It
has been evident for several years that printer manufacturers
make far more revenue for their company profits from replacement
cartridge sales than they can ever conceive of accumulating
from printer sales - The possible figures are staggering -
and particularly extreme with low cost entry level printers.
When one realises that cartridges contain ink and that over
the years manufacturers have progressively been reducing the
quantity of the ink fill that they supply in cartridges (with
very few exceptions) - It means that customers pay more per
print with newer printers than they did with older models.
This
is the case with Hewlett Packard and Lexmark where cartridges
have been made progressively smaller in size. e.g. Just
a few years back HP sold cartridge for home user inkjets
which contained 40mL of ink - Latest HP offerings as little
as 5mL per cartridge!!
The
only serious way to save cash with HP Lexmark Dell and a
few others is to refill the cartridge with ink - This is
basic recycling and is the cheapest way to run printers
as it is replacing the raw commodity used - Ink.
HP & Lexmark attach the print head onto their cartridges
so this is another reason to recycle as purchasing a new
cartridge means that the print head is replaced for a new
one - Not a bad thing but - not always essential as the
empty cartridge has a reusable printhead - refilling these
type of cartridges avoids the need to always be replacing
this expensive part.
Epson
and Canon put the printhead into the printer as a re-usable
part and make the part which contains the ink a much simpler
"Ink tank" - These are much cheaper to produce
/ copy and many clone cartridges have appeared over the
years some as good as the original for quality of prints.
These compatible cartridges
have been increasingly undermining Epson's market share
of the replacement inkjet cartridge market.
It is an indication of how
much the after market sales of ink cartridges matters to
Epson profits, that this manufacturer has been raising actions
in the UK High Court citing infringement of Intellectual
Property and Patents which Epson hold on their Ink Tanks.
In the UK none of five (or more?) actions (or threat of
action) has been tested in the courts as in the first 3
cases we know of the companies written to and threatened
with High Court Action have backed down - settled "Out
of Court" and agreed with Epson not to continue selling
compatible cartridges which infringe. The UK ink cartridge
manufacturer (whose cartridges we sell on www.proprint.co.uk
also settled with Epson - have their own patents
on their cartridges and this was the first instance of a
cartridge manufacturer reaching an amicable settlement never
to have ceased production and continuing with production
of Epson compatibles to this day.
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