Epson Printer Sabotages Non-Epson Ink Cartridges?

A very common business model studied in MBA is the Gillette "sell razor at a discount and make money on the blades." (https://hbr.org/2010/09/gillettes-strange-history-with).

EPSON also duplicate that business model on their printers - sell the printer at a low price first in order to secure a life long customer buying HP cartridges.


What happens if third party (non EPSON) manufactures of ink cartridges enters and starts selling a competing ink cartridge?

One clever way is to

    1) motivate the printer owner to update their printer firmware
    2) in the firmware, EPSON can check to see if an original EPSON ink cartridge is installed
    3) if not, send a code to the ink cartridge to exploit a HW weakness (pressure, fit, etc)
    4) the third party ink cartridge will leak, explode, print poorly
    5) causing the owner to buy a real EPSON ink cartridge instead


Here is proof:

http://www.amazon.com/Epson-Expression-Wireless-Printer-C11CC48201/dp/B0080SG86Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1425141081&sr=8-2&keywords=epson+xp-200#customerReviews

New firmware is evil - firmware checks to see if the ink cartridge is EPSON (original & expensive)

http://www.amazon.com/E-Z-Ink-Remanufactured-Replacement-Compatible/product-reviews/B00ENNJFPG/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_5?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFiveStar&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=byRankDescending