HP gets slapped with yet another lawsuit for blocking printers using anything other than its own inky liquid cash cow
You may suppose that Hewlett-Packard’s most necessary revenue generator is perhaps AI servers or low cost laptops, however you would be mistaken. Over half of HP’s annual income final yr had been totally right down to its print division, with no small due to its Dynamic Safety printer firmware improve that fully blocked all third-party ink cartridges. Cue yet one more spherical of litigation, within the type of a lawsuit aiming for sophistication motion standing, claiming HP has created a monopoly on printer ink.
As reported by Ars Technica, the submitting is requesting that HP is given an injunction that finally requires it to disable Dynamic Safety, thus permitting house owners to make use of non-HP alternative ink cartridges. Oh, and the small matter of greater than $5 million in damages, and a trial by jury as well.
This is not the primary authorized case towards the modifications to how HP’s inkjet printers react to third-party cartridges, and the corporate has already paid out vital sums of money to settle such lawsuits and compensate customers for not having the ability to use their printers.
Not that any of this has dented HP’s love of Dynamic Safety and printer ink subscription plans. Tech shoppers all over the world are printing much less annually so HP and different printer producers have been turning to considerably authoritarian strategies for maintaining the income rolling in.
Dynamic Safety was launched again in 2016 and the printer ink DRM was met with the form of reception that you just’d anticipate, with frustration at being unable to make use of no matter cartridges one appreciated in a immediately owned printer effervescent up by means of social media till lastly boiling over into lawsuits.
And regardless of paying over 1,000,000 {dollars} within the EU as compensation, for instance, HP exhibits no signal of fixing its ways. Actually not when its chief monetary officer was “actually proud” that it managed to boost the revenue margins of its print division. Branded inkjet cartridges have all the time been the primary income in that sector, with the printer itself being offered for nearly no revenue in any way.
It is ostensibly the identical mannequin employed by Microsoft and Sony with their consoles: Promote the models as cheaply as doable, generally making a loss on them, however claw all of it again by means of on-line providers, equipment, and recreation license charges. Are you able to think about the uproar in case your Xbox or PlayStation refused to run a recreation if it wasn’t immediately offered by Microsoft or Sony? Nicely, that is precisely what is going on on with HP’s printers.
In 2023, Hewlett Packard’s print sector generated $18 billion in income and $3.34 billion in earnings so a few million {dollars} right here or there for paying off lawsuits is barely going to register. Sadly for inkjet followers, that form of revenue means Dynamic Safety may be very unlikely to vanish.