It looks like a legal storm could be brewing for HP. HP is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of inkjet printers. Users around the world have reported that HP has programmed its printers to no play well with third-party ink cartridges. Apparently HP Inkjet printers are programmed to malfunction when a non-HP made ink cartridge is used, on an arbitrary date of 9/13.
The printers are programmed to recognize that a non-HP cartridge has been installed and they tell the driver to report a “damaged cartridge” error to the end user. HP stated that they have been responding to individual support calls on this issue and that the issue is being caused by the third-party cartridges. They has since redacted this statement, replying that a firmware bug is causing the error.
Using on online boards and forums were quick to report that printers with no internet connection or scope for OTA firmware updates were throwing the error. The only real explanation for this is that HP programmed this date to deliberately make third-party cartridges malfunction and drive up sales of their own cartridges.
