to have the balls to stay the course and folded shamefully before the might or Lexmark's legal team, that has to be counted against SCC ?

No you didn't. That was a quote from Lexmark's press release regarding the case - trying to spin it as though they are the winners.

Isn’t the whole thing a bit like a car manufacturer taking Halfords to court? I accept that using third party parts invalidates my watentee on any parts reliant on that part (But it is still down to the manufacturer to prove that any damage was because of the third party part), but this is stupid.

Again using the car analogy, why the F**k dose a printer even have an end user licence? I can see the point with software (You wont copy this etc) But hardware? I

It is typical of morally bankrupt modern business (and know im not an anti globalisation loony).

Lexmark are the biggest abusers of overcharging for ink carts I've seen - I mean they're all pretty bad but Lexmark really do take the biscuit so it's about time somebody stuck the boot in.

Shame the consumers don't have the same weight to make them make the right decision - the easy answer is to not buy Lexmark printers, but I think we all know most users won't find out the con until it's too late.

At the moment printer manufactures make their money selling ink. The printers are cheap. This is a little like playstation and games or cell phones and contracts.

If printer manufacturers can no longer make money from ink they'll charge more for the printers. No one wins

Forget the legal niceties and arguments that have little benefit to anybody other than the lawyers. We waste far too much time and money arguing what the law says, and not enough time and money considering what the law SHOULD say.

The general public doesn't care whether a chip has a valid patent or not. What it cares about is being overcharged for consumables.

The simple way to prevent it is to make it unlawful for devices which use consumables to implement technology which has the effect of preventing the use of third party consumables. Then it makes no difference whether a chip has a valid patent or not -- because the use of that chip would be unlawful in the first place.

First, change the law to prevent further abuse. The legal wrangling on historic issues then becomes substantially irrelevant.

...Lexmark's ink is crap! In my experience, unless you use it daily, the cartridge nozzles dry up.

I use my Lexmark printer once a month or so, and the official Lexmark cartridges inside (which can't have printed more than a dozen pages) print out the streakiest, crappiest printouts you've ever seen.

Come back dot matrix, all is forgiven!

"Regardless of the merrit of such a device and the marketing gulag it creates, if the device is legally patented, the protocol patented, and the user license constrains the use to legal replacements, anyone infringing on the patents or circumventing the license is comitting a crime."

Not so. There is no "licence" on a piece of hardware that you own outright. Whatever you do with it is no concern of the vendor (unless you do something like throw it through their window, obviously). Anything that anyone else does to prevent you from using your own property for its rightful purpose is illegal -- it may constitute simple civil trespass or criminal damage.

Copyright *cannot* be used to prevent legitimate competition. If one device is checking for a copyrighted phrase to prove that another device is "genuine", then reproducing the phrase for the purpose of creating an interoperable device is Fair Dealing.

It's also likely that this runs afoul of environmental protection legislation, which requires that consideration be given to reuse or recycling of components at end of life.

The anti-refill chips aren't intended to prevent recycling - although in the case of HP-style ink cartridges there is a *TINY* bit of merit in their use - their intent is to keep *YOU* from recycling.

HP cartridges embed the print head itself in the "disposable" cartridge. The technology used in the head uses a micro-boiler to vaporize a tiny bit of ink and use this to "spit" a micro-droplet onto the paper. Over time, the "boiler" becomes clogged and needs to be replaced.

