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Lexmark Sues 24 Companies Over Toner-Cartridge Patents
eldavojohn writes "Remember back in 2003, when Lexmark tried to use the DMCA to stop aftermarket toner cartridges from being produced? Well, they're now suing 24 companies for infringing on 15 patents they have on toner cartridges. The article also notes that Lexmark has been filing lawsuits over patent infringement on formulas for their inks."
How can a formula be patented when you can't even copyright a recipe (and that's all ink is, a recipe of dyes)?
As for patents on toner cartridges, I imagine if they were specific enough to get a patent for it (I know, I know, I'm not new around here, I know stupid patents get granted all the time), chances are they wouldn't need to worry about after-market producers.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I mean really? Every printer of quality I've seen in the last 3 years (and I use the word 'quality' loosely) has been an Xerox, HP or Canon. Maybe they should spend some time building things people want to buy. Could be wrong of course. Often am.
JE
Might as well start suing people for making paper compatible with their printers aswell..
Inkjet printers suck, get a small B&W laser. Do color prints onlines and ship em.
Their patents are probably nothing more than 'we patented the specifications of cartridges that work with our printers so other companies can't sell cheap 3rd party cartridges' patents.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Lexmark, HP, Canon, and Kodak all deserve the money gotten for their ink. It's only fair. I say, and I am sure most of slashdot is with me, what's GOOD FOR LEXMARK IS GOOD FOR CONSUMERS !!
I called their tech support after trying to get one of their printers to work on Linux. This was before I found out that they use a non-standard and proprietary way to communicate between computer and printer.
The tech asks me if I'm using Windows XP or Vista. I say I'm using Linux. He's says "Windows Linux?" "No, just Linux." "Oh, okay, Windows 98." From there he proceeded to give me help based off the idea that I was running Microsoft Windows 98 Linux Edition.
Different topic, but same exact conversation.
Copyrights, patents, all other government regulations need to be abolished as well as any other government control of economy, interest rates, wages laws, every single thing. It's killing the economy, it can't save it. Government is an unproductive destructive force and you can see it in everything it does, this includes copyright and patent laws.
You can't handle the truth.
Its not just for inkjet printers anymore.
One more company takes the patent troll route after finding out they are incapable of manufacturing something worth owning in the first place. Unfortunately HP printers are approaching Lexmark quality levels and not the other way around. I hate both companies, but obviously avoid Lexmark like the plague. I usually don't even bother trying to troubleshoot them or buy new roller kits -- I just replace the lexmarks with HPs.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
"Bastardze?"
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I usually ignore stories about hardware patents, but this one highlights a problem that exists in software patents: interoperability is essential.
Microsoft can develop a wonky filesystem (FAT), and use their market power to force it on everyone. When they finally realise that 8-letter filenames is a broken idea, they add a fix, patent the fix, and sue people who use the fix.
That fix isn't patentable because it's valuable, it's simply valuable because it's patented. It's an arbitrary idea, not necessarily better than any other solution (of avoiding the problem in the first place!), but it becomes a must-have because it's the idea Microsoft chose to implement.
Same with Word. Microsoft patents a few features in their file format and they're essential. You develop your own file format and patent some features, and they just get avoided by Micrsoft and nobody cares about your patents. How good your patents are, or how they compare to Microsoft's patents, is of no consequence.
And so it is with Lexmark. They make cartridges in a certain way. Might be good, might be wonky. You can patent a better idea, but it's useless because you're not looking for "best", you're looking for "compatible".
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help with developing these arguments is very welcome.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Evidently you've not shopped for a laser printer recently. Toner isn't any cheaper. I think they migrated the laser printers to inkjet printer model some time ago. Cost of toner cartridge today can go over a hundred dollars easily. Some manufacturers even have built in page counters on toner cartridges that would refuse to print once certain page count is reached, irrespective of the actual amount of toner remaining in the cartridge.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Overheard at Lexmarks recent board meeting: "oh my good our company will soon need to file for Chapter 11... SUE EVERYBODY!!!"
