Lexmark International, Inc. is an American corporation that develops and manufactures printing and imaging products, and provides businesses of all sizes with a broad range of printing and imaging software, business process workflow, solutions and services including laser printers, multifunction products, printing supplies, and business services for businesses and enterprises. The company is headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky.

 

History

Lexmark was formed in 1991 when IBM divested its printer and printer supply operations to the investment firm Clayton & Dubilier & Rice, Inc. in a leveraged buyout. Lexmark became a publicly traded company on the NYSE on November 15, 1995.

 

Operations

The firm's corporate and R&D offices are located at the headquarters in Lexington with additional R&D facilities located in Boulder, Colo., Cebu, Philippines, Kansas City, Kansas and Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Lexmark has offices throughout North and South America, Asia, Africa and Europe. The company has more than 13,000 employees worldwide. In addition to manufacturing hardware under their own name, Lexmark is also the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of printers for other major companies, such as Dell and IBM InfoPrint. Lexmark also develops printing solutions and services developed to run on a touch screen that is located on the printer or MFP that provides access to many software applications that reduce the complexities of manual paper processes.

 

Acquisitions

In May 2010, Lexmark signed a definitive agreement to acquire Perceptive Software to build upon and strengthen Lexmark's industry-focused document workflow solutions and managed print services offerings. Perceptive Software is a software firm that develops enterprise content management (ECM), business process management (BPM), and document output management (DOM) applications. Headquartered in Kansas City, Kansas, USA, with regional offices in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.

 

In 2011, Lexmark International purchased Netherlands-based Pallas Athena in a cash transaction valued at approximately $50.2 million. The Dutch company is now part of Perceptive Software. The purchase of Pallas Athena builds upon and strengthens Lexmark's end-to-end managed print services (MPS) and business process solutions with the addition of business process management (BPM), document output management (DOM) and process mining software capabilities. The Pallas Athena brand was integrated into two areas of Perceptive Software, "Perceptive Process" and "Perceptive Content".

 

In March 2012, Lexmark announced the acquisition of Luxembourg-based BDGB Enterprise, including its U.S. subsidiary Brainware, Inc., for a cash purchase price of approximately $148 million. Brainware's intelligent data capture platform accurately extracts critical information from paper and electronic documents, validates the extracted data and passes it to customers' data management systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and/or financial management systems. The Brainware brand was integrated into "Perceptive Intelligent Capture, powered by Brainware", on October 15, 2012.

 

In March 2012, Lexmark acquired Australia-based ISYS Search Software for $32 million and U.S.-based Nolij Corporation for $32 million. ISYS builds enterprise search solutions, and Nolij develops Web-based document imaging and workflow software. The ISYS brand was integrated into "Perceptive Search" and the Nolij brand was integrated into "Perceptive Content".

 

In January 2013, Lexmark acquired Minnesota-based Acuo Technologies for $45 million. Acuo Technologies develops medical imaging document management software. In March 2013, Lexmark announced acquisitions of AccessVia and Twistage for a combined purchase price of approximately $31.5 million.

 

Printer and Multifunction Printer (MFP) Offerings
 

The Lexmark MX812dtfe monochrome laser MFP
 

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 Wi-Fi inkjet printers and the very first to release printers with a web-enabled touchscreen. They also offer a wide variety of laser printers with software solutions for more professional printing environments.

 

Inkjet Exit

In August 2012, Lexmark announced that it will be stopping production of its inkjet printer line. By doing so, Lexmark will close an inkjet supplies manufacturing facility in the Philippines by the end of 2015. Lexmark will continue to provide service, support and aftermarket supplies for its inkjet installed base.

 

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. Yet a recent firmware update allowed Lexmark to prevent end-users from refilling ink cartridges or using third-party ink cartridges.