Memjet has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. The lawsuit alleges infringement of eight Memjet patents related to its page-wide "waterfall" printing technology.
Specifically, the complaint asserts infringement of the following patents:
- U.S. Patent No. 6,575,549, titled "Ink Jet Fault Tolerance Using Adjacent Nozzles"
- U.S. Patent No. 6,880,914, titled "Inkjet Pagewidth Printer for High Volume Pagewidth Printing"
- U.S. Patent No. 7,156,492, titled "Modular Printhead Assembly With a Carrier of A Metal Alloy"
- U.S. Patent No. 7,325,986, titled "Printhead Assembly with Stacked Ink Distribution Sheets"
- U.S. Patent No. 8,662,636, titled "Inkjet Printhead Having Rows of Printhead Segments"
- U.S. Patent No. 8,678,550, titled "Printhead Assembly with Laminated Ink Distribution Stack"
- U.S. Patent No. 8,696,096, titled "Laminated Ink Supply Structure Mounted in Ink Distribution Arrangement Of An Inkjet Printer"
- U.S. Patent No. 9,056,475, titled "Inkjet Printer With Web Feed Maintenance Assembly"
The lawsuit seeks both to enjoin Hewlett-Packard from its unauthorized use of Memjet's patented page-wide waterfall technology, and to recover damages resulting from Hewlett-Packard's use of that patented technology in HP's PageWide printer products, including the Pro X generation of office printers, the T-Series commercial presses and PageWide XL series products. HP has stated its intention to use its PageWide Technology across its printing portfolio including in future wide-format and 3D printers.
Memjet has invested substantial resources in the research and development of its page-wide waterfall technology over the last decade. Memjet has protected that investment through the development of its significant patent portfolio, including several thousand U.S. and foreign patents in the page-wide inkjet printing space.
Editor's Note: Printing Impressions reached out and HP said, as a matter of company policy, HP does not comment on pending legal matters.