Their
hundreds of lawyers went after compatible (twins) cartridge makers and
cartridge parts makers around the world. If the O.E.M. even thought that you
infringed on one of their thousands of patents legal notices and letters were
mailed and then another shoe dropped.
The
environment movement realized that millions and millions of chemical filled
inkjet and toner printer cartridges considered old and used were filling up
garbage dumps around the world. These toxic little devils filled up the trash
cans at the office and at home and they ended up on the garbage truck on trash
day. Hundreds of millions of copier, fax
and printer cartridges were discarded every year and the “green movement”
demanded a solution that could save the planet.
The
newspapers around the world were writing about the inkjet and laser toner
printer cartridge industry scandal and their despicable pricing for tiny drops
of ink, environment damage caused by the used and so-called empty cartridges,
their communist factories full of human beings treated like slaves, their
cartridges indicating empty when in fact that they were not and the lists went
on and on.
This
consumer based curiosity turned into outrage and to the amazement of the
O.E.M’s and their supply chain retail partners their customers moved away from
the big box stores and started using the small mom-and-pop refilling stores
that sprang up all over the United States.
This frightful experience just created more tension and the O.E.M.’s
Original Equipment Manufacturers of inkjet and laser toner copier, fax and
printer cartridges went all out to destroy the new and exciting refilling
industry.
They
knew their vault of money making secrets was now open and they discovered that
millions of their cartridges were seemingly stuck in warehouses, distribution
centers and fulfillment centers around the world as unsold. Major supply chain retailers had hooked their
profit wagons to the multi-billion dollar computer printer, office copier and
fax machine revenues because the inkjet and laser toner printer cartridges were
their top revenue and top profit creators.
It is estimated that the inkjet and laser toner printer cartridge
business remains the only reason that some major office supply retailers are
still in business today.
The profit
margins concerning cartridges are obscene and they are sold by the millions every
week inside the United States. Not all
of the compatible cartridge makers escaped the rage and fury of the O.E.M.
lawyers and their routine business enterprise turned into a global legal
battle. Lexmark even repackaged their
inkjet and toner printer cartridges and imprinted a legally binding contract on
the exterior packaging.
The contract was
simple and frightful at the same time; if you open and use this Lexmark
cartridge you will not refill it but, send it back to Lexmark. The battle raged all the way to the Supreme
Court of the United states as the O.E.M.’s giants Apple, Brother, Canon, Kodak,
Dell, Epson, HP Hewlett Packard, Kyocera, Lexmark, Minolta, Okidata, Panasonic,
Pitney Bowes, Ricoh, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba, Xerox, Konica, Lanier, Mita,
I.B.M., Olivetti, N.C.R., Fujitsu and their supply chain retail partners had to
find a way to protect the billions in profits and keep the small business
planners from reaping the rewards of the refill refilling industry.
The O.E.M.
catastrophe could not be stopped and printer cartridge revenue moved away from
the big box retailers like Staples Inc., Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Office Depot,
Office Max, Quill, Costco, Target, Amazon and others into the cash register
drawers of the refill refilling mom-and-pop stores sprouting up in every little
town, village and big city. As the big
box retailer revenues continued to fall their profits sank and working secretly
at first came up with another great idea to kill off the small business
cartridge refillers.
