Slashdot Mirror
HP Launches Ink Patent Violation Manhunt
BlueCup writes to tell us that Hewlett-Packard has deployed a large team consisting of many scientists and many more lawyers looking for possible ink patent infringement. With more than 4,000 patents on their ink formulations and cartridge design and a market share of more than 50 percent in the US HP depends heavily on the sale of ink to make profit after sometimes selling their printers at a loss in order to lock in the ink resale.
Hewlett-Packard has deployed a large team consisting of many scientists and many more lawyers ... [HP have] a market share of more than 50 percent in the US HP depends heavily on the sale of ink to make profit after sometimes selling their printers at a loss in order to lock in the ink resale.
Two days ago I was attempting to print a B&W document on my HP inkjet printer and it paused .. printed a line and paused .. then stuck. I form-fed the sheet it had stalled on and found
a large amount (at HP rates, about $4 worth) of ink pooled on the paper, as if it had taken a widdle and forgot where it was before this well-timed potty break. After cancelling the print job and powering down and up again the printer, I tried again. Same results. Perhaps they could explain why this is happening.
It's simple, sir, HP depend upon your regular purchase of ink and you haven't bought enough recently to ensure sustained profits. It's another of our patented business processes. Get out and buy some more, there's a good chap.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So, now HP needs to chase down violators to protect itself. If only HP had continued to pay attention to quality, maybe HP would not need to worry about this kind of activity.
Fifteen years ago, the only brand of printer I would buy was HP. Partly because HP was on point, but also because I'd always associated HP with quality as job one (actually, I guess that was supposed to be Ford). HP calculators, printers, electrical instruments, all quality products for years I'd faithfully used with trust.
Then came the second HP printer I'd ever bought, a deskjet, and I don't remember its model number. I do remember it suddenly either would pick up no sheets of paper for printing, or pick up 2 or 3 at a time. The fix?
I give HP credit, they did offer a fix. But it involved a scary piece of software and an even scarier piece of hardware with steel wool pads (I'm not kidding) you had to insert into the feed rollers -- and when all was done, you had a better performing (not perfect) printer and a heck of a mess to clean up. (Though I did get a free dental appointment once by bringing in my contraption and applying the HP "fix" to their HP printer!)
An anomaly?, a tiny blip on the radar? Nope. The next printer I bought, also HP Deskjet, fell apart so many times because of cheap plastic assembly I became an expert in the insides of the machine.
Still, I faithfully recommended HP printers to friends and family, but there were a disturbingly large and consistent number of "incidents" with these new printers. They were either balky in their performance, had ink problems, were virtually impossible to install, or keep installed. I gave up on HP about three or four years ago. Sadly, it's tinged my opinion of HP in general, from HP-UX, to HP-41X RPN calculators, probably unfairly since I think they still make some of the best electronics.
HP decided to go the route of making money on their printer ink, and sell their printers sometimes below cost -- that's kind of the disposable razor idea -- not necessarily a bad idea, but if it comes at the sacrifice of making reliable printers, I'm out.
HP's obsession with cost cutting, chasing down patent cheaters, etc., these are not the signatures of a class technology company.
A friend of mine recently discovered that it was cheaper to buy her same model printer on sale than to buy a replacement cartridge for her existing printer. She couldn't bring herself to toss a perfectly good printer just to get the cartridge cheaper, but the temptation was there. I'll bet many other people don't have the same compunctions about this sort of waste.
I met a traveller from a silicon land
Who said: Two life-sized cutouts of cardboard
Stand near Palo Alto. Near it, at 367 Addison Avenue,
Half sunk, a shatter'd garage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on a pedestal in Cupertino these words appear:
"My name is Carly Fiorina, queen of queens:
Look on my works, Bill and David, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, outsourced and bare,
The stock options stretch far out of the money.
Um, buy a laser?
I won't be buying another ink-jet printer....ever*. I wouldn't even get 50 pages out of the inks before it clogged and reported problems, or 'empty'.
I have a solid Samsung Laser (1610 maybe?) I bought 5 *years* ago. Still going strong. only B & W but hey, I don't need color all that often (that's what work is for...ha).
My next purchase will be a laser 'all in one' that will be B & W too. Mostly because I'm not ready to shell out $500-700 for the all in one color monsters for my own small needs.
*Unless you need to do uber-quality photo prints, ink-jets are relics.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
HP Ink for a DeskJet model - $20 / 11 milliliters = $1.82 per milliliter
Dom Perignon - $145 / 750 milliliters = $0.19 per milliliter
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
I'm a chemist for a company that makes formulations for the papermaking, mining, and oilfield industries, and I do a lot of work analyzing chemical patents. After reading this article, I see two cases: one full of BS and one that msy sctually be legit.
a tic_Control_Components), but Lexmark sued on the basis of copyright and DMCA violation, not patent violation. You mechanical, electrical and computer engineers in the audience can talk about this one better than I can.
Case 1. HP suing people for violating their "cartridge design" patents. Without hearing anything else, this sounds like HP's suing people who make replacement cartridges that fit their systems (including any chipping), which sounds pretty low. We've seen this once with Lexmark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_Int'l_v._St
Cases 2. HP suing people for violating their ink formulations. (All that stuff about using GC, the "egg yolk" test, etc.) Here HP may not be full of BS. Inks aren't as simple as you might think -- they are highly engineered formulations that must disperse into tiny droplets for spraying by the ink jet, they must not bleed, they must not fade in light, etc. This is on my turf, so I'll lecture for a bit.
The inks are made from specific combinations of pigments and dyes, which could have been used for centuries or been made in a lab last week. The dyes and pigments are then mixed with other chemicals that will disperse them in a solution and keep them from settling over time. The pigment, dye, or dispersant can be a new chemical substance and granted a material patent. The specific combination of ingredients, including how they are mixed together, can be granted a process patent.
Unlike software patents, the patents in the paragraph above cover tangible things (pigments, dispersants, dyes, and formulations). They can be circumvented and you can prove if you are infringing or not with some straightforward lab tests. Some simplistic examples: If HP has a patent on an ink that is 25% A, 50% B, and 25% C, I can sell an ink that is 50% A, 30% B, and 20% C and not infringe. If the dye molecule in HP's material patent absorbs at 590-610 nm and the dye molecule I sell absorbs at 550-585 nm, I am not infringing. Smart companies change the competitor's formula just enough to avoid violating patents, while being able to have approximately the same performance.
HP may find people copying their patented chemicals or formulations and prosecute them to he fullest extent of the law. They may find instead competing companies coming out with similar but noninfringing products at a low price that the consumer actually likes. In that case, hopefully the market will clear things up instead of a bunch of suits.
(Of course the cynic in me thinks they'll still sue the people who are not infringing their material or process patents in the hope of intimidating them.)