A lot of companies which produce off-brand inks have been
thriving on the Polish market. Currently, the number of these is
equal to or even higher than the number of brand producers. This
suggests that forensic experts should remember about off-brand
inks and very seriously consider them during questioned document
examination. Fortunately, apart from applicability to brand
inks, the MECC method shows great potential for off-brand
(substitute) inks. It enabled one to distinguish between these inks
and their brand equivalents. Moreover, discriminating between
inks coming from different producers and different cartridges was
not a problem. What was noticed is that substitute inks have
poorer quality control standards and sometimes cartridges with
the same number contain inks of a slightly different composition.