HP Inc settles printer toner lockout lawsuit with a promise to make firmware updates optional HP Inc. has settled a class action lawsuit in which it was accused of unlawfully blocking customers from using third-party toner cartridges - a practice that left some with useless printers – but won’t pay a cent to make the case go away. One of the named plaintiffs in the case is called Mobile Emergency Housing Corp (MEHC) …
Ditto !
Might I add - I'm also appalled by the audacity of some people claiming that torching other people's cars because of their brand is a bad thing !
I'm sure that my right to destroy someone else's property, threaten them and make their life hell because I don't have the balls to attack the real culprit is a right enshrined in the Constitution somewhere. I know this because I know to be right, which entitles me to do that stuff.
I also would like to remind all that this DOES NOT make me the same or worse as those jerks in Diesel trucks that have been boxing in and rolling coal on them for years. These guys ARE bad. I am good.
I mean, these guys with the trucks are bad still. I don't torch their trucks though, as they tend to be men in decent shape and armed with bats or worse. This sorta makes me feel like I'll let it slide. But those kids, little ladies and college professors in Teslas - aaah THE SCUM !!! BURN !!! BUUURNNN !!!
I'm so sorry - I don't know quite how to break this to you, but it's just SSDD at Brother now too.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/06/brother_firmware_update_toner/
That's one person, and Brother has since claimed that they are not stopping 3rd party toner usage. The below has a pretty in-depth report on what Brother thinks might have happened.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/brother-denies-using-firmware-updates-to-brick-printers-with-third-party-ink/
Expressed a little more clearly (or directly) my next replacement printer will NOT be made by HP. A replacement is imminent, as my very elderly (but hitherto very reliable) HP LaserJet m401d is clearly dying. Thanks to El Reg for the timely advice. Canon ink tank looks like a good choice, as they all come with full function Linux drivers. (penguin in the room....)
To be honest, I think my HP problem boils down to all the toner / print units now being re-manufactured old stock - polish it up a bit, put more toner in, repackage and sell again. No prime new stock available - almost certainly no longer being made-, and the elderly green photosensitive cylinder has a limited working life. It was a good machine while it lasted, and probably still would be if supplied with decent quality toner units, but after about 20(?) years and goodness knows how many toner units I really have no grounds at all for complaint.
Time to move on to newer technology..., but it will not be HP.
> That's fine.
Err no.
That leaves the door open to printers being shipped with “delivery” firmware, ie. To get full feature you need to upgrade the firmware…
Also if I brought a printer, it is reasonable to expect to receive firmware updates for 10 years.
No the right decision that should have been accepted by the court was for firmware updates to not change the as shipped recognition of third-party ink/toner.
If you really want to limit ink/toner choices then add setting that locks acceptable cartridges to the same OEM as currently installed.
Used to stand for 'Hinge Problems' in some circles.
It just isn't right, you'd think that there would be some mechanism where folks can buy a 'refillable' catridge that is designed to work with any ink and has a robust and effective anti-clog mechanism.
An idea I came up with is to build an entirely homemade printer with my own chip using a completely novel piezoelectric 'pump' that runs the ink tank in reverse thus avoiding rhe need for expen$ive ink in the first place. Essentially any ink particles that get jammed in the nozzles are pulled back into the solvent tank which then gets emptied. Making the actual process of clearing a clogged head a very simple and routine process.
For toner it is a ilittle more complicated but it is still doable.
One major problem with tomer based printers is that the drum becomes a consumable. That photoconductive coating has a finite life and changing from the older selenium to an organic photconductor (OPC) may be cheaper and better for the environment but it substantially affects durability because under constant irradiation the plastic loses its cohesion and eventually stops being a photoconductor.
Making one of these from scratch is not simple though there are methods,
Did also look into a reuseable paper with 'Janus Particles' (an older version of E-ink) and the problem then becomes how to address them without a silicon or other backplane, printers that use multi-particle methods like the ZInk do clever tricks with timing and a conventional very high resolution thermal head.
One potential workaround here would be to use a heat based solution ie have the active material require heat AND electricity to change shape. Essentially here the particles are suspended in a wax like material with a low melting point of around 90 Celsius so that under heat and electric charge the particles become mobile.
