Last week, we ran a post about a slightly controversial video that claimed that a particular 3D-printing slicing strategy was tied up by a patent troll. We’re absolutely not lawyers here at Hackaday, but we’ve been in the amateur 3D printing revolution since the very beginning, and surprisingly patents have played a role all along.
Modern fused-deposition modelling (FDM) 3D printing began with Stratasys’ patent US5121329A, “Apparatus and method for creating three-dimensional objects”, and the machines they manufactured and sold based on the technology. Go read the patent, it’s an absolute beauty and has 44 different claims that cover just about everything in FDM printing. This was the watershed invention, and today, everything claimed in the patent is free.
Stratasys’ patent on the fundamental FDM method kept anyone else from commercializing it until the patent expired in 2009. Not coincidentally, the first available home-gamer 3D printer, the Makerbot Cupcake, also went on sale in 2009.
The Stratasys machines were also one of the big inspirations for Adrian Bowyer to start the RepRap project, the open-source movement that basically lead to us all having cheap and cheerful 3D printers today, and he didn’t let the patent stop him from innovating before it lapsed. Indeed, the documentation for the RepRap Darwin dates back to 2007. Zach [Hoeken] Smith delivered our hackerspace the acrylic parts to make one just around that time, and we had it running a year or two before the Cupcake came out of the company that he, Bre, and Adam shortly thereafter founded.
The story of hackers and 3D printers is longer than the commercial version of the same story would imply, and a lot of important innovations have come out of our community since then too. For instance, have a look at Stratasys’ patent on heated bed technology. At first read, it seems to cover removable heated beds, but have a look at the cutout at the end of claim 1: “wherein the polymer coating is not a polymer tape”. This cutout is presumably in response to the at-the-time common practice of buying Kapton, PEI, or PET tape and applying that to removable heated bed surfaces. I know I was doing that in 2012, because I read about it on IRC or something, long before the Stratasys patent was filed in 2014. They could only get a patent for sprayed-on coatings.
As [Helge] points out, it’s also easily verifiable that the current patent on “brick layers” that we’re worrying about, filed in 2020, comes later than this feature request to Prusa Slicer that covers essentially the same thing in 2019. We assume that the patent examiner simply missed that obvious prior art – they are human after all. But I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to implement this feature given the documented timing.
I would even be so bold as to say that most of the post-2010 innovation in 3D printing has been made by hobbyists. While the RepRap movement was certainly inspired by Stratasys’ invention in the beginning, our community is where the innovation is happening now, and maybe even more starkly on the software side of things than the hardware. Either way, as long as you’re just doing it for fun, let the suits worry about the patents. Hackers gotta hack.
This is why one should always publish their ideas if they want to share it for common good.
Any prior art voids patents. That was the one thing I learned from patents from a school course.
And yet it doesn’t. I recall a case where a researcher had their published work patented after he published. It took 5 years before the patent was revoked, but that was 5 years of his time wasted he couldn’t do research on his work, and he doesn’t get the cost back fighting a bad patent. The patent office simply doesn’t have the resources to give patent approvals the due diligence they require and err on the side of approval. Alongside the patent system is the trade secret system. I think patent should get restricted more and encourage trade secrets more. If the point of the system is to encourage and reward sharing of knowledge, what’s the point of disclosing information for the benefit of others if it prevents them from using it within a reasonable time period that the information would be useful and preventing them from independently coming up with a similar enough idea? The use of the modern patent system just wreaks of childish playground “He’s stole my idea! / He’s copying me!”
Oh he could’ve done research on it, he just would have been risking a patent lawsuit. Now, in theory, that suit would be thrown out and the patent voided immediately when the case crossed a judge’s desk, but there’s always the risk of an ass sitting on the bench.
That’s one of the problems with patent law. It takes an interested party opening themselves up to significant risk to get an invalid patent thrown out. The only risk the patent troll takes is having their frivolous patent taken away from them, which isn’t a real risk if it’s one of dozens and your business model is built around having some of them thrown out.
Getting rid of a bogus patent should be easier than getting one, and shouldn’t involve more than a webform and maybe a nominal fee. But that would require significant tax dollars to be spent on salaries for patent judges in order to mitigate the anticompetitive practice of patent trolling, and that’ll never happen.
Does a write up on Hackaday count as prior art?
Any publicly-disclosed information constitutes prior art. (Expert witness for patent infringement cases, but IANAL.)
