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Lexmark Wins Injunction in Toner Cartridge Suit
goingincirclez writes "Cnet reports that Lexmark has won an injunction against Static Control Components, Inc., which effectively prohibits the manufacture of recycled / third party toner cartidges. Slashdot covered the initial filing of the suit. SCC also has a rebuttal site that definitely warrants checking out. I would like to think that other printer manufacturers won't follow suit, but I'm not that naive. Better start your trust fund for ink cartridges."
This is good news for Dell. They'll be selling their own printers in about a month, and anything that makes other manufacturers look bad will help them gain marketshare. What will be interesting is to see how Dell plays in the ink cartridge business. Will they try to be like everyone else, or will they try to do to ink prices what they've done to PC prices?
Have you ever had to replace a broken tail-light? Auto manufacturers *are* copyrighting their designs only to prevent competitors from providing inexpensive replacement parts.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
Well - this problem seems to be impacting the ppl from North America. Check below for the current status within the EU - if someone knows of any new developments - please post!
Dow Jones Business News
EU Parliament Bans Proprietory Printer Cartridge Policy
Wednesday December 18, 10:40 am ET
BRUSSELS -(Dow Jones)- In a blow to Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - News; HP) and other printer companies, the European Parliament voted unanimously Wednesday to ban them from forcing consumers to buy manufacturers' own-brand ink refills.
The printer-ink provision was included in a last-minute amendment to a bill requiring manufacturers of electronic goods to pay for recycling them. Conservatives supported it as a consumer-friendly action, while environmentalists welcomed it as a green measure.
"Consumers who are fed up with being ripped off when they need to replace the ink cartridges in their computer printers will be pleased with the requirement," said Robert Goodwill, a Conservative member of the parliament who sponsored the amendment.
The bill comes into effect in 2006.
Many color printers cost about EUR100 to buy, but replacement cartridges run as much as EUR40 each, Goodwill said. Companies have sprung up offering cheaper cartridge ink refills. But Goodwill said manufacturers had limited the use of the refills by installing computer chips on their original cartridges.
"When the cartridges are refilled, the printer comes up with an error message and many users are forced to buy expensive new cartridges from manufacturers," Goodwill said.
The practice may be harmful to the environment, as it limits recycling, and to consumers, but it has been beneficial to printer companies. H-P's ink and toner refills bring in about $10 billion annually, or about 15% of its annual revenue.
H-P dominates the market. According to consulting company CAP, H-P now has 44% of the $11 billion West-European market for printer ink, with Seiko Corp.'s Epson (J.SKO) unit with about 25%, Canon Inc. (CAJ) with 18% and Lexmark International Inc. (NYSE:LXK - News) with 10%.
Suppliers who refill ink cartridges or sell knockoffs have about one-fourth of the market, according to CAP. But their share is static.
Their complaints have attracted the attention of European Union Competition Commissioner Mario Monti. In May, he said regulators were looking into possible anticompetitive behavior by some printer makers.
"There's probably a case here for us," Monti said at the time. Since then, the Commission has been silent on the issue.
Complaints from refillers also attracted parliamentarian Goodwill. He visited the local Cartridge World shop in York and came away determined to insert the amendment into the larger bill about recycling of electronics goods. He and a Green parliamentarian first inserted the amendment back in October.
But the German government supported the printer companies' attempts to remove it this week. Bargaining between parliamentarians and governments went until 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, Goodwill said.
"The Germans wanted to defend their chemical companies which make this ink for the printer companies," he said. "When we threatened to hold up the entire recycling bill, they finally dropped their objections."
The printer companies still can appeal to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. H-P declined to comment. Spokespeople for Canon and Lexmark said they were unaware of the issue.
-By William Echikson, Dow Jones Newswires; 32-2-285-0134; william.echikson@ dowjones.com
Dow Jones Newswires
12-18-02 1040ET
I subvert Lexmark's plans by refilling my old toner carts with stuff from this vendor. While it's somewhat more difficult a process than just installing a new cart, I save over $150 with each refill.
Not affiliated with TonerRefillKits.com, just a happy customer. Don't be put off by their crappy website - the stuff ships out quick, is fairly priced, and works as advertised.
As an "IT Manager" I get 2-10 calls a day from people trying to sell me toner cartridges. The usual pitch goes something like this:
"Hello Mr. Smith, my name is Todd and I'm calling from ABC products. We develop our own high tech toner cartridges and they are the best on the market. What I'd like to do is send you a cartridge; at no cost to you, so can you can see our quality product."
I know of a client who actually went along with it, and they were shipped a pallet of these things and billed for like $2,100.
Anyway...I have always found that genuine HP cartridges are the best value. We buy so many of them, we only pay a few bucks more than the imitations. Plus, even my users can tell when we've put a imitation cartridge in, instead of the genuine HP toner.
And when exactly will you be informed that you are purchasing a printer that has a single supplier for refills? Do you suppose that there will be a big, screaming banner on the box stating that for now and forever you will be raped by overpriced single-source refills? Probably not.