This would also permit colour printing as particles could be biased in such a way to use both electric and magnetic switching by using diamagnetic inks containing (for example) bismuth and iron so a single 'Ouroborus Particle' can show an entire colour spectrum.
Remember that this is the person who invented time travel yesterday. I'd plan to wait a while for this, unless the plans can be sent backward to today using that ansible.
The problem isn't that HP printers clog with 3rd party ink... I've been using 3rd party ink in an HP for years now. Deny firmware updates every time they're offered, and that's enough to keep them working.
They just refuse to print with it. You're solving an imaginary problem with an imaginary solution.
Ah, the old Tektronix Phasers (as I used to know them before Xerox bought the technology) and their crayons.
Beautiful print quality, and once they were up to temp, you sent it a print job, and it would crank out full bleed color prints at a rate unheard of for that size and class of printer.
The downsides? a 20 minute warmup/cooldown period, and during the warmup phase, it ate a full set of crayons, which IIRC were not exactly cheap either. And the place smelled like someone had put a box of Crayolas into an oven as well. :D
Fond memories.
Yes famiiliar with these. I was thinking more of scaling up Zink (tm) printers by using several interlaced print heads and clever software to add speed.
A two rather than three colour system like E-ink might work here, red blue and black would be more than enough for most applications.
Certainly for the purposes of redacting documents without shredding and reprinting, which would be a valid case, interestingly the Zink paper can actually show photochromic effects as I found out. If you write a partial barely visible image then heat it the picture 'appears' like the old Polaroid films on the cyan channel.. You heard it here first!!
"Lores has also argued that using third-party suppliers is a security risk, claiming malware could theoretically be slipped into cartridge controller chips. "
So how about this Lores: you update the firmware one last time to completely IGNORE the presence or absence of a cartridge chip. That way you aren't screwing your customers and, at a strike, remove the security risk.
Worst case is that there IS a serial numbered chip but that's it. If the printer has warned of an empty cart, you are given the opportunity to say it's been refilled and you're then warned to be careful.
Difficult to prove, as the requirements are more than just "lower price than cost of manufacture". From the FTC's website on it: "Although the FTC examines claims of predatory pricing carefully, courts, including the Supreme Court, have been skeptical of such claims."
It's not really selective enforcement, it's more like "hardly ever successfully prosecuted" in the US. #FreeMarket, etc etc
In the EU (& UK) there is an anti-dumping law, "It protects against damage to UK industry caused by the dumping of goods in the UK at prices much lower than the normal value." The definition of "normal value" includes page 3, point (4) in second column:
(4) By constructing a normal value based on the costs of production plus a reasonable amount to cover selling, general and administrative costs and profit
It seems to me that HP is in breach of this.
Why are they not taken to court ?
Most gaming consoles when sold at launch are sold at below manufacturing costs to make their money from the licenses for publishing games on the platform. Nintendo didn't like it when companies like Codemasters reversed engineered their lockouts to allow unauthorized games on their consoles. So they tried to take it to court and lost.
That's why HP keep settling out of court for their 3rd party ink/toner shenanigans as they know they will loose if it ever gets to court based on previous similar cases.
There are no laws to prevent this. Nor should there be. It's razor/razor blade pricing model. Many items are sold at a loss to entice the customer into the original purchase, so the vendor makes a profit over the life-cycle of the customer selling consumables or upgrades or cross-sells. Examples include HPE's base model servers, fremium software, trial periods for software, supermarket milk, battery-powered power tools, Teslas, etc, etc.
When customers complain about the price of a cartridge, they overlook that they were able to buy the printer at below cost.
HP are handling this very poorly. They don't even make an honest effort to articulate the benefits of HP ink which, having worked with them, doesn't surprise me.
"Why is the FTC not putting its nose in this ?"
The FTC is a bit ... "distracted" ... at the moment.