So hurry to establish a HaD column “quick ideas” and fill it i.e. with “A city cover created by half-transparent hexagonal self-organized robotic solar cells”, “Subatomic 3d printer”, “Solar powered Fischer -Tropsch fuel synthesis fed by atmospheric CO2” or “Mandatory ON taillights on each moving car”. What is the relationship between patents and sci-fi? How detailed must be the idea to be recognised as prior art? There is grey area where law wolves living are.
I don’t think saying stuff without any details count. A patent is about the process, not a general idea. And there can be many ways to get to the same end result. That’s how patents are circumvented.
I think that Richard Feynman would disagree ;)
Patent lawyers and Feynman (and the adult film industry) would at least agree that there’s plenty of room at the bottom.
A patent is required to teach someone skilled in the art to replicate the invention. You can’t just toss an idea—you have to specify how you implemented it. Originally, the patent office required a working model of the invention but this requirement was waived in 1880.
We very much need to bring that back. An awful lot of patent trolling comes from vaguely worded guesses that were just specific enough to seem like something, combined with an overworked and often rushed patent office and a bit of a question about whether even an obviously over reaching patent is worth fighting in court. A working demonstration wouldn’t solve all those problems, but at least it would make the scope and purpose of the patent much more clear and being it back to being a tool for innovators instead pf lawyers.
Of course our whole system of IP needs a total overhaul for several reasons, not the least of which is the global market and the vastly different ways IP is treated throughout. But if the USA demanded that patents came with working specifics, I think it would at least be a step forward.
For software patents specifically there should be a requirement that you demonstrate a working implementation of the thing you want to patent. This requirement alone would put an end to most of the vague broad software patents out there while not making it any harder for people (or companies) who have invented something genuinely new.
Just expressing some vague idea doesn’t count, the standard is that there must be enough information for a “Person of Ordinary Skill In The Art” (“POSITA”) to reproduce the invention.
Markforged just went through a patent suit.
https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/markforged-and-continuous-composites-legal-battle-ends-with-18m-upfront-settlement-offer-232968/
I personally don’t agree with the outcome…but I am not a lawyer…and it seems to me they got tired of paying lawyers. Seems to me there was plenty of prior art.
That’s the other problem here – the likes of Stratasys can just keep paying lawyers until the other guy goes bankrupt or gives up. The world needs tighter laws about vexatious litigation.
I always thought one of the key measures of a patent was that the invention was “non- obvious”. So many of these patents seem like zero effort ideas. It’s not like “brick layers” took a bunch of expensive r&d to figure out, it’s literally a patent on a shower thought.
I asked in the other article, why do US patents stop the rest of the world?
A US patent prohibits a company outside the US from importing their infringing technology to the US.
Many companies who file US patents file identical patents in multiple countries to add coverage. The most common bundle when filing international patent applications include the United States, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan and Europe.
(EU) No 1257/2012 and (EU) No 1260/2012 passing streamlined european filing with a Unitary patent now covering 24 countries.
This is important too, because some jurisdictions (notoriously in Japan) allow prior way to be overridden by a working example. This is currently being used to troll software designs via patents on things as banal as game mechanics.
if every patent in the USA was declared null and void, and new patents lasted 10 years (and couldn’t be extended) it would be a huge economic boom for the country…
Some patent holders may disagree. Not all patents are held by Google-sized evil corporations or trolls.
The system is undoubtedly 0being abused by some, so it probably does need some rule changes.
Is there an example you can cite where nullifying a specific patent would generate positive results for the US economy? Genuinely interested.
If 10 years isn’t long enough to monopolize an idea to make having that idea up in the first place profitable… maybe it’s just not that great an idea? Just saying…
That said, I’d be open to a system that makes 10 years the base patent length but does allow for longer patents IF the idea takes so much time to start up and become profitable that a longer period is justified. But there needs to be a system that incentivizes judges to be honest about this and not just reward every corp that comes along with a fancy lawyer.
How about a system where if too many of a judges decisions get overturned they get to go back to judging traffic fines for low pay?
