HP detonates its timebomb: printers stop accepting third party ink en masse

Back in the 1960s and 1970s IBM was the defendant in a lot of anti-trust suits. Some of these were by manufacturers of peripherals which were intended to be plug compatible with IBM systems. The courts ruled that changing interfaces without any technological purpose was an anti-competitive action. They also forced IBM to publish the interface specifications and pay damages to the third-party manufacturers. Perhaps someone who know anti-trust law really well can explain why this doesn’t apply in the case of ink cartridge interfaces to printers.

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