Courtesy of Tristram Shandy
1. Ex auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus Sancti, et sanctorum canonum, sanctaeque et entemeratae Virginis Dei genetricis Mariae, Atque omnium coelestium virtutum, angelorum, archangelorum, thronorum, dominationum, potestatuum, cherubin ac seraphin, & sanctorum patriarchum, prophetarum, & omnium apolstolorum & evangelistarum, & sanctorum innocentum, qui in conspectu Agni soli digni inventi sunt canticum cantare novum, et sanctorum martyrum et sanctorum confessorum, et sanctarum virginum, atque omnium simul sanctorum et electorum Dei,--Excommunicamus, et anathematizamus hunc furem, vel hunc malefactorem, HP et a liminibus sanctae Dei ecclesiae sequestramus, et aeternis suppliciis excruciandus, mancipetur, cum Dathan et Abiram, et cum his qui dixerunt Domino Deo, Recede a nobis, scientiam viarum tuarum nolumus: et ficut aqua ignis extinguatur lucerna ejus in secula seculorum nisi resquerit, et ad satisfactionem venerit. Amen
2. Maledicat illum Deus Pater qui hominem creavit. Maledicat illum Dei Filius qui pro homine passus est. Maledicat illum Spiritus Sanctus qui in baptismo effusus est. Maledicat illum sancta crux, quam Christus pro nostra salute hostem triumphans ascendit.
etc.for ten more paragraphs. s/N.N./HP/g
I needed an A3 scanner/printer, and the HP 7740 was just right.
However, before I bought that printer I first checked that there was non-HP ink for it, and I ran it the first year on the cartridges that came with it for warranty (let's not give them an excuse), and that was after immediately blocking firmware updates the moment it started up for the first time.
It's been doing the job ever since - no HP cartridges in sight :)
I have an Epson but bought some refillable ink cartridges, you basically just top them up with a syringe every few months. Don't even have to remove them from the printer so there's no gap in the ink flow as long as you don't let them run out.
The printer does complain that I'm not using original ink sometimes but that can just be ignored (usually)
like on cigarettes packs and, IIRC, on homeopathic stuff in Netherland (IIRC).
Changing the rules with a firmware update should automatically entitle customer for a full refund.
Or they can just sell the toner / ink for a reasonable price and nobody would bother to mess with 3rd party stuff to save a few bucks (and they can also save development costs, legal costs, and material costs since no toner chip is required)
A few years ago I bought an HP OfficeJet Pro 8740 for around $AUD450 (an ink-jet printer) because it was the only available Printer/Scanner with two paper tray and document feeder
Recently bought complete new set of cartridges - cheapest I could find was $AUD390
Two downsides:
1) cost of cartridges
2) claimed scanner resolution doesn't seem accurate when comparing same DPI scan between the HP and a Canon scanner over 10 years older (the Canon creates a clearer scan)
Based on this my next Printer/Scanner with same requirements WILL NOT BE an HP
Good Investment HP, NOT!
It's just a matter of time until their printers refuse to print their own return labels.
It makes no economic sense for most people to have a printer - we've already picked up the costs and labour that our suppliers' back offices used to be responsible for and OEM printer ink is simply a further tax on that. The thing about having people in buildings doing stuff we pay them for is that at least economies of scale are possible. Working unpaid as clerks and buying ink by the drop is never going to be efficient.
"It makes no economic sense for most people to have a printer"
Likely true for folks in an office, especially given the big multifunction machines can each serve dozens. At home, though, we print quite a bit - coloring pages for the kids, crafts, layouts for things, custom graph paper, birthday party invitations, chore lists to post on the fridge, etc.
(Woodworking tip - for odd-shaped items, print out the outline of it and spray-glue it to the board, then put it on the band saw. Fast, easy, and accurate.)
If you absolutely need a printer, but only actually print the odd sheet, the original cartridges/ink might last effectively forever.
That is, HP's need to recoup their investment will fail on the basis of your minuscule printing volume.
Could they actually require you to print more in order to force you to buy their supplies? (Some test and cleaner processes appear designed to do this!) Would they stop working if you do not print at least 100 pages a month, or some such?
(I've no idea is current day HP practices check expiry dates on supplies. Which would be another approach.)
I've just switched to laserprint as I do barely 50 sheets a year and was fed up with having to replace almost-full inkjet cartridges that had dried up and even several cleaning routines couldn't get them going again. (It also doesn't help that the only place I can put it gets a few hours of afternoon sun). I ordered online, salesbloke rang me the next day to say "we notice you haven't ordered a toner cartridge". I said "doesn't it come with a starter pack that does about 700 sheets?". He said "yes". I said "that should last me the next decade then". And I'll be putting something over it when not in use.
>” having to replace almost-full inkjet cartridges that had dried up and even several cleaning routines couldn't get them going again.”
It does look like once the ink has dried in the nozzles it’s a major job to clean.
