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."

Beter yet...

[esconsult1]

Start using Laser Printers.. o wait...

Better yet....

[SpaceCadetTrav]

Just print everything at work.

OUR? government

[Sabalon]

Of the people, by the people, for the people?

Oh...fuck the people. They left that one off.

That's it...

[rnturn]

...I'm gonna start looking for a used DECwriter for my printing needs. Let's see 'em put some damned chip in a printer ribbon sool.

DIE DMCA! DIE!

A Rebttal?

[phraktyl]

Being the responsible /. user I am, I quickly googled for rebttal to shed some light on this obviously new technology. Google, however, pointed out that what the poster meant was *rental*.

So, from the original story, the SCC has a rental site that warrents checking out. I'm not sure how they mean to make a profit on renting out ink cartridges, but more power to them!

Re:Printing is sooooo last centery.

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Because my monitor is too heavy to bring on the train. And there's no plugs.

I guess I could tape a printout to the monitor, and put the monitor on a cart of some kind... Oh wait, we don't want to print.

I guess I could read the pdf and commit it to memory. D'oh, but another person can't read my mind (at least since I lined my toque with tinfoil).

Well, I'm out of ideas...

Re:A Rebttal?

[Anonymous Coward]

"the SCC has a rental site that warrents checking out."

I like how you mock them for a typo and then misspell "warrants", despite the fact that it's spelled correctly in the story, which should make for an easy reference.

Way to go.

Oh no!

[fireboy1919]

The lowest quality brand of printer on the market has decided that people can't copy their cartridges!

What's next?

Will it be illegal to make generic versions of RC Cola?

Illegal to make work-alikes to "No-Ad" sunblock?

No one will be able to make anything that looks like a Ford Pinto [bob2000.com]? Or one of these cars? [uglycars.co.uk]

What is this world coming to!

Well, at least I can still buy Tandy 5000 [attrition.org] compatible computers.

Re:This is going to get pathetic

[Waffle Iron]

There's a reason those cartridges cost so much. Quality ink is always made from the finest rare Cognac. Since Cognac can cost almost $1000 for a 1 liter bottle, and an inkjet cartridge contains about an ounce of ink, you're actually getting about $30 of cognac, and there's very little markup involved.

(Or maybe I'm getting this backwards. Fine cognac might be expensive because it's made from inkjet ink... I don't remember; I'll have to look it up.)

Re:Not sure this is the wrong decision

[Alyeska]

I may as well have thrown the printer away and bought a new one every time at those prices.

Some time ago, friends of mine here (in AK) began doing just that. They did the math, discovered it was cheaper to buy a new printer from [major membership-type warehouse outlet] each time a cartridge ran out. Perfectly good printers became targets for a wide variety of projectile weapons.

Dot Matrix!

[xchino]

I'm telling you man, it's the printer of the future! You don't have to replace ink! It tells you when your printing has start, and finished through an excellent system of horrible screeching! You can buy a box of paper and never have to reload a tray! Plus, you get alot of extra strips of paper with the perforated tracks, which you can use to make nests for some of the local fauna!

The inevitable DOJ question...

[cindik]

When does scc-inc.com get redirected to the DOJ website?

Re:I'll never buy another lexmark printer

[govtcheez]

Did anyone else automatically get a mental picture of Samir from Office Space when they read that?

"Why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam! I swear to God, one of these days, I, I, I kick this piece of SHIT out the window!"

Re:Beter yet...

[$$$$$exyGal]

I don't get it.

--sex [slashdot.org]

Re:Printing is sooooo last centery.

[dubiousmike]

hmm - everyone has such insightful things to say. Let me print this thread out to bring on my morning commute.

wait a second!

cancel
cancel
cancel
CANCEL

*sigh*

Re:Actually....

[SN74S181]

I worked for a large format color printer company years ago. They had a line of color printers, but they'd never designed their own printhead technology. What they did instead drove Hewlett Packard up the wall.

They bought HP Deskjet cartridges new. They drilled a hole in the top. They dumped out the HP ink and attached an 'IV Bottle' sort of arrangement on a hose, as you described, and used the HP cartridge as a print head.

Their ink bottle was much higher volume, and they effectively used the HP printhead mechanism for far longer than HP had originally intended. HP hated them and tried to put them out of business over it.

I worked there as a component level troubleshooter on the complex PCB assemblies that went into those printers (they had embedded 486s, I960s, Pentiums, and FPGAs, and this was back in the early 90's), and I talked to some of the development guys who had reverse engineered the HP deskjet print head. Needless to say, there's no public documentation of the pin layout on those cartridges.

You can buy toner refill

[Anonymous Coward]

I hacked open my Lexmark cartridge (using a warm blade) and poured some toner down it. You can buy toner kits with instructions for the Lexmark printers. Its 14.95 for 4000 pages as opposed to 50 for 2000 pages if you buy a new cartridge every time you run out of toner. You can refill up to two times, thus amortizing the cost of the cartridge and sticking it to lexmark.
This helps offset the ridiculous prices that lexmark charges for their toners. For example their e210 printer comes with a toner cartridge that lasts 1000 pages and subsequent ones are 2000 pages and 50 dollars each. Im still on my original cartridge and have refilled once. Itll be a year before I refill again, then another before I have to buy a cartridge. Afaik, some printers similar to the e210 (a samsung) actually have a plug that you can remove to refill cartridge. No hacking required.