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Lexmark International, Inc. is a
privately held A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is ...
American company that manufactures
laser printer Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively-charged cylinder called a "drum" to d ...
s and imaging products. The company is headquartered in
Lexington, Kentucky Lexington is a city in Kentucky, United States that is the county seat of Fayette County, Kentucky, Fayette County. By population, it is the List of cities in Kentucky, second-largest city in Kentucky and List of United States cities by popul ...
. Since 2016 it has been jointly owned by a consortium of three multinational companies: Apex Technology, PAG Asia Capital, and
Legend Capital Legend Holdings Corporation () is a Chinese investment holding company with interests in finance, real estate, and information technology, and the controlling shareholder of its better-known associate company, the Lenovo Group. Formed by the Chin ...
.


History

Lexmark was formed on March 27, 1991 when investment firm Clayton & Dubilier completed a
leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loan ...
of IBM Information Products Corporation, the
printer Printer may refer to: Technology * Printer (publishing), a person or a company * Printer (computing), a hardware device * Optical printer for motion picture films People * Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist * James ...
,
typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
, and
keyboard Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...
operations of IBM. Lexmark became a publicly traded company on the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...
on November 15, 1995. By 2016, the company struggled to keep corporate clients that are cutting costs and the consumers who are shifting to mobile devices from personal computers. It was reported in April 2016 that Lexmark would be acquired by Apex Technology and PAG Asia Capital for US$3.6 billion. Lexmark was set to be acquired at $40.50 per share in the transaction. Initial talks for the acquisition were begun at the
Remax World Expo The RemaxWorld Expo is an annual trade show comprising vendors from within the print consumables industry. The event began in 2007, resulting from a joint venture between the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) and Recyc ...
in 2015. The deal was closed on November 29, 2016. Lexmark stated that its headquarters would remain in Lexington, and that its enterprise software line of business would be spun off and "rebranded" to
Kofax Kofax Inc. is an Irvine, California-based intelligent automation software provider. Founded in 1985, the company's software allows businesses to automate and improve business workflows by simplifying the handling of data and documents. Since 20 ...
. As part of the sale, the Perceptive Business Unit portion of Lexmark's Enterprise Software Services division (e.g. their non-Kofax branded document management products) was sold to the
Thoma Bravo Thoma Bravo, LP, is an American private equity and growth capital firm with offices in San Francisco, Chicago and Miami. It is known for being particularly active in acquiring software companies and has over $114 billion in assets under manage ...
management group who agreed to in-turn sell the Perceptive Business Unit to the Hyland Corporation. The Kofax branded applications remained as part of Lexmark, but other document management systems like Perceptive Content and NolijWeb and products like Intelligent Capture (formerly "Brainware") and Enterprise Search (formerly "ISYS") were absorbed by Hyland.


Operations

The firm's corporate headquarters is located in Lexington and R&D offices are distributed globally with additional R&D facilities located in Boulder, Colorado, US; Lenexa, Kansas, US;
Cebu Cebu (; ceb, Sugbo), officially the Province of Cebu ( ceb, Lalawigan sa Sugbo; tl, Lalawigan ng Cebu; hil, Kapuroan sang Sugbo), is a province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas region, and consists of a main island and 167 ...
, Philippines;
Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...
, West Bengal, India; Berlin, Germany; Stockholm, Sweden and Irvine, California, US. Lexmark has offices throughout North and South America, Asia, Africa and Europe. As of July 2018, the company had approximately 9,000 employees worldwide.