Yes, except that the toner cartridges can print 10,000 pages.
A nice advertisement for what not to buy, thanks Lexmark.
Anyway, for those looking for alternatives, Brother doesn't chip their cartridges, and the ink is not criminally expensive. Anyone know of other brands?
Another option is to buy a continuous ink system; often these include compatible chips so you can bypass the manufacturer. Though, finding good CIS and quality inks may be somewhat troublesome. Any suggestions here?
There once was a seller of toner ...
Toner may be more expensive but in the long run its cheaper. I don't do much printing and my old ink-jet seemed to eat ink cartridges irrespective of whether I actually used the damn printer. I'd try to print something and pretty much every colour would be empty even though I had only brought more ink about 10 pages ago. My new B&W laser has already printed more pages than my ink-jet ever has and shows no signs of running out of toner. It apparently has enough toner to last It 2000 pages
The Magnusson Moss Warranty Act does not let them void the Warranty so they just try this BS to lock out the 3rd party stuff.
What if a car maker pulled this on a radio interface so you are locked in to there radio and can't install your own. What about remote starters?
In car DVD and TV systems?
The cost per page for toner is less than the cost per page for ink. For example, this HP ink cartridge costs 4.4 cents per page, while this HP toner cartridge costs 1.3 cents per page.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Should they not be going after the manufacturers of said inks and cartridges and not those who are importing and/or selling them?
You cannot sell your 'fake' inkt with less than a 2000% profit... And even then we will lose a 1000%... Seriously printer inkt is not more expensive than gold. It just isn't no matter what they let you pay for it. For this very reason I never buy inkt. We have come in the absurd situation that is quite a lot cheaper to just buy a new printer with the 1000 pages worth of filling you get with it.
Hey Lead Butthead, Toner is cheap. http://www.google.com/products?q=+toner++P1006 , Refilled toner is even cheaper. For an HP LaserJet P1006, 6 pack refurb for $80, 1200 pages a wack - works out to ~1.2 cents a page. Inkjets are from 2.3 to 8, and the quality just isn't as good, not to mention messy.
After all, that's what it boils down to.
Can't beat the competition - sue them. What this tells me is that Lexmark doesn't have a good enough value proposition on their replacement toners. If they offered even close to equal value to the knockoffs, or the knockoffs had a bad rep for damaging people's printers, there wouldn't be a problem.
Wow, I don't normally think this after looking at an XKCD comic, but that one is so arrogant and off the mark, in one of the worst ways possible!
Blindly trusting a GPS device's directions, and insultingly disregarding the likely better directions of someone who lives there and is intimately familiar with the best way to get there, shows a total distrust in the intelligence of the person you're visiting. Sure, it's good to have the address and look up the directions yourself, but immediately preferring the automated directions, which often, at least in my experience, have problems, is almost sociopathic in the trust it shows in technology over personal wisdom.
To bring this back to the support desk issue, I think it actually supports the current, often frustrating, script-based approach. What is the ratio of knowledgeable users to arrogant idiots who thinks they're knowledgeable users? You know, the users who don't want to listen to the easy solution that fixes the problem 80% of the time, which would fix it for them, because they're experts and have a tool that often works that they trust in totally, even though they haven't the faintest clue on what they're doing?
While I agree that it sucks that Lexmark (and most other printer manufacturers) put chips in their printers and discourage 3rd party consumables, I will say this: there is a good reason for it. I can count on one hand the number of Branded ink/toner cartridges I've ever seen go bad. When someone buys easter egg coloring ink for $3 a gallon and puts it in their Lexmark printer, or a "remanufactured" cartridge that has 3 million pages on it and is filled with shredded tires by blind people in China, guess who gets blamed when the print quality gets messed up? Certainly not "ch3ap1nk4le$$" on ebay. No, it's Lexmark. Shitty toner cartridges have caused more problems with printers than manufacturing defects, probably by 10x or so. Lexmark (and the rest of them) have a real reason for wanting to do this. What they should do is drop the prices on the consumables and sell the Total Cost of Ownership, not the retail price. Then nobody would need to make remanufactured carts.
