The ink cartridge refill battles

So there you are. It's three in the morning and the project that you're working on is due at 8:30 AM - just three hours from now. It's finished, perfect! You click on PRINT... and then it happens. The big box opens on your monitor with its flashing 'Printer Out of Ink' message. Lucky for you, you decided to pick up one of those ink cartridge refill kits out of curiosity the other day.

With manufacturers selling printers practically at a loss these days, it's almost less expensive to throw away your printer and pick up a new one when it runs out of ink. The reason they're priced so low, of course, is so that they can sell you ink cartridges and supplies indefinitely. Industry experts estimate that as much as 60% of the profit made in the imaging market is made on the sale of inkjet and toner cartridges. With that much at stake, the big printer companies obviously have a stake in the success or failure of the ink cartridge refill market.

And several of them have spoken out in no uncertain terms. Lexmark, for instance, has brought suit against a company that sells refilled and remanufactured Lexmark ink cartridge refills, claiming that the company violates its intellectual property rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Their contention has been struck down in two separate courts, but the case isn't over yet.

Hewlett Packard has brought suit against two companies that sell remanufactured ink cartridge refill cartridges. Their contention is that one company, InkCycle, refills cartridges with ink that violates three patents held by HP. The other company, they say, uses deceptive labeling on their packages. Rhinotek sells recycled and refilled HP ink cartridges, and they want the words USED and REFILLED prominently displayed on the packages. Currently, the only hint of that fact on the Rhinotek packaging is a sentence in small print on the box that states that Rhinotek 'supports recycling' and uses recycled parts for its products whenever possible.

Despite the suits, Hewlett Packard insists that they support the right of customers to refill ink cartridges on their own, and that the company will continue to make their ink cartridges refillable. They do, however, use software on some cartridges that makes them unusable either 4 1/2 years after the expiration date, or 2 1/2 years after the original installation dates.

Using an ink cartridge refill kit to refill your ink cartridges will not void the manufacturers' warranty, according to most major companies. They do, of course, make the point that their own proprietary inks - many of which are developed for use with one specific cartridge style - are higher quality than the far less expensive inks used in most ink cartridge refills.

For more information on refilling an ink cartridge or to browse through related printer ink products and supplies please select from the following:

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