Acquisitions

* In May 2010, Lexmark acquired
Perceptive Software Perceptive Software is a business unit of Hyland Software, Inc. Hyland announced itacquisition of Perceptivein July 2017. History The company was founded in 1988 as Genesis Software and initially produced accounts payable software application ...
for $280 million to build upon its software offerings. Perceptive Software was a software firm that developed enterprise content management ("Perceptive Content", ″ImageNow") and document output management applications. * In 2011, Lexmark International purchased Netherlands-based Pallas Athena in a cash transaction valued at approximately $50.2 million. The purchase of Pallas Athena added business process management, document output management and process mining software capabilities to Lexmark's services. * In March 2012, Lexmark announced the acquisition of Luxembourg-based BDGB Enterprise, including its U.S. subsidiary
Brainware Brainware was an American software company that marketed Automatic identification and data capture and data extraction products. The company was acquired by Hyland Software in 2017. Brainware originally spun out of Dulles-based SER Solutions Inc ...
, Inc., for a cash purchase price of approximately $148 million. Brainware's intelligent data capture platform extracted critical information from paper and electronic documents, validated the extracted data and passed it to customers' data management systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and/or financial management systems. * In March 2012, Lexmark acquired Australia-based
ISYS Search Software ISYS Search Software was an Australian supplier of enterprise search software for information access, management, and re-use. The company marketed and sold a suite of embedded search, mobile access and information management infrastructure technol ...
and U.S.-based Nolij Corporation, both for $32 million. ISYS built enterprise search solutions and Nolij developed Web-based document imaging and workflow software. * In January 2013, Lexmark acquired Minnesota-based Acuo Technologies for $45 million. Acuo Technologies developed 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. * In late August 2013, Lexmark signed an agreement to acquire Germany-based Saperion AG. Saperion was a developer and provider of enterprise content management and business process management (BPM) software in Europe. The company was purchased for $72 million. * In early October 2013, Lexmark acquired PACSGEAR, a provider of connectivity solutions for medical image management and electronic health records. The company was purchased for approximately $54 million. * In September 2014, Lexmark acquired Stockholm, Sweden-based
ReadSoft ReadSoft was a global provider of applications for automating business processes. ReadSoft was founded by two university students in Linköping, Sweden, in 1991. The company was headquartered in Helsingborg, Sweden and its shares were traded on th ...
for $251 million. ReadSoft was a financial process automation solutions company that specialized in software solutions for document process automation on-premises or in the cloud. * In May 2015, Lexmark announced that it had acquired
Kofax Kofax Inc. is an Irvine, California-based intelligent automation software provider. Founded in 1985, the company's software allows businesses to automate and improve business workflows by simplifying the handling of data and documents. Since 20 ...
for roughly $1 billion. Kofax, headquartered in Irvine, California, US was a provider of smart process applications. They combined capture, process management, analytics and mobile capabilities to organizations. This line of business was, in turn, spun off from Lexmark when it was acquired by Apex Technology in November 2016.


Divestitures

* In August 2012, Lexmark announced that it would stop production of its inkjet printer line. In April 2013, Funai Electric Company, Ltd. announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire Lexmark's
inkjet technology Inkjet technology originally was invented for depositing aqueous inks on paper in 'selective' positions based on the ink properties only. Inkjet nozzles and inks were designed together and the inkjet performance was based on a design. It was used a ...
and assets for approximately $100 million (approximately ¥9.5 billion). Funai acquired more than 1,500 inkjet patents, Lexmark's inkjet-related research and development assets and tools, all outstanding shares and the manufacturing facility of Lexmark International (Philippines), Inc., and other inkjet-related technologies and assets. * In 1996, Lexmark International was prepared to shut their Lexington keyboard factory where they produced Model M buckling-spring keyboards. IBM, their principal customer—and the Model M's original designer and patent holder—had decided to remove the Model M from its product line in favor of cheaper Asian-made rubber-dome keyboards. Rather than seeing its production come to an end, a group of former Lexmark and IBM employees purchased the license, tooling and design rights for buckling-spring technology, and, in April 1996, reestablished the business as
Unicomp Unicomp is a manufacturer of computer keyboards and keyboard accessories, based in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. History In 1996, Lexmark International was prepared to shut their Lexington keyboard factory where they produced Model M buck ...


Legal cases

Lexmark pioneered the use of profits from
ink cartridges An ink cartridge or inkjet cartridge is a component of an inkjet printer that contains the ink that is deposited onto paper during printing. Each ink cartridge contains one or more ink reservoirs; certain producers also add electronic contacts ...
as a business model, with the result of modifying the legal models of product ownership and patent exhaustion over several years. 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 '' Arizona Cartridge Remanufacturers Ass'n Inc. v. Lexmark International Inc.'', when the
U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
rejected Lexmark's petition for a
writ of certiorari In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of an English prerogative writ, issued by a superior court to direct that the record of ...
, 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. However, a recent firmware update allowed Lexmark to prevent end users from refilling ink cartridges or using third-party ink cartridges. Lexmark also lost in the Supreme Court case ''Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc.'' in 1 7-1 ruling that reversed and remanded a Federal Circuit court decision (30 May 2017):


See also

*
List of Lexmark products The following is a partial list of Lexmark products currently sold under the Lexmark brand. Printers Laser printers suffixes:a: auto feed - d: duplex print e: eSF support (embedded apps) n: network (letter omitted when 'e' is present) ...


References


External links

*
EFF: Lexmark v. Static Control Components Inc.
{{Authority control Computer printer companies Companies based in Lexington, Kentucky Electronics companies established in 1991 1991 establishments in Kentucky 2016 mergers and acquisitions Private equity portfolio companies