HP sues Asian firms over patents
Summary
Topics
The suit, filed in a federal court in San Francisco, alleges the Asian companies also converted over 300,000 genuine HP printheads from its facilities in Asia and sold these components globally as products manufactured by Hong Kong-based Mipo, Bloomberg said on Monday.
Other than Mipo, the defendants are Taiwan printer cartridge maker MicroJet Technology, Hong Kong-based PTC Holdings and SinoTime Technologies, a U.S. affiliate of Mipo.
Separately, the Wall Street Journal said Monday that HP has accused MicroJet of infringing six of its patents in ink cartridges. MicroJet sold these under its own name or as part of generic or custom-ordered cartridges sold to other companies including Mipo and PTC.
For more on this story, read HP sues Asian firms over patents on ZDNet Asia.
Talkback Most Recent of 4 Talkback(s)
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All of it is made in China...
Ironic, made in China, and sue in China.
tux_engineer03/09/2010 05:24 AM -
HP Inks
From an HP document regarding their industrial inks:
"Unlike some equipment manufacturers that sub-contract ink production, HP is an ink manufacturer. Its solvent/ UV ink manufacturing facility in Cape Town, RSA is the largest solvent digital ink manufacturer in the world.
In addition to this, the company has solvent/UV as well as water-based ink base ink factories in Israel, and R&D teams in both countries. A new ink plant for solvent inks, opened in 2009 in Puerto-Rico..."
Also, back in 2006, Fujifilm bought Avecia's desk Ink Jet ink assets which included the only two manufacturing facilities, one in the UK and one in the US. Avecia was rumored to be HP's largest ink supplier.
Bill403/09/2010 06:06 AM -
its ink ONE and lexmark lost this battle in court.
If they have copied the ink, well maybe they have a case... assuming that ink is not considered being invented prior to all patents, which i think it should.
As for the catridges... ya, they probably have a case for copying... except for the fact that a court has already ruled against lexmark for making proprietary cartridges which locked customers in to one printer. Since that is essentially what HP does, they will probably lose this battle.
Been_Done_Before03/09/2010 10:32 AM -
But they were print heads made by HP...?
Wait. Is this a company taking used printheads with ink supply, genuine HP product, and re-using them? Or is this a company that is licensed to make printheads for HP, that made extra ones to sell elsewhere?
If the latter is the claim - and anecdotally there's a lot of counterfeit manufacturing in China of all sorts of goods (I think the unusual Strida bicycle was a victim) - I see the problem patent-wise. But if it is legitimate product being recycled after use for re-use, that seems fair to me. But bad news for HP, obviously. They sell their special ink like it's holy water but I don't think you need their blessing to use a printer.
So maybe they'll just make the genuine HP printhead end its specified working life more dangerously. Say when the ink finishes, acid comes out instead. Hot acid. The product packaging disclaimer will be something to see.
Robert Carnegie 200903/11/2010 08:45 AM
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