Not illegal, just unethical
1 Like
Lazmo88 stated that Swapmod wasn’t interested in industrializing an A1 version of the automated plate switching functionality.
Your reply was “This is not entirely correct.”
What is that supposed to mean? That’s kind of a cheeky answer for what is essentially the crux of this issue. Theodore has a leg to stand on if Swapmod or Jobox at any time indicated they were not interested in A1 plate switching.
To me that opens up the floodgates for anyone to go create it. And by you stating “not ENTIRELY correct” implies that there is some inherent correctness to it.
I’m with lazmo in that just because you have a mechanism for the A1 mini, it does not mean that you have a monopoly on every bedslinger out there.
And lean on the Hail Mary quote… when European Mariners met Asian Mariners for the first time and they both were using sails to power their boats, nobody was surprised. It’s just understood that’s how you do it. For a Y-axis bed slinger, it’s no surprise that the plate is loaded and ejected on the Y-axis. It would be insanely complicated to do it on the X-axis, and ridiculously overengineered to use a 6 DOF arm.
For Y-Axis bed sligners, either you replace the plate on the Y-axis or you tilt the whole thing forward and nudge it off with the toolhead once the plate is cool.
Vorons have had plate replacement apparatus’ made before, is Jobox/Swapmod copying them?
If he’s copying you, but you haven’t created it yet, then is he copying you?
The whole Bambu community loses if you have a novel idea and the philosophy is “you guys have to waaaaaaiiiitttttt for usssss toooo maaaaaaaaaake ittttt fooooorrrrr the Aaaaaaaa1111111.” When there are people who can and want to do it right now.
7 Likes
Thanks for sharing your opinion. Please excuse me, but I will not continue this discussion. I already sayed all I wanted to say and can not win here anything, but loose a lot of time. I respect your opinion even if I’m not sharing it entirely. I agree to fact, that when someone not hurry up, there will be others who does.
You can get ones at the moment for the A1 mini, it’s called SwapMod if you want to have a look and take inspiration for one for the bambulab a1.
5 Likes
I don’t think you read any of this thread…
2 Likes
Oops didn’t read all of it 
4 Likes
So were they designing this for a different printer because if I’m correct the A1 mini didn’t release until September of 2023 and the A1 in December of 2023?
These printers have only been out for about 1 year now where are you getting these we’ve been working on this for years now thing.
JobOx.
Developement started early 2022
I can’t see the issue in releasing this even for sale. If it was developed on his own without using the files from the A1 mini version then what is the issue?
I see it as another competitor joining the party. I could build a car and I doubt any other manufacturers would say you can’t do that as we had wheels on ours first.
Legally I don’t think theodor has done/is doing anything wrong but I’m not a lawyer.
1 Like
why swap the bed why not just use a 3dque vaapr bed that ive been using on a ender3 for years? not extra cost in multiple plates? all I have to do is tilt it, the machine prints, cools, pushes it off the plate and restarts?
Its indeed a very clever design this plate swapping thing, but curious how effective it is long term?
Because it has to cool. This doesn’t- it just swaps plates in a few seconds and moves on. There’s certainly use cases for both.
Hey everyone, just a quick update!
After months of tuning, I’m finally close to a final version. I’ve already provided a few early bird units to some of you, and if the feedback is positive and everything works as expected, I believe I’ll be able to start preorders in March.
As for the app I mentioned earlier, the core functionality is mostly finished, and it’s already possible to run it in the Windows console. Now, I’m focusing on the visual side.
Stay tuned, and thanks for your support! 
7 Likes
Theodor hasn’t done anything wrong. He is just improving on someone else’s design. Take the Bambulab AMS, the Creality CFS, and the Anycubic Ace Pro and put them next to each other; they look one and the same. If there isn’t a lawsuit for that, there shouldn’t be one for this. 
2 Likes
Legally wrong? I’m not a lawyer so I won’t comment. Morally wrong? I’d say so.
Jobox, who was the original team who developed this idea and has, according to Dill, spent 3-ish years developing the technology. They came up with the way to switch plates so efficiently. They came up with the ideas on how the software would function. They spent their time, effort, and money to create this product.
