Hewlett-Packard Co and Xerox Corp are suing each other over printing technology issues once again. HP started the ball rolling last month, slapping Xerox with a breach of contract suit over its TruRes chip technology. Xerox uses the chips in its DocuPrint NC60 color network printer, and HP claimed that Xerox had not paid royalties on the chips and stopped shipping them to the company. Then, on Monday, Xerox issued a counter suit, claiming unfair business practices, it has continued to make and ship the printer in question.
In a statement, Xerox said of HP’s actions: We believe that HP is using the courts in an unjustifiable attempt to terminate our agreement in an effort to remove Xerox as a competitor…we are confident that Xerox will have no grounds to terminate this contract…we believe that HP sees Xerox as a significant competitive threat in their printing business, and as a result have resorted to this unsavory tactic. It is not known how long Xerox will be able to continue producing the NC60, now that HP has stopped shipping the chips to it.
HP was no less forthright in its condemnation of Xerox. Company spokesperson Nolan Sundrud said, We’ve tried to work with Xerox, licensing technologies…Xerox didn’t follow the contract. HP, he claimed, were baffled by [Xerox’s] inability to work through the relatively simple negotiating process. This, Nolan said, was due to negativity about HP on Xerox’s part. It appears to us, that since they’ve become more of a competitor, they picture us as the bad guys, he said.
This is hardly the first legal spat that HP and Xerox have indulged in. Sundrud said that there are four are five suits between the two companies pending. No date has been set for the new cases.
