A Bostonian is suing HP and Staples for colluding to inflate the price of printer ink. According to the suit, filed by Ranjit Nedi, Staples took a $100 million hint from HP not to stock cheap generic competition to its $8,000-a-gallon juice.

Everyone knows that printer ink is a swindle: they sell you the printer cheaply (or not so cheaply for higher-end prosumer models), then sell the colors — unremarkable commodities, let us not forget —

at prices that would make a perfumer blush.

As the inks are commodities, however, they have to take measures to stop you simply refilling the cartridges. Circumnavigating even trivial technological locks potentially runs foul of the Digital

Millenium Copyright Act, and printers are also designed to deliberately and unecessarily waste ink. Nedi's submission suggests an even more aggressive tack was taken: the outright bribing of retailers.

There's not a lot you can do except wait for the inevitable application for class action status. Then we can all help deliver a slow-motion kick to the corporate shin that will take years to unravel.

$8,000-per-gallon printer ink leads to antitrust lawsuit [Ars Technica]