Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

Do Canon printers in the EU have this problem? I would think customers would be able to return them as defective.

I'd be interested to know if this was intentional.

I can very much see that the all-in-one device has some "initializeHardware()" function that tests and sets up all the internal components, which probably requires ink to run (firing an ink jet as part of the initialization with no ink present usually burns some ink and it'll permanently clog with carbon deposits).

Likewise, I suspect if the light bulb in the scanner was faulty, it wouldn't print. Or if the chip controlling the fax functions was unresponsive, it may not scan, copy or print.

Designing a device which can self test every component, and then have a matrix of exactly which components must be present and working to do each function is very possible... but it's extra engineering effort, extra testing, and an extra source of bugs.

For example, if an ink cartridge is missing, the weight of the carriage will be different, which will need different motor control parameters to ensure the movement speed is suitable (they're DC motors, so require quite complex control algorithms to move at a close-to-constant rate across the page).

Overall, it might not be Canon management requiring this behaviour, but rather the engineering teams deciding that all these corner cases are not worth the effort of supporting.

Hi Canon!

Thanks from increasing my list of examples why people should no be so condescending of proprietary firmware.

Actually, they don't need to be opensource. Having free firmware or being a simple machine to obey is enough. There are good printers listed on h-node. People mock fsf ryf certification but I think it is very much valid.

In general multi-function printers tend to be a bit crap even without these sort of shenanigans. Most people would be better off buying the appropriate device for each function.