Hi this is Frank Ramono for WhatTheyThink.com.  The other day I was searching through patents.  I always like to see what people are working on.  

And as you know patents in the United States are sort of a secret for about a year, maybe longer I think.  Although to get a European patent you have to file it one year and one day after the American patent; I think that still holds.  And at that point it because public because then you can have access to it.  In any case, this one was dated September 28, 2010 and it was filed by New Page in Wisconsin.  Actually New Page is based in Miamisburg Ohio outside Dayton but the people who worked on this appear to be mostly in Wisconsin.  It’s a special paper that is used for multi-function printing, meaning that this paper could be used in inkjet machines and toner-based machines and even perhaps in offset machines.  It has to do with the way they coat the paper and the way they create the paper so it’s a combination of approaches.  It gets into all kinds of details with chemistry and tables and stuff like that; I don’t understand any of it.  I only understand it when I see a piece of paper and then I try to print on it.  

Now why this is important is because in digital printing, paper is part of the process.  It’s not just buy a paper and run it in your machine.  No, you have to buy a substrate that has actually been tested and developed for your device.  In some cases there are toner-based products that are generalized so you can buy just about any paper for most copiers and multi-function printers and low-end digital machines but when you get into the high level machines then the paper becomes an issue.  In inkjet it’s even more of an issue based on whether it’s Drop on Demand or it’s a continuous inkjet. Whether it’s pigment or dye-based ink.  How you put the image down.  Is it water-based ink?  Is it solvent-based ink?  Is it UV-based ink?  Is it eco solvent-based ink?  

Is it based on corn or soy?  Now we’re using our crops for creating ink as well as using it to make gasoline, you know ethanol.  So pretty soon there’ll be no crops left to actually feed people because we’ll use if for all these other purposes.  

So there’s a lot of activity out there in developing the proper papers for different inkjet machines and, of course, many inkjet machines put down a drop of precoating before they put the actual ink down.  That mitigates it to some degree but coated stocks tend to be a problem in the inkjet world.  I think that will change because of these kinds of patents that are being developed and other developments that are out there.  But we have to watch very carefully what’s happening there because for the first time in history it’s getting to the point where you buy the press from the company and you buy the ink from the company and it may be because of patents that you buy the paper from the company.  You know when I buy a car… if you buy a car from Ford you don’t buy the gasoline from Ford.  So, I mean, all the manufacturers are going to have to watch this very carefully because if I’m now locked in some way, shape or form to your paper or your ink, you can raise the rate, you can change the entire way I do business with one minor change in pricing.  

So it’s an area to watch and watch very carefully but you can see there’s a phenomenal amount of activity going on out there by paper companies to develop new grades of papers for all these new digital printing devices that are coming along.  And by the way, there are a lot of them coming along.  

And that’s my opinion.  Thanks a lot.