Well I sell/upgrade/repair computers and people ask me all the time "What is the best __________ ?" When they ask *ME* about printers I tell them not to buy Lexmark. I think they are junk anyway. This is just one more issue.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
The post was as if the article was about Lexmark inkjet or other printers, when it's about laser printers after all: "Start using Laser Printers.. o wait..."
"Start using Laser Printers.. o wait..."
As funny as this is, there is a point to be made here. Roughly a year ago I bought a $300 laser printer made by Brother. (it's $250 today) I'm still on the original cartridge. I'm probably would have bought at least 2 or 3 ink replacement cartridges for my old inkjet by now. Frankly, I don't like futzing with that. Sometimes the ink just evaporates.
Right now it costs about $60 to replace the cartridge. $85 gets me a cartridge with double the capacity. $180 gets me 6x the capacity of the original cartridge.
That may be a little steep of an investment, but imagine buying the $250 printer + $180 drum (after the original cartridge is empty a year or two later) and never having to worry about it again.
Ah those are the daaaaaaaaaaaaays.
Whatever printer I get now, it won't be a Lexmark.
I just called Lexmark on their toll-free phone number to tell them how despicable I thought this lawsuit was. I told them that, unless it was dropped, I would never purchase another Lexmark product nor would I recommend their products to clients or colleagues. If you feel that way, call them:
In the U.S., their phone number is:
1-800-LEXMARK (1-800-539-6275)
Hours:
Mon - Fri
9am - 9pm EST
Saturday
12pm - 6pm
Watch Lexmark cut the size of the cartridges as well.
They don't need to. There's been long-standing accusations that the ink cartridge manufacturers don't completely fill the cartridges they sell, so the ink doesn't last as long and the consumer has to buy refills more frequently.
Bypass the manufacturer and remanufacturer altogether - just get a refill kit from www.inksell.com. No, I'm not an employee, just a happy customer.
They have a kit for $9.95 that has enough ink for two full refills. Your future refills are only $2.95 per ink bottle (once you've got the kit).
Takes 5 minutes or less to do the refill. The only difficult part is breaking off the top of the color cartridge but they supply a tool for that.
I've been using the same ink cartridge for about 6 months and I do a lot of printing. I've probably refilled it like 4 or 5 times now and it still works like a champ.
I don't have to feel guilty about printing full color photos anymore.
859-232-2000
1. Ask for the president's office, and when connected, tell them that you refuse to do business with a company that is using a dubious law to squash competition!
2. Ask them why they don't feel that their product is a good enough value, that it will sell, without doing business in this manner!
3. Ask them what the procedure is for returning your Lexmark printer to them, since they did not make you aware, when you purchased the printer, that you would be forbidden buy law to use 3rd party replacement ink!
Let them know that their conduct is unacceptable.
Buy from some company who are trying to produce products which will reduce your costs.
The Kyocera ecosys printers spring to mind.
http://www.kyocera.com/
Deleted
The Copyright Office is currently considering a petition to exempt printers/cartridges from the DMCA (at Static Control's request, of course!). You have until March 10 at 5pm EST to comment.. html.
Tell them what you think at http://www.copyright.gov/1201/comment_forms/index
I bought a used HP 1100 for $86 shipped on eBay and I couldn't be happier. Most laserjet printers are supported in Linux and it seems from the little research I did, there's a whole industry devoted to refurbishing and reselling laserjets, especially HPs. After a year of cursing over trying to get a Lexmark inkjet running in Linux, it was wonderful to see the HP running on my Samba box after about 40 seconds of configuration.
Save your color printouts for an inkjet and try a laserjet for everything else! You'll save money in the long run.
This guy is way out there
We sell HP and lexmark inks where I work. Trust me, the markup isn't from the retailer. There is a (very) slight possibility that our distributer is gouging us, but our cheapest vendor is only slightly less than our most expensive vendor in the ink world. I can say for almost a 100% certainty that the ink price gouging comes from the manufacturer. This is the exact opposite to the cable industry, where computer cables are marked up between 100% and 500% by the retailer (this is from the MSRP, which we don't follow). Since we use our same markup on these cables are our other products, we have undercut our local competition in cables by over 100-500% in almost every instance.
Interestingly, we sell an HP color inkjet printer for 76$, and we sell the ink cartriges for that printer for 89$ (this is the price for both color and black). We have the same margin on all 3 products. Lexmark does the same exact thing, but we don't sell their printers, just the inks.
We have a guy that comes around and picks up our empty inks that people bring back for us to recycle. We can get 1-5 dollars each (model, brand dependant). They ship them to africa to be refilled, and then resold later in asia. One reason is because of this copyright BS lexmark is pushing on everyone.
Contrary to popular belief, the circuitry and printhead on the cartrige itself is what costs the most. The guy we sell our used inks to can get up to $10-$15 on some models, and the people refilling them are still making a profit even after shipping them across the world, refilling, cleaning, and reselling them for less than new. I have personally refilled my black cartriges for less than $5 each refill, and only after a few refills does the print quality go down (due to worn out print head)
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.