From what I remember the international ruling in favor of the big corporations who brought that suit to stop importation of third party ink carts into the US was not signed and implemented by the US attorney general in the Bush administration. In other words to the best of my memory it was an ITC suggestion to member countries that had to be signed and agreed upon by the importing country to have any legal legitimacy or effect. You can research this but I believe the attorney generals office thought they had over reached and ignored the ruling. I don't know if it was ever submitted again or not. But the result was to scare away a number of the small asian companies form making and shipping the desktop carts to the us and europe.
At any rate, it's kind of a moot point, because most all of the third party ink companies have now switched to very good and reliable funnel fill cartridges for large format and new reliable continuous flow units for the desktop printers that allow you to buy the pigments in bulk and fill your own carts easily. That alone saves a lot of money and waste. It also gives you the ability to create formulations that are not available from the big three. I now have 4 large format printers loaded with Piezography monochrome pigments of different kinds for different purposes. Many of these inks can be mixed and or blended in software for custom projects on custom media if you are the kind of person who likes to do that. There is still a small group of us out here who appreciate the benefits of that kind of approach. I still continue to use oem color pigments entirely (Vivera) because I believe them to be superior ( if a lot more expensive) in almost all cases, but not so with black and white.
nope, never happened. Perhaps you are recalling the ITC ruling disallowing the import of 3rd party desktop model cartridges to go into Epsons. The inks have continued to be widely used. There was also some legal action involving Media Street and their Generations Inks, the first viable pigment inks many of us used, but they are color inks. But I don't know any more about it.
Tyler