I have two sets of HP 21 & 22 cartridges that have been sitting in an alcohol bath for the last two months and still they are blocked. From weighing the cartridges I know they are full of ink.
It is a shame ribbon printers no longer seem to be a thing, my 40+ year old typewriter, with similar aged ribbon can still produce readable black type.
Which, from a trustworthy company, would look reasonable because I'm sure the stuff degrades eventually* and, if used, could cause problems. However, every printer company in existence seems to be untrustworthy, so I assume they stop working on any possible excuse that will send you to buy another cartridge.
* I know this is a problem with inkjet printers. I'm not sure how toner ages. I print so infrequently that I don't have a printer, though that means I have to occasionally commandeer the office printer.
I had, at one point in time, a Lexmark Optra S, which was a 12ppm beast of a machine in it's day. Except I never really used it, and on that printer, the OPC drum portion of the toner cartridge did eventually die on me from disuse.
The other reason I got rid of it was because the process for replacing the paper pickup/feed rollers required almost a full teardown of the damned thing, including pulling the main drive train out.
The HP laser printers (at least the medium to large business class models) were built for long service life- the pickup and feed rollers were super easy to replace, and you got a set of them with a maintenance kit, which was every 100,000 to 150,000 pages, depending on model.
The less said about the "L" series models, the better- those were pretty crap.
Well seeing as it's American, how long before it refuses to print anti-trump/musk/republican sentiment? How long before it refuses to work if its IP address isn't in America?
Seriously though, this is part of the enshittification of everything. If the printers were sold with a big warning "ONLY WORKS WITH HP TONER" then that's reasonable. But to change an already-working printer to suddenly not work any more is beyond defensible.
I bought an HP printer for my son a few years ago when he was at college. He couldn’t actually use it because it had to be on WiFi at all times and the dorm WiFi didn’t allow printers.
So I took it myself and bought a multi pack of non HP cartridges like I had been doing with my 10 year old Brother printer. I thought why not, it’s a pretty sleek looking printer, more compact, has a nice flat top for my cat to sleep on, etc. The very next firmware update locked those cartridges out—$50, probably 3 years’ worth, down the drain.
I had already ditched the old printer and I did the math and signed up for their Instant Ink thing—we don’t print very much and it works out to like 10 cents a print which is slightly lower than the cost per print of their larger tanks (but still higher than 3rd party). It does work, but being forced into this feels like I’m being ripped off every time I use it. It constantly misprints (like any other crappy printer) and while I know I’m paying for misprints no matter what, watching their stupid “pages printer” count go up because their hardware sucks feels MUCH worse under this business model, every time it happens I go into a rage thinking they’re intentionally failing so they can count more pages against me. And then they email constantly saying “we glad to see that you’re getting so much use out of your printer, would you like to increase your subscription?” (That’s literally what it says—infuriating). NO F-ING WAY.
And then their CEO publicly says they think this business model is great, and that their explicit goal is to make you dependent on their services?!
I seriously want this thing to die so I can recreate the Office Space scene. It will be cathartic. My wife thinks we should get rid of it just so she doesn’t have to listen to me rant every time I print something.
It’s so annoying I’m taking the time to write a long comment on a Reg post!
I will never buy another HP product of any kind again. When I bought my last laptop I looked at theirs and one was in the top 3 I was considering based on specs and price, but I did not go with HP specifically because of this practice. I paid a little more for another with similar specs just to avoid HP. So they may have made a hundred bucks or so (gross not net even) forcing me to buy ink over the last 2 years, but they probably lost a laptop sale. Good business model?
The chip in the cartridge, which is only there to prevent you using other ink, is a security risk? Hmm too bad there’s no easy way to mitigate that… oh wait I know! DON’T have a security chip?! Maybe charge the proper price for the printer in the first place?
I bought an HP printer for my son a few years ago when he was at college. It seemed like a good idea at the time. He couldn’t actually use it because it had to be on WiFi at all times and the dorm WiFi didn’t allow printers.
So after railing against HP for a while I gave up and took it myself and bought a multi pack of non HP cartridges like I had been doing with my 10 year old Brother printer. I thought why not, it’s a pretty sleek looking printer, more compact, has a nice flat top for my cat to sleep on, etc. The very next firmware update locked those cartridges out—$50, probably 3 years’ worth, down the drain.
