A battle between Oc and Xerox has ended at the Office of Fair Trading with the former winning the squabble over sales of spare parts.

Xerox subsidiary Con-tinua went to the OFT after Oc refused to supply it with parts, consumables and envelope kit for high-speed digital printers such as Oc Pagestream forerunners NDX and NDZ.

Continua, a third-party servicing firm, said Oc had "abused a dominant position" in the high-speed printer market by refusing to supply kit.

But Oc managing director Mike Cornish said the seven-month OFT probe had found "no grounds to suspect infringement."

A spokeswoman added the market had plenty of big players including IBM and Nipson and her firm was not dominating. Oc had stopped selling to Continua after Xerox went from being part to total owner of the firm, she said.

"We thought as Xerox was selling high-speed printers... we did not want to supply parts to a direct competitor. We had no contract with Continua but had supplied parts in the past."

Story by Jez Abbott