Forget about maximizing the economy. That’s the business peoples’ job. Maximize technological development by balancing rewarding good ideas with encouraging the next innovator to build upon them.
eh, you alluded i think to the cornerstone of almost every policy failure in the US. we search the world for ‘a little guy’ who would suffer if we taxed big guys, and make him the mascot for why we can’t tax big guys. meanwhile the big guys work their hardest to make sure the little guy is screwed anyways.
just like a little guy can’t meaningfully fight against a patent troll, they also can’t meaningfully fight against patent infringement either. the patent system, for better or worse, only benefits big players.
says someone who has never tried to secure investment capital to bring an invention to market. Million dollar ideas dont exist. Million dollar implementations of good ideas do. It takes a lot of time and money to bring any idea to reality. If you cant ensure investors that they will see a substantial return they walk. So unless you were born with a rhodium spoon in your mouth youd be SOL.
No, it wouldn’t. You clearly don’t understand how incentives work. Our patent system is hugely flawed, but not in the way you suggest.
You know, you could just go ahead and shift the layers horizontally instead and bypass the patent.
Just print one layer outer perimeter with a lite bit less line with, and the one above with a little more, then shift the layer lines in each layer, and maybe fluctuate the extrusion for the next layer to have regular gaps to fill. A bit more trouble maybe, although I do think it may be even stronger than the patented method, as the next layer will fuse two lines bellow while creating a flat surface, while the patented method will not have an prepared surface to hold on to.
So here is the problem, who is going to pay to get the patent nullified?
Bambu Labs is, in all likelyhood, not going to want to touch this, given their current patent dispute.
Prusa Research probably does not want to fight a patent lawsuit because of their slicer. If they did this would be a great feature. But because of the license of Prusa Slicer, a tangible return on the investment would likely be difficult to quantify.
Soft fever probably doesn’t have the capital to challenge this.
Ultimaker? Maybe. But again where is the return on the investment?
Unfortunately it is not as easy as showing up to the USPTO, dropping off a form showing prior art, and the patent is revoked. It takes money. Unless people are willing to put up said money, then this idea wil be locked behind another patent until it expires.
The EFF may be inclined to help, given their previous activity: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/11/judges-investigation-patent-troll-ip-edge-results-criminal-referrals
Another commenter mentioned a $3000 reevaluation fee that may be refundable when the investigation part has been fulfilled by the filing party. Seems well within reach of crowd funding even when the money is not refunded imo.
So here is the problem, who is going to pay to get the patent nullified?
Bambu Labs is, in all likelyhood, not going to want to touch this, given their current patent dispute.
Prusa Research probably does not want to fight a patent lawsuit because of their slicer. If they did this would be a great feature. But because of the license of Prusa Slicer, a tangible return on the investment would likely be difficult to quantify.
Soft fever probably doesn’t have the capital to challenge this.
Ultimaker? Maybe. But again where is the return on the investment?
Unfortunately it is not as easy as showing up to the USPTO, dropping off a form showing prior art, and the patent is revoked. It takes money. Unless people are willing to put up said money, then this idea wil be locked behind another patent until it expires.
That’s very simple. Parent offices ONLY check if there are other patents for prior art, they don’t search the internet. And they don’t care, as they get payed more for accepting a patent then denying it.
The patent system is absolutely vital to support innovation, as a means for inventors and companies to see a return on their ideas and investment.
At the same time, it’s deeply flawed because many, many patents are issued that shouldn’t have been, and patent litigation is insanely expensive.
Patent examiners have an almost impossible task, to ferret out every last bit of prior art wherever it might exist in the world (the internet is everywhere, so disclosure or filing anywhere in the world can count as prior art).
They generally have only days of time-on-task to rule on validity, and can often have dozens of referenced prior patents to consider, let alone other relevant work that may not have been disclosed in the application.
The result in my view is that many patents are issued that shouldn’t have been, stifling the advance of technology and the general public good. (I’ve served as an expert witness on a number of patent cases in the area of imaging, image processing architectures and image management. IANAL though. Infringement claims based in bad patents create a lot of very well-compensated work for me, but I wish it were otherwise 😕)
A central problem is that patent litigation is almost by necessity insanely expensive. (Very complex issues that come down to the precise language used, the very specific interpretation of the meanings of various terms and very deep research into prior art – coupled with economic impacts that can easily reach 8 figures.) This means that enforcing a patent is rarely practical for an individual inventor, and responding to even completely specious claims of infringement is costly regardless of your size.
On the whole, it’s a broken system, but it’s the only one we have, and is vital to innovation. The best we can do in current circumstances is to fight against bad patents any way we can, while at the same time supporting and upholding good ones.