I don't think that's quite right. I work at HP (I hardly dare to say it in this thread hahaha), and I am quite sure that the full formulation of the inks is dev

I don't think that's quite right. I work at HP (I hardly dare to say it in this thread hahaha), and I am quite sure that the full formulation of the inks is developed in house (at least for large format). I do think it's true that there only exist a few hundred pigments, and those are not developed at HP. And likewise for other ingredients I guess. I am not involved in ink development myself, but I know that when we get a new ink from the other side of the ocean (with improved properties, or compying with updated regulations), many printing parameters have to be changed or new print mode algorithms have to be developed to maintain print quality. When it's just not possible, there may be hardware changes, or there is some more alchemy, and we get a new version of the ink. And so on. This can literally take years, and sometimes it just doesn't work and a new ink development path is abandoned