They should also sell the carts with a "core charge". Send back your carts, get a $50 credit.
Hint: when you buy a printer, look at the cost of consumables per page BEFORE you buy it. That $99 color laser printer probably isn't a deal when you factor in the $500 it will take to replace the toner. But the $250 printer just might be.
(Also, all printers are crap these days. Nobody competes on quality anymore, just on specs. There is a reason those old Laserjets were $2500, and that's because they were made of cast iron.)
(Although I will say the Lexmark C53x series is pretty damned good.)
remember refills at Walgreens, Office Max, etc. They are pretty good, and much cheaper for inkjets.
Toner is CHEAP, third party carts for my Brother are .35c/page, even the Brother carts are only .8c/page, yes that's correct they are less than a penny a page, you'll spend more on the paper than the toner =) Bigger printers are even cheaper per page, but obviously come with a bigger acquisition cost and the cost of a single consumable replacement is more than my printer with 2,500 page starter cart ($99).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
GPS are only as good as the map data and some time that data does not show
it's a non truck road.
it's been closes off.
the ramps where re routed and you can't go that way any more and you have to take a different way to get there.
They reworked a one way systems map does not show the new way.
A easier and better way is not in the map yet.
and many other things.
The article also notes that HP has been filing lawsuits over ink patents.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Not to mention toner won't dry out. So if you don't print that frequently, the cost of replacing dry would exceed anything else by quite a lot.
Your proposed solution to our current economic problems is to become a communist nation? (not to be confused with a Communist nation)
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Maybe your printers used to be okay.
Now I will never buy or recommend one of your printers. I suspect I'm not alone.
Good luck with your business plan.
> that's not what happened. [...] People used FAT because it did what they wanted
Microsoft had a dominant position on the desktop. Being incompatible with Microsoft would have been a show-stopper. Microsoft's filesystem was FAT, so if you wanted to be compatible, with then-current Windows and will all future versions, then you use FAT.
For your disagreement, a link to a contradictory story would be very interesting. Or if you don't have a link (and I won't hold it against you, given that I've no link), could you at least say what part of this story you see a flaw with?
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Anything built by HP pre-Carly is pretty much a tank, even the early DeskJets.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
No chips in cartridges!
What Lexmark is fighting about is most likely not the cartridges themselves as containers of ink, but rather the chips. Makers of third-party cartridges have to reverse-engineer Lexmark's chips which prevent users from refilling cartridges.
You can fight this nonsense by not buying Lexmark, Canon, HP, Epson, etc.
EOM
> I mean, the only reason that unionization wasn't more effective earlier on is because the corp's used the government to bully strikers.
Actually, no. They hired private police forces to bully (and sometimes kill) union activists.
And the average human navigation narrative are long on detail and short on relevant constraints. e.g. "The most direct way is to cross town on the Panzerbahn, but it's a black art to merge into the exit lane, so I suggest you loop to the south and cross town on Marine Drive which is longer but avoids many ugly intersections, then after you turn north on Artic Express, you need to shoot past 49'th which has a three second advance left, and then take the next three rights, which gets you westbound on 49'th where there's a project to reline the local water main, so it's going to make a big difference if you arrive before or after the works crews" etc.
Then the intrepid driver is free to ask, "what if I survive exiting the Panzerbahn, do I avoid the waterworks on 49'th?"
Probably the fastest way is to ask the address, consult the GPS and then declare "my GPS is routing me here and there, is that going to cause me any problems?" The other person will say "oh no, that's fine", and you'll run into problems anyway. When you arrive (late) the person goes "huh, that road has been closed for a year now, I never knew" and the happy consensus is achieved that local road knowledge, like poetry, rarely translates.
