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A bunch of toner manufacturers and sellers have infringed on Japanese electronics outfit Canon's patents, according to an initial finding from the US International Trade Commission (ITC), with a judge recommending imports of their products be banned.
The notice [PDF] from an administrative law judge this week said an Initial Determination (ID) was made on Tuesday 15 March, finding that "certain toner supply containers" violated Section 337.
The notice asks for input from the public on whether to institute an import ban if the commission agrees and finds the firms violated the rule.
Updated The ongoing semiconductor shortage has reached the point that it's affecting one of the most-hated aspects of printing – copy-protection chips on ink cartridges.
That's right, the function that enables printers to scream about foreign bodies if you dare to use a third-party cartridge or potentially prevent the printer from working at all.
Japanese electronics outfit Canon has had to admit, by way of its German tentacle, that it's having such a hard time getting hold of components that it's been forced to ship toner cartridges without the chip fitted.
Review Peripherals purveyor Logitech's Signature M650 is its latest take on a workplace mouse, and The Register has a raked a talon over one.
The Signature range comes in three colours – graphite, rose, and off-white. We were given the white left-handed version (the buttons are on the right-hand side – the image below is of the right-handed version).
First impressions were good. The mouse can be connected to a computer via Bluetooth or USB dongle, which lurks in the battery compartment. It looks smart, and the moulded design fits an average hand well. Our unit weighed in at just over 100g so not particularly hefty.
Canon USA has been accused of forcing customers to buy ink cartridges when they only want to scan and fax documents using the manufacturer's so-called All-In-One multi-function printers.
David Leacraft bought a Canon PIXMA MG2522 All-in-One Printer from Walmart in March, and was appalled when his device was incapable of scanning or a faxing documents if it ran low, or out, of ink. Unlike printing, scanning and faxing documents do not ordinarily require ink.
He wouldn’t have spent the 100 bucks on Canon’s printer if he had known this, his legal team noted. Feeling cheated, Leacraft fired a lawsuit at Canon USA, seeking class-action status on behalf of other disgruntled customers.
Printer ink continues to rank as one of the most expensive liquids around with a litre of the home office essential costing the same as a very high-end bottle of bubbly or an oak-aged Cognac.
Consumer advocate Which? has found that ink bought from printer manufactures can be up to 286 per cent more expensive than third-party alternatives.
Dipping its nib in one inkwell before delicately wiping off the excess on some blotting paper, Which? found that a multipack of colour ink (cyan, magenta, yellow) for the WorkForce WF-7210DTW printer costs £75.49 from Epson.
Review Mechanical keyboard manufacturers have typically swerved Mac users. It's not personal, it's just business.
The Mac has a fraction of the traditional PC market share, and a significant proportion of mechanical keyboards are intended for competitive gamers, rather than those who type for work (be they developers or writers, or in the case of your correspondent, both).
The Vissles V84 is therefore a bit of an oddity. This compact keyboard (84 keys) ships with a Mac layout by default, although it comes bundled with standard Windows keycaps, as well as the ability to switch into a standard PC layout by pressing down a key combination.
Canon has had a double shot of bad luck lately. First, its brand-new photo-and-video-hosting cloud started losing files. Now it's reportedly fallen victim to ransomware.
The Japanese camera maker noticed at the end of July that footage uploaded before June 16 to image.canon had started going missing. The service launched in February, and offers 10GB of long-term storage space for people's personal photos and videos. Some cameras can automatically upload material to the cloud, too.
Canon pulled the plug on service, and restored it days later, on Tuesday, August 4 when the data-gobbling glitch was fixed, we're told. Strangely, it said no data was leaked. In a statement, the biz said:
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