I had already ditched the old printer and I did the math and signed up for their Instant Ink thing—we don’t print very much and it works out to like 10 cents a print which is slightly lower than the cost per print of their larger tanks (but still higher than 3rd party). Probably break-even for our printing requirements.
So It does “work”, but being forced into this feels like I’m being ripped off every time I use it. It constantly misprints (like any other crappy printer) and while I know I’m paying for misprints no matter what, watching their “pages printed” count go up because their hardware sucks feels MUCH worse under this business model, every time it happens I go into a rage thinking they’re intentionally failing so they can count more pages against me. Adding insult to injury, it also routinely fails to print correctly when using iOS’s AirPrint, which is 90% of the printing we do, which means keeping their stupid app on our phones just to be able to print reliably.
And then they email constantly saying “we glad to see that you’re getting so much use out of your printer, would you like to increase your subscription?” (That’s literally what it says—infuriating). NO F-ING WAY.
And then their CEO publicly says they think this business model is great, and that their explicit goal is to make you dependent on their services?!
I seriously want this thing to die so I can recreate the Office Space scene. It will be cathartic. My wife thinks we should get rid of it just so she doesn’t have to listen to me rant every time I print something. It might just have to have an “accident” soon. Maybe a performance art piece, I’ll post it on YouTube and get my 15 seconds.
It’s so annoying I’m taking the time to write a long comment on a Reg post!
I will never buy another HP product of any kind again. When I bought my last laptop I looked at theirs and one was in the top 3 I was considering based on specs and price, but I did not go with HP specifically because of this practice. I paid a little more for another with similar specs just to avoid HP. So they may have made a hundred bucks or so (gross, not even net) forcing me to buy ink over the last 2 years, but they lost a laptop sale and all potential future business. Good business model?
No they aren't. They're hoping the customer will be enough of a sucker to pay for the expensive cartridges instead of third party ones. This is especially egregious in the case of HP where the print head is part of the cartridge, so the only real risk to the printer is though bad firmware or ink leakage. Literally, if I stick in an Acme cartridge and it is bad, I ought to be able to put in an HP original to get good printing again.
However, that being said, I am an Instant Ink subscriber, because the fiver a month I pay is less than I'd be paying for inks (a full XL set costs more than the printer did) and it gives me the freedom that if I want a copy of something, I can just chuck it at the printer without worrying how much ink it'll use and how much I have left (or my favourite, how much the machine will piss away on cleaning itself).
Plus, just for the record, while the majority of those big Instant Ink cartridges I've had have been good, but I've had four cartridge failures which when you think I've maybe had fifteen in total, it's a non-negligible percentage. Actually I think it's their shitty DRM screwing up, but whatever, I have sitting on my now decommissioned HP3530 a brand new huge black cartridge. I installed it, it did the usual setup stuff, then rejected it - cartridge error. It never got as far as printing anything. So make of that what you will... (it's not hard to get replacements, during office hours, after fighting a stupid AI bot, but that's not much help if you need something *now* and the replacement will arrive in about a week)
If I understand correctly, HP's "solution" here is to let you ignore firmware updates.
Catch #1: Being a settlement, there are no court-ordered requirements to this new "feature", particularly that the information for each update tells you if it's going to block the "trouble" cartridges. The only out is to block/ignore all firmware updates period. (Icon: be vigilant or your printer will be damned)
Catch #2: HP made to claim that you could roll-back/undo firmware updates. Anyone who might be affected has probably installed firmware already that would do this (aside from you fellow El Reg readers), which I'm guessing is 90%. (Icon: your printer is probably damned already, from which there is no return.)
Only 10% might survive, and only if they read about this settlement and follow the guidance to ignore <u>all</u> future firmware updates. Not very likely except for the few of you who already commented that you're in that small demographic. I shall call you the 1% -- print happy and cheaply.
(I hope Canon isn't as bad. Just received new cartridges this week from the Bezos Bazaar. Thought I was buying genuine cartridges but didn't check very carefully. Now I'm afraid to load one.)
Printer Ink is cents on the liter, cents on the pint, whatever units you use.
I use Epson Ecotank printers (tm) that use VIALS of ink, it has no cartridge whatsoever. No chip. Just a pint of ink that you squeeze in the tank.
HP printers have been horrible for nearly 30 years by now.
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