After I got burned by Brother institute toner cartridge DRM, I started looking into this. Apparently there are a lot of patents around paper feed mechanisms etc

After I got burned by Brother institute toner cartridge DRM, I started looking into this. Apparently there are a lot of patents around paper feed mechanisms etc. It would, apparently, be very expensive to design a new, non-infringing, non shitty paper feeding mechanism and the customer base would likely be extremely small, resulting in a sky high price. I'm no expert and can't vouch for any of the details, but this is what I encountered in multiple online discussions when I looked into it last. That being said, I'd probably be willing to pay up to $500 for a simple black and white open source, open hardware laser jet printer, assuming that it worked as well (from a pure mechanical perspective) as current consumer grade printers.