HP removes update that forces customers to use its ink cartridges

HP has announced that it would walk back an update that made it impossible for the owners of certain HP printers to use third-party ink cartridges.

The tech giant known for its laptops and printers made a controversial decision to quietly trigger a digital lock in the September firmware update. After the update, any customer who attempted to print with a non-HP cartridge would deactivate the printer and receive a cartridge replacement warning. The printer would not resume working until an HP brand cartridge was inserted.

“We should have done a better job of communicating about the authentication procedure to customers, and we apologize,” said HP in a blog entry posted Thursday. The post went on to explain that they would offer another firmware update to affected customers to reverse the digital lock in two weeks.

Last week after the update went live, HP’s support forum was flooded with questions and complaints about their printers suddenly not working.

“It’s alarming from a consumer rights perspective,” said Cory Doctorow, a special adviser for the Electronic Frontier Foundation who published a letter calling for HP to reverse the update on Monday. “If you buy something and it’s yours, it’s a bit weird for a manufacturer to reach into your home and take away stuff about it that you value in order to improve their bottom line.”

In Thursday’s blog post, HP wrote that it removed the third-party ink cartridge option to “ensure the best consumer experience.” It wrote, “When ink cartridges are cloned or counterfeited, the customer is exposed to quality and potential security risks …”