One case where I do take detailed notes over the phone is when entering suburbia where you need to snake along the path of the Minotaur within tract developments of Wolframesque originality.
I once bought a Lexmark inkjet as part of a package for my GF, took it home, read the heavy legal text on the outside, refused to open the box, and took it right back. I have a different grudge against HP. The build quality in Brother printers scares me, so I always start with Canon when possible (but not the Pigma photo printers.)
Even Canon earned a black mark. I once had a perfectly good Canon scanner for which they never upgraded the driver (for any OS whatsoever) after Windows 98. Took it off to recycling. It was shipped to China where a ten year old boy ingested some of the toxic metals and grew a tumour on the side of his head which he treated by using for a tourniquet a reclaimed power necktie that had outlasted its profit mojo. Good thing, he almost died.
Unfortunately, inkjet printers are one of the less excusable waste streams in the history of western civilization.
Not long ago I read about the billions of dollars HP invested in ink with a thousand miraculous qualities, so no doubt it's worth more than liquid gold. 80% of the documents printed barely last two weeks before heaving directly into the recycle bin. Somehow the profit margins at HP have convinced management that the average person wishes to print their suggestive but erroneous Google map navigation route in gold brocade, every damn time.
Where's the cheap shitty ink I would generally use 90% of the time? And why do none of the print drivers I commonly encounter ever tell you in advance the total ink consumption of the job you are about to print, including the ten full colour sheets you forgot were in the middle of chapter seven?
"This short print job will cost more than the initial purchase price of your inkjet printer. Press OK to continue, or CANCEL to terminate the print job after squirting, but prior to curing." Those little print heads consist of many hundreds of reverse-engineered penis brains swaddled in patent protection.
others have already pwned you on how much more lasers can print, the other issue is laser printers can sit unused for a long time and be fine. leave your ink jet with new ink sitting for 9 months and you will need new carts or at least need to blow a ton of ink and paper running head clean cycles.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Colour laser printers are under $200, and the toner cartridges last a hell of a long time. Why is anyone buying ink-based printers?
Along with Kodak with no Linux drivers don't support Lexmark products.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Rated for over 50K pages/month. So far I've only gone through one toner cartridge, the replacement is good for 6000 pages.
-1, Total disregard for reality.
If you wanted to be compatible (which is what Ciaran was talking about), you had to use FAT. Nowadays you have the choice of FAT and NTFS, both equally patented.
Well, now I know not to buy Lexmark printers :)
I haven't heard of page counters in toner. I recently researched and bought a laser printer (went with Brother 2170W in the end if anyone cares) and I noticed many of them use a sensor to tell whether the toner is out. When the sensor says it's out it won't print any more. Put some tape over the sensor port and it just keeps going. I admit I was mostly interested in Brother and Samsung though just from word of mouth. Samsung reviews mentioned wireless problems which is why I went with Brother. The page counters may exist in brands I didn't look at.
With Ink however you will generally get much less use than what you calculate because apart from office-environments most people will go many weeks without running out, which means that some of the ink will dry up. Some people will only print a handfull of pages before they find out their ink is ruined.
Unused toner will keep for many months or years and are much more reliable.
For Bulk printing I would guess that a nice continuous ink system would be most effective, but then again inkjet printer wear out much quicker.
Lexmark and Hp are afraid of a moving market. They think the best idea instead of working on lowering prices or working to get and build their customer base....the best way is to sue the competition so you get the competitions customers. I don't buy Lexmark or HP, I work for a hospital in New England and we use SoyPrint Toner cartridges. They are a 3rd party comapany selling toner for Lexmark and HP at fair prices and they save 3 liters of oil each toner cartridge. HP or Lexmark couldn't come up with a new and eco-friendly idea like this !!!! Think about all they think about is hmmm "lets make our cardboard box more green friendly"...all the while the toners in the box are actually taking 3 LITERS OF OIL TO MAKE THE TONER POWDER!!!! That is a a shame!!! We are running out of oil here people !!! We should be looking for ways to stop using foreign oil...not continue to use it!! Check out this mid-sized company SoyPrint at www.soyprint.net , I think they are based out of Maine or California or something. HP and LExmark... go back to the drawing board...
