Oxymoron of the day: Consumer Linux
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HP sues four ink cartridge companies
MAKER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK HP has filed a lawsuit to sue four printer ink cartridge companies for patent infringement, according to Businessweek.
The patent infringement case rests on cartridges sold by printer ink cartridge maker Microjet and three other manufacturers. HP alleged in a complaint filed in US federal court that all four companies "converted more than 300,000 genuine HP printheads from HP facilities in Asia", then sold them as products manufactured by another company, Mipo Technology.
Microjet did not have much of a response to HP's lawsuit. Microjet spokesman John Kuo said only, "Our lawyers are currently investigating the situation." He did say the company had not been contacted by HP before it filed the lawsuit and that he only found out about the case yesterday.
In its complaint, HP asked the court to bar the companies from infringing its patents and requested unspecified damages. µ
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You complain about HP's ink prices, umm..what about the other companies? Epson and Canon are just as high or higher, Lexmark and Brother are HIGHER than them. Why single out HP to compain about? Noone is requiring you to buy their product. HP and Kodak have printers that have the cheapest prices on ink.
And where is the outcry for disposable razors? Its the same thing, same principal.. GROW UP whiners.
You can get a copy of the actual court documents that Hewlett Packard submitted on this a href="http://answerco-cross-reference.blogspot.com/2010/03/hewlett-packard-lawsuit-mipo-compatible.html" Office Supplies Blog /a .
This is not the first time HP has been at this sort of unruly behavior. If it is not their policy to spy on board members, their families, and others to get a leaks, they sue print cartridge manufacturers for reverse engineering them. HP looses the first lawsuit, opening the door to 3rd party cartridges for their extremely expensive ink.
Now HP is conducting itself in an unruly manner by suing (probably) those same companies they failed to win against before,only this time claiming patent infringement.
The cost of ink, when compared to the cost per ounce of gold, is greater than the ounce of gold. On top of that the ink goes onto paper which ultimately is thrown out.
If you look at the cost per mL of ink and compare it to the cost of the next one up, you can see it is much more costly than $300 a gallon. I tell people to cease buying inkjets and tell them about HPs unruly behavior, and advise them to buy a non-HP laser printer.
by encouraging people to buy a new printer with exorbitant ink prices HP are creating a lot of unnecessary environmental waste. Maybe some government that cares a little about the environment (germany?) should investigate and fine them bigtime.
Can we sue HP for cartel based ink pricing?
Really isn't this price fixing to a degree and something all the other printer companies are doing?
Is anyone testing 5% coverage numbers with reality?
whatever is meant by "converted".
I've never liked HP's method of ensuring that they sell ink at around $300 a gallon by including electronics on the print head, though there's justifiable benefit to it -- because the head clogs, which I suspect doesn't hurt their income.
But when it's literally cheaper to buy an entire new printer rather than a replacement ink cartridge, as is frequently the case, I must view HP with contempt and withdraw any support for their abuse of the patent system.
Just put a GALLON tank on a well built printer that will last as long the early Laserjets did.