Lexmark (NYSE: LXK) is an American corporation which develops and manufactures printing and imaging solutions, including laser and inkjet printers, multifunction products, printing supplies, and services for business and individual consumers. The company is headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky.
History
In March of 1991, IBM divested a number of its hardware manufacturing operations to the investment firm Clayton & Dubilier, Inc. in a leveraged buyout to form Lexmark International, Inc.[2][3] Lexmark became a publicly traded company in 1995.
Operations
The firm's corporate and R&D offices are located at the headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. Lexmark has offices throughout North and South America, Asia, Africa and Europe. The company has more than 13,000 employees worldwide. Lexmark was a Fortune 500 company until they were ranked #507 in the 2009 Fortune 500 rankings. In addition to manufacturing hardware under their own name, Lexmark also does third party development of printers for other major companies, such as Dell.
Products
Lexmark specializes in printers and printer accessories. Its current range of products includes color and monochrome laser printers and inkjet printers, both of which may include scanners (including all-in-one devices with faxing and copying capabilities and photo printers), and dot matrix printers. Lexmark was one of the first companies to release wifi inkjet printers and the very first to release printers with a web-enabled touchscreen, coming in early September of 2009. They also offer a wide variety of laser printers with software solutions for more professional printing environments.
A specialized series of printers are - if equipped with separately sold accessory cards (one memory card to hold data and one Lexmark Form card) - capable of interpreting textual data and converting them into forms. To create the forms required for this to work, one uses the software package "Lexmark Forms Composer", a proprietary package available from Lexmark aimed at developers. This same type of software is put into use on the newer releases of Lexmark printers with their business card scanning capabilities.
Legal Cases
A court victory in 2005 was handed to Lexmark in the case of ACRA v. Lexmark. This case states that Lexmark can enforce the “single use only” policy written on the side of Lexmark printer cartridge boxes sold to certain large customers at a discount, with the understanding that the customers will return the cartridges to Lexmark after using them. This means that these customers can face lawsuits if they breach the agreements, and do not return the cartridges.
Also in 2005, Lexmark suffered a legal defeat in the case of Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components, when the US Supreme Court rejected Lexmark's petition for a writ of certiorari, thereby rejecting their attempt to have the Court hear their case. In this case, the defendant was a manufacturer of microchips that allowed third-party ink and toner cartridges to work on printers, including many manufactured by Lexmark. Such printers incorporated a feature that would require authentication from a microchip within the ink/toner cartridge in order to function; this was designed to prohibit users from refilling the cartridges.
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