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Wednesday, February 23, 2005

HP Sued for Allegedly Programming Print Cartridges to Expire
According to Reuters: "A Georgia woman has sued Hewlett-Packard Co., claiming the ink cartridges for their printers are secretly programed to expire on a certain date, in some cases rendering them useless before they are even installed in a printer.

"The suit filed in Santa Clara Superior Court in northern California last Thursday seeks to represent anyone in the United States who purchased an HP inkjet printer since Feb. 2001. HP is the world's No. 1 computer printer maker. An HP spokesman said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

"HP ink cartridges use a chip technology to sense when they are low on ink and advise the user to make a change. But the suit claims those chips also shut down the cartridges at a predetermined date regardless of whether they are empty."

# Permalink Posted at 12:27 PM 8 comments Email this Link

Comments on this Item:

Should be pretty easy to prove/disprove. If it can shut itself off on a certain date it must have an internal power supply. Just break open a cartrige and look for a battery. If there isn't one, case closed.

# posted by Justin 12:15 AM

That's assuming they were dumb enough to set it in volatile memory.
The simple way would be to encode an expiry date (or make it a function of the serial number/batch number and encode that) and put that in a small part of the cartridge's ROM. Then either the printer or the software could check and determine use.

See if the old winding-the-clock-back works on those dead ones?

# posted by Phil 12:37 AM

I don't know about HP, but my Epson print cartridges come with an expiry date printed on the box. Because ink goes funny after a while.
An expiry date isnt a bad idea, but I take it from the article that HP don't put on the box for the user to see.

-Perros-

# posted by Perros 6:45 AM

Something is definitely fishy with the ink level meters. I got a low ink warning and then a no ink warning and just decided to keep going to see what would happen. Bottom line: colors printed just fine and then the black faded a tad, but I happily printed for another month. HOwever, if my new cartridge was DOA before even taking it out of the box, I would call for an investigation, because that is going way too far. Surely someone can reserse engineer these things and see what is going on.

# posted by Alice 10:34 AM

They should also look into the practice of shipping new printers with partially filled ink cartridges, forcing consumers to buy expensive new ones within weeks or days of purchasing the printer.

# posted by Bob 12:58 PM

And, yet an other case where the multi-state ban on class actions makes HP able to do this.

Now, did HP include the hardware/OS disclosure in their Patent app for these products? If not then the patent may well stand (failure to disclose how to make and practice the invention in the best mode by one of reasonable skill in the art is a bar...but keeping a trade secret a "QC" feature may not invalidate the patent) - however the anti-reverse engineering components of the NET and DMCA may operate as a complete bar to liability because the customers don't have the legal right to take the critters apart to find out that they have been ripped off.....

B ill is old enough to remember when "shrink-wrap" licenses were so overbroad that certain products were shipped that didn't actually perform - but the license denied the right to seek damages (other than replacement media).

When will we see a nice big black box that does windows/LINUX/UNIX plays DVDs, is a TIVO and pays your bills while keeping your dishes spotless - all for a measley $500 (I'd bet on billware) only to have the beast fail after 4-6 months and the terms of the DMCA/NET/License all require you to eat the loss?

Too cheap for a lawsuit one-by-one and illegal to create a class...

# posted by Anonymous 3:13 PM

I don't know how true any of this is, but if it is true, I hope this lady has proof! It makes you wonder how advanced these companies are and it makes you want to pull the ink out of your printer and tear it apart to see how true it really is! This has been an on going issue, printer companies are really in the ink business and sell printer as a side item.

# posted by Tinker 12:24 PM

I am in the military. We had an HP DESKJET 850(?) with spare cartridges in storage for deployment, off we went, put in fresh cartridges from a new HP box and the printer refused to print stating the cartridges were expired. I believe the printer driver compared the date of manufacture of the cartridge to the system date and if too old would not use the cartridge. We reset system date and off we went.

# posted by Anonymous 9:41 PM

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