DSF

I agree with Andrew.

The usual tactic has historically been that the seller of non-Sawgrass inks is either sued for patent-infringement or ends up agreeing to a license which fixes the price.

There is no way that Sawgrass will let this company sell dye-sub ink for half the price that their other resellers are forced to sell for. That's simply unsustainable because all of their other authorised resellers will kick up a fuss and everyone will stop buying Rotech/Artanium/Visi-Sub/whatever. Agreeing to let this company sell ink at 50% of the regular price would effectively bankrupt Sawgrass, so it's not going to happen.

What is most likely to have happened is that Sawgrass may have given this company a breathing period of, say, a couple of months and then they'll have to abide by the same terms as all other authorised sellers.

Remember when TOG settled with Sawgrass? They were allowed to sell ink at a reduced cost to existing customers for a period of one year. After that, they had to fall in line with everyone else.

I would expect the same kind of thing to happen here.

In the meantime, it may just be tempting to get the ink in and set up an experiment. Pity that everyone who's bought into Ricoh printers can't use this ink, though.

Andrew;22676 wrote:I don't see how they can sell ink at that cost officially. All the time and money Sawgrass have spent defending their patent just to then let a company carry on as normal with their blessing. Doesn't make sense to me. There do seem to be more companies and users carrying on with non official sublimation inks these days and quite openly. Is this the end of Sawgrass fighting their corner?

I think that Sawgrass has probably made quite a clever move here. I have been under the impression that the InkTec sub ink is a lot more recent in development than the sub ink Sawgrass offers. This is probably a reason why I don't suffer from blocked nozzles like I used to using ink from Sawgrass.

I suspect in time Sawgrass will concentrate more on the sub gel ink for the Ricoh printers. Let's face it you either want an A4 or an A3 printer & Ricoh offer both sizes so cuts down the number of different printers to support. To back up my case we all know the Epson D120 was replaced with the B40W & both were supported by Sawgrass. Now the B40W has been replaced last October by the B42W & there is no support from Sawgrass for this printer after 7 months. Being fair the new chip technology on the B42W hs probably made Sawgrass back off supporting this model.

So, what would you do in this situation? Why not do a deal with a rival who probably will be willing to support the new models coming from Epson & at the same time you still make money whilst another company does the work. In a way it's a bit like out sourcing & you still get a cut of the business. We discussed a few weeks ago that if pushed legally Sawgrass may have a problem to prove their case in court beyond all reasonable doubt.

A very clever business move I think & also a very welcome one too.

I can't see Sawgrass turning their back on Epson as that is their main source of revenue. As soon as they let Inktec officially do something like this then every other supplier buying Artainium (which is every other officially licensed small format supplier around the world) will turn their back on them. They have created an unfair playing field and the only way to level it is either force Inktec up or slash their profits massively to allow others to compete on Artainium. Ricoh might be the future or might not. If they want to make huge profits on Ricoh then they need to shut off the cheap Epson option.

As far as I know their patent is water tight. TOG said they would fight them all the way but caved in very quickly in a high profile case. I remember Purple Monkey coming onto the market selling cheap Artainium then getting kicked back into place. They don't seem to be jumping on people as quickly these days though. Is it Coralgraph that does cheap ink currently? If so they don't seem to be having trouble.

Be interesting to see how things develop regardless.

Putting all their efforts behind Ricoh wouldn't be logical simply because there are so many people out there who want to make their own choices. With Ricoh, you can't use a CISS and you can't use refillable cartridges. You *have* to use one of the two printers Sawgrass tell you to use. Ricoh would rapidly become the tiny niche market if users have the legal/official choice of putting half-price ink in any printer they want.

As Andrew says, all other sellers of Sawgrass ink will very quickly be rattling their cages insisting on being able to sell Artanium ink (and Ricoh cartridges) at prices that can compete with ink-tec.

Andrew;22693 wrote:As far as I know their patent is water tight. TOG said they would fight them all the way but caved in very quickly in a high profile case.

I believe TOG were fighting them on the grounds of who came first and the issue came up that the patent covered dye-sub ink in printers with thermal printheads - so it shouldn't apply to printers with micro-piezo printheads. I don't know why TOG sold out (my guess is that they just didn't have the money to keep up the fight), but Sawgrass have a lot of patents that make it confusing for anyone trying to work out what to fight them on.

Andrew;22693 wrote:Is it Coralgraph that does cheap ink currently? If so they don't seem to be having trouble.

I believe they have had words, which is why you can no longer find dye-sub ink on their website. If anyone's using Coralgraph dye-sub ink today, then it's probably old stock they're getting rid of or previous customers that still have some left. The way people keep talking about them, they're inviting Sawgrass to have another go at them. Some people don't know when they're well off and don't know enough to not keep drawing attention to other people's ink.

These are all of the reasons I went wide format. We could print the same, high volume on an A3 as we do currently and still put mostly A4 sheets through the wide format printers. All comes down to cost. I also notice now that the Lyson suppliers have dropped the smaller size bottles so it is either 1L or 5L option. I know a few used to use the 250ml size for the smaller printers.

In fairness, if it wasn't 3 times more expensive to buy ink that does the same job as a widely available cheaper alternative then Sawgrass might have an easier market to contain.

Andrew;22699 wrote:In fairness, if it wasn't 3 times more expensive to buy ink that does the same job as a widely available cheaper alternative then Sawgrass might have an easier market to contain.

That's the same argument for all OEM ink, too. If they sold their ink at affordable prices then there'd be no place in the market for cheap third-party ink. They'd make just as much money because people wouldn't be afraid to print as they are now, and they'd buy more ink. For example, I have a R1800 that I haven't used for two years because I can't afford the ink, but I use cheap ink in a Brother printer and I use it for everything without thinking.

But I suspect Sawgrass need to keep their prices high to make big enough profits before their patent expires (which I believe could be as soon as a couple of years). Once that happens, the market will be flooded with cheaper ink and any current "authorised" supplier that isn't already exploring this option for when the patent expires will find themselves left behind.

However, there's probably a newer patent covering the Ricoh printers and the authorised resellers are probably not allowed to sell non-Sawgrass ink if they want to sell Ricoh cartridges. If that's true, everyone who's been pushed into buying Ricoh printers today will find themselves with nowhere to go when the patent expires. At least with Epson printers, people can pick whatever ink they like to put in it.

Quick update, further clarification received, this agreement covers large format only so does not apply to small format.

Thought as much. Are they going to ask who has proof of large format though? Also, they don't need a licence or any kind of agreement with sawgrass for large format, might just be doing it as an accredited supplier.

I also got the email saying it was for large format printers too.

Oh well, back to reality again eh.

Ian M;22764 wrote:I also got the email saying it was for large format printers too.

Oh well, back to reality again eh.

Just for clarity,

are we talking A3+ as a large format printer, or bigger than this (i.e large format being A2, A1 ->)