This is also where ink formulation becomes critical: the ink is similar to the fuel-oil mix in a 2-stroke gasoline engine. It must carry pigment, boil at a specific heat input, remain at a specific viscosity over a wide temperature range, be a solvent to keep the "boiler" clean and lubricated, and fulfill the toxicity and environmental requirements of a consumer product. This was the original reason that HP and others did not want 3rd party refillers involved: the ink technology was usually the first thing that was scrapped by unscrupulous refillers, causing rapid failure of the print head mechanism. HP "solved" the problem by putting "disposable" print heads in each cartridge - thus insuring that a new print head would be used each time the cartridge was replaced, eliminating the maintenance problem. (Indeed, in some of the high-end "All-In-One" products, the print head and ink cartridge are actually two seperate components: you replace the ink cartridges 3-4 times before replacing the MUCH more expensive print heads. However, these are engineered to be long-life heads...probably through some small decreace in viscosity and a bit more solvent in the ink mix, as the physics of the head design dictates the parameters for forming the droplet that hits the paper.)

Other manufacturers did not follow this simple design, and built a non-replaceable print head into the printer. This requires a more sophisticated ink in order to keep the mechanism from failing for a "reasonable" printer life expectancy.

I "learned" all of this the "hard way" - I did an internship with a large computer company back in the 1970's in the printer development lab and researched pneumatic "hammer" and ink jet operation in line-printer environments. OOPS - my age is showing again...

The "unfair" part of this equation is the busiess model that has been adopted with regard to the disposables, not the fact that print heads need to be replaced. While ink may be a very expensive component to develop, the cost becomes trivial when you start making tankers full of it. And, due to the very short duty cycles of consumer printers (yes, SHORT duty cycles), the ink and head designs *SHOULD* be useful for at least 2 or 3 refills before failure of nozzles finally occurs.

The "politically correct" solution for a manufacturer would be to provide ink in 2-3 times larger cartridges at about the same price as the small ones today, and provide a post-paid recycle pack with each new cartridge to return the spent cartridge for proper recycle and disposal. This would allow use up to head failure and make it trivial to return the cartridge for proper disposal.

I'd gladly pay double for my printer if it meant I didn't have to spend $100 on ink. It's gotten so out of hand, I can now have my digital photos printed off at a studio for less than the cost of the ink and paper to do it at home!

Recently, I had to talk some friends out of buying a replacement printer rather than buying a replacement ink cartridge. After rebates, the new printer was cheaper than the ink cartridge (and it came with ink).

Methinks the print companies are selling their printers at a loss. After I did some legwork, I found out that the "starter" ink cartridge that was included only had a third of the ink of a regular cartridge.

www.memjet.com

Being a laser printer owner IO havent had to deal with nasty Ink prices for a long while. I did pick up a cheap Epson last year to print some photos, in fact I bought two, as a new printer was about £20 cheaper than a set of cartridges!

Staples was told that they could sell Staples cartridges for HP products or they could sell HP cartridges. So said the printer and office machine rep at my local Staples store, anyway. That might not be the "official" reason there are no third-party inks for HP at their store these days, but it's plausible and these kinds of things do tend to filter down by word of mouth through a company.

If anyone could give more specifics, I'd love to know.

Besides, the HP cartridges (the full ones) cost about $30 for the 0.3 ounce ones. That's $100 per ounce, or $1600 per gallon. Where are all the people bemoaning the fact that Americans are paying as bit more than $3 per gallon of gasoline? (Yes, I know you in the UK spend a good deal more than that, but the point stands that $1600 is much more than $3). (That's about £800 per about 3.8 litres on the ink, for those of you unfamiliar with US measures.) With prices like that, who needs to banish competition, anyway? Why, one would be hard pressed to sell most illicit drugs at such prices.

Yes, I realize part of the cost is the cartridge itself, but they could always make the reservoir bigger, and then the cost of print heads and such would be spread out over more ink.

I bought a Canon BJC4100 for €250 more than 10 years ago. The print head was replaceable independently of the cartridges. Head +carts cost €45. Original carts cost €35, compatible ones cost €25. Refilling both carts cost €2.5.

Based on my (or rather my children's) usage and a new head every 18 months (pessimistic) I saved €250 annually by refilling the cartridges.

The printer was finally retired because it was literally wearing out mechanically and had become a little unreliable.

These are the kind of economics that make sense. I never felt screwed by Canon.