That is working really well where exactly?
What the hell are you on?
Of course FAT did what people wanted. People wanted a filesystem that worked with most software and a significant part of "most software" was called "Windows". Which for some totally weird reason didn't support ext2. I mean it would have made perfect business sense, right?
We had extreme problems with a new Lexmark printer. The drivers were apparently buggy; the often crashed on two very clean computers. We will never buy another Lexmark product.
The solution:
print at work.
I haven't printed _anything_ since I got a smart phone 3 years ago lol.
You can save a lot of money by getting a smart phone and ditching the printer. Just sayin...
People bring me printed crap all the time at work. I just don't understand it. You can take a screen shot and email the crap. You can even email the document or a link to it.
I used to work with lawyers that would take an electronic document (which THEY wrote in the first place), print it, mark it up with red pen, then interoffice me the printed corrected copy, so I could correct the electronic original. I'm a developer, not a paralegal, so I told them to fuck off, but what kind of idiot wouldn't just edit the fucking electronic document and send it back. Why print it? You can't tell me "Oh I work on stuff on the train" This was a doc that got sent to them, and inter-officed back to me the same fucking day. Aren't lawyers supposed to be smart? Why would they do something so fucking stupid? It boggles the mind, especially with electronic signing and revision history.
People need to learn to lay off the fucking print button. It generates and unbelievable amount of waste. My desk is filled with paper that other people printed and brought to me. All of it is 100% unnecessary. What a fucking crime.
Bitching about lousy printers and cartridges is pointless. You don't need them. Stop fucking buying them.
Crap like this is why my family doesn't even -have- a working printer. Instead we print the natural way; bring the file to work and print it there. Plus it's free!
Seriously though, once tablets are more or less ubiquitous in a professional office it will trickle down to the point where they're giving the ink away for free just to sell a printer again.
bend like the reed
Brother is making some great printers these days, and have Linux support for almost all of them. Linux Support = support for CUPS, LPD and SANE. Many of the drivers are GPL, so you can get code from Brother's website. Many of the drivers are in Ubuntu's repos, so most of the time you can just apt-get.
Most print features are implemented. Also, Brother's ink is not chipped, and you can buy genuine Brother ink for about $9/cartridge or get third party ink for about $3 per cartridge (you can probably refill, too, but for $3 per, why mess with it). The cleaning cycles don't tap the ink on Brother printers the way they do on Lexmark either. I had a Lexmark years ago that would get about 40 pages out over one month and need $60 worth of ink.
The only thing with Brother is that their printers are $10-$20 more than the comparable Lexmark or Brother, but you'll get you $20 back on the first round of ink.
-- $G
I dunno if the rest of the printer industry is getting the same way lately, but some Lexmark printers I recently bought have far greater disparity between claimed toner capacities and actual toner capacities than I'm used to seeing. (No, I'm not confused about the starter cartridge that comes with new printers, and yes, this is based on real-world data, and no the page coverage on the print jobs were not particularly heavy.)
Google Maps (with maps for all turns) is my weapon of choice. My first experience with a GPS began when it told me to drive to the starting red arrow that wasn't on the screen and because I was "driving" it wouldn't allow me to use the touch screen to look for it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
File anti trsut, require RAND licesning.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
I have a Lexmark business printer. Used once in the last two years, been a paper weight ever since. Their driver for this model is from the pits of hell. Bought a HP business printer. It has been a dream to use. I hope Lexmark looses their lawsuits!
EASY .... Just don't buy their products.
l