I wonder if part of that problem could be solved by going back in time, and printing on something like the accordion-folded paper favored by dot-matrix printers, or even a full roll of 8.5 inch wide paper that then gets sliced into 11 inch long chunks after the ink is applied?

Then we just have to solve all the other problems :)

I kinda don't buy patents at this point. There were very decent printers in 90s and those have any patent expired already.

Digital cameras have a stable(ish) lens interface, so people use a smaller number of models for longer. Consumer inkjet printers are so cheap and change so often that there is no single model that's popular enough for people to coalesce around (and people who do care about e.g. a printer that works well on Linux will research and buy one that's known to work well on Linux - printers are pretty much a commodity, whereas people have strong feelings about their camera hardware and want to use a particular camera with different firmware instead of changing cameras)