Patent ID: 7134738

Claim:
A cartridge configured to be detachably attached to a printer, the printer having a printer main body incorporating a processing unit and a physically separate storage device having plural pieces of information about said cartridge, said cartridge comprising: an ink reservoir wherein said ink reservoir is divided into at least five ink chambers, in which at least five different inks are respectively kept, and wherein the plural pieces of information at least in part correspond to quantities of the at least five different inks; a rewritable non-volatile memory containing a plurality of pieces of corresponding information relating to said cartridge, wherein said non-volatile memory comprises a plurality of information storage areas, in which the plural pieces of corresponding information corresponding to quantities of the at least five different inks are stored respectively and independently, and each of the plurality of information storage areas has a storage capacity of at least one byte; the plural pieces of corresponding information having been written into said non-volatile memory less frequently than at which the plural pieces of information relating to said cartridge are written into the physically separate storage device incorporated in the printer main body of the printer, and the writing of the plural pieces of corresponding information to said non-volatile memory of said cartridge being triggered based upon at least one of the following actions, operation of a power switch, operation of a cartridge switch reflecting replacement of the cartridge, and termination of a power supply to the printer.