Sparky II touted as “the only compatible chip fully compliant with Canon’s recent intellectual property rights situation”.
ARMOR Office Printing has partnered with Japan-based ST Sangyo to develop its latest answer to Canon’s patent portfolio; the Sparky II chip stated as “the only patent respectful chip solution in Europe – all other solutions being susceptible to patent infringing”.
ARMOR’s Régis Thébaud (left)
The French aftermarket company had learnt that Canon was likely to be awarded a patent filed in 2004, “making patent infringing the emission of light based on colour information stored in [a] chip. The chip data needs the colour ID in order for the printer to operate”.
This patent was already effective in Japan, and was confirmed for Europe under patent number EP 2 062 731 B1.
ARMOR and Sangyo since developed the Sparky II chip, stated as being unique “based on advanced data analysis and processing and the most important feature is that it does not require use of any colour ID and yet preserves full printing functionalities”.
Sparky II represents the development of previous attempts to combat Canon’s protected LED-dependant chips. Following obtaining a European paten protecting its cartridges “with an electronic chip controlling the LED dependent to the ink level stored in the memory of the electronic chip”, ARMOR and Sangyo partners to devise the Sparky I.
Sparky I previously allowed a “maintain[e]d visible LED light but no connection between the LED and cartridge ink content”.