Epson Press Release

LONG BEACH, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Nov. 5, 2003—Inaccurate Claims Regarding Residual Ink in Epson Cartridges Causing Consumer Confusion and Potential Damage to Ink Jet Printers

Epson America Inc., responding to inaccurate public reports on the design and function of its ink cartridges, today is providing important information to consumers regarding the reason why its cartridges contain a small amount of ink when consumers are advised to replace them. This response was prompted by allegations from a Dutch consumer group that have since been publicly retracted, as well as several U.S. lawsuits. The recent lawsuits were filed by the same law firm in several jurisdictions and based on these same inaccurate allegations that Epson believes are completely without merit.

Epson’s position that these lawsuits are frivolous is echoed by many of the industry’s leading authorities on printer technology including CAP Ventures and Lyra Research. A sampling of their opinions follows:

“The U.S. lawsuits copying the erroneous Dutch allegations against Epson are frivolous,” said Jim Forrest, imaging expert with Newton, Mass.-based Lyra Research. “An Epson ink jet cartridge that runs completely dry could damage the hardware’s printing mechanism. Yes, there may be some ink left over, but that is by design, for the protection and longevity of the printer. And, since its cartridges are priced by page yields, not volume, consumers are in fact getting all that they paid for.”

“Recent trade press coverage on some of these lawsuits appear to be manufactured and have little legitimacy,” said John Shane, director, Communication Supplies Consulting Service, CAP Ventures, a leading strategic consulting firm for providers and users of business and visual communication technologies and services. “This type of misleading industry discourse does little to accurately educate the marketplace.”

Epson’s ink cartridges are designed to include a small safety reserve of ink. This safety reserve serves an important engineering function to ensure consistent image quality and prevent damage to the permanent print head that could be caused by drawing in air bubbles when there is no ink remaining in the cartridge. The printer will automatically stop working when there is no more safely usable ink in the cartridge. Users benefit from all of the ink they have paid for since Epson promotes and prices the cartridges based on the usable volume of ink reflected in the rated yield, not on the total volume of ink.

The chip included in Epson’s cartridges records the amount of ink that has been used from a cartridge, which not only ensures that the print heads are not damaged by ink cartridges running dry but also enables users to swap out cartridges as needed to handle particular print jobs.

“Our customers get the full benefit of the ink we promote if they use our printers as we recommend,” said Keith Kratzberg, director, photo imaging, Epson. “Therefore we take these abusive accusations very seriously and deny them vigorously. Furthermore, we are concerned that some of the people making these accusations are doing a disservice to consumers by recommending that they override the ink replacement signal which will cause poor quality prints and can damage the printers.”

Rumors surrounding this issue began in July 2003 when Consumentenbond, a Dutch consumer organization, alleged that Epson misled consumers by prematurely warning them to replace ink cartridges because they use an integrated chip to prevent the use of all of the ink. Upon further investigation, the Dutch consumer organization publicly retracted all claims and issued an apology, concluding that all brands of ink cartridges have ink remaining when consumers are advised to replace cartridges. In addition, the organization confirmed that Epson cartridges confer a technological benefit in order to maintain the life of the printer.