They all lived happily ever after

And so after a cliff hanger that has lasted over the summer, Landa Digital Printing’s story and its journey have not yet reached their end. Many will hope that acquisition by a P-E business signals a new chapter for the company which launched with the industry’s biggest fanfare in 2012 and which has seemingly stumbled at every hurdle since. Some have been writing the company’s obituary ever since. Others have been equally keen to celebrate the success of a new technology to the printing industry. The judge’s decision will change neither opinion.

For what the Landa story shows is that game changing (if that is what nanography may yet be) technologies are hard to get off the ground, even with the marketing flair and optimism of founder Benny Landa. For some his stubbornness and intransigence lay behind the company’s problems; for other his stubbornness and intransigence have been necessary for the company to get as far as it has. Offset inkjet can solve many of the problems direct inkjet has, just as the development of offset litho set that technology on the path to becoming the industry’s most versatile and dominant technology. 

Offset litho’s development was shared across multiple press suppliers, ink and plate companies, each keen to advance the process. Offset inkjet, like other styles of inkjet, is still a closed process ringed by patents and single-source supply of the necessary consumables and software. What if this were not the case? What if the core technology was open to all, that different suppliers could provide the inks, others might come up with different types of transfer blanket and press manufacturers might be forced into their own developments for fear that their technology would be outpaced. That would require upturning all the principles of tech companies and embracing those of Jonas Salk who refused to patent the Polio vaccine and so consigned a scourge of childhood to the history books. Can Landa’s story have such a happy ending?