If It Prints, I'll Let You Know

The economy may be slow, but that didn’t stop Xerox and its team of researchers from bringing forth innovations. As featured on their website, this is their response to the challenges that are not only at hand but might lie ahead, at least until the economic turmoil repairs itself.

In a recent post, we featured Xerox’s erasable paper. This is but one of the many innovative ideas that Xerox patented last year; a total 609 U.S. utility patents that, when added to other patents from Xerox’s joint venture partner in Japan – Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd. – number to almost a thousand. Now that’s commitment to research and development.

Xerox Chief Technology Officer and President of the Xerox Innovation Group Sophie Vandebroek summed up all the company’s innovation efforts by saying, “You cannot sacrifice tomorrow to save today.” There are companies who tend to pull the plug on innovation to cut corners and save on costs. In the Xerox strategy, this is the last thing they want to do, as this may lead to product gaps in the future. By keeping the innovations coming, Xerox is assuring itself not only of leadership in the industry but providing an opportunity to open new opportunities and grow further in them.

Highlights within the more than 600 U.S. patents include one that involved low energy solid inks, applied to the Xerox Phaser 8860. Another patent covers advanced emulsion aggregation (EA) toner technology; this toner has the ability to give sharper image quality and higher reliability despite a reduction in toner usage. Documents printed using EA toner only use about half the material used up by conventional toners.

Another patented technology was used as the basis for TrueMatch Search and Retrieval, which allow users to scan a document and then send the corresponding original electronic version to their e-mail account, from which they could print a new copy of the document.

The list can go on and on, and by the end of this year, we can only expect more innovations from Xerox.

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