Then along comes Theodor to take the exact concept of hardware and software and simply changing the dimensions and swapping magnets for springs (a very minor difference). He is not improving it, he’s beating the original team to market with a possibly worse version (judging by the 6+ typos on the website) for a different printer. Dill has stated that the A1 version is coming from Jobox. Another thread member spread misinformation and claimed that Dill stated that there would be no A1 version.
Same exact thing applies with CFS, ACE, and all the other copies. Bambu comes up with the form factor and software, everyone else ripped them off. Competition is a good thing, but only when there’s innovation. ACE at least added something in relation to humidity, if I recall correctly.
1 Like
@Theodor keep on this way, you are doing an amazing work for A1 printer owners. 
3 Likes
@Dill was doing amazing work for A1M printer owners, Jobox is (according to Dill’s previous posts) working on an A1 version. Theodor is stealing ideas.
From my point of view, there is a misunderstanding here. Theodor is not a competitor to SwapMod or Jobox. He made a different product for a different group of users. His system was developed for the A1, not the A1 Mini. It works in a same way but it solves a different problem.
As far as I know, there is no real proof that Jobox or SwapMod are making an A1 version. Dill mentioned it once and pretty much only asked if there is an interest for such product, but if they were really working on it, why would they not tell to potential users? There have been no announcements or updates.
Theodor saw that there was no plate-changing system for the A1 and made one. If Jobox makes one in the future, that is good because users will have more options. But from where I see it, there is no reason to attack someone for creating something new.
3 Likes
I am not a lawyer, but I am a US patent agent, so I have a reasonable understanding of intellectual property (IP) law, especially in the USA. But that being said, this is not legal advice…
There are several types of IP from a legal point-of-view. Trade secrets are just what they sound like. For something to be a trade secret, the company/person needs to take reasonable care to keep the thing from becoming public. Think about the formula for Coca-Cola as an example of a trade secret. Once a trade secret is made public, there is no more protection. I don’t think that trade secrets are coming into play in this discussion.
Trademarks cover symbols that identify a maker of a product. It can be a logo, a word, a phrase, etc. “Swapmod” would likely be covered by trademark law, whether or not it is officially registered as such, as it is being used to identify the source of the product. Even if someone makes an exact copy of another product, there is no trademark infringement as long as they don’t use the same brand-name or logo, or something similar enough to cause confusion.
Copyrights cover an expression of an idea, such as the words in a book or the content of an stl file. Copyrights are accrued when something is created without any extra registration, although there are official processes to register a copyright. Copyright is the only area of IP law to have a “fair use” doctrine, meaning that there are some specific exceptions which allow a copyright to be ignored, such as making a backup of something. But a copyright can’t cover the underlying concept. For example you can copyright a photo of a lighthouse, but that doesn’t preclude someone else from taking another photo of the same lighthouse, from the same angle, under similar lighting conditions, and copyrighting that photo themselves.
Design protection (design patents in the USA, design registration in most other places) covers the ornamental design of something. It must be applied for to obtain. Someone else can make another product that does exactly the same thing as long as it doesn’t look the same. How much different it needs to look is always a point of contention, but generally, things need to look almost identical to the actual design element that is protected to infringe, but this is a long involved topic.
Utility Patents cover the way that something is built or the way that something functions. The protection offered depends on exactly what is claimed in the patent, which can be very broad in some cases, but may be very narrow in other cases. Utility Patents are fairly expensive to obtain (thousands of dollars) and take quite a long time to obtain (2-3 years is typical), but offer good protection from competitors in many cases. There is NO fair use doctrine for patents, although the realities of the costs of enforcing patent rights means that you are unlikely to get in major trouble if you infringe a patent for your own personal non-commercial use - BUT you could.
From a legal POV, if a new product/company is not infringing on a competitors IP as defined above, then they are probably not in legal jeopardy in bringing their competitive product to market. This is how capitalistic markets work and how new technology and lower prices emerge. From what I have seen in this thread, while @Theodor may have taken the same idea described by others for use in his product, whether he is in legal jeopardy or not depends mostly on whether patents have been applied for by others. And he will probably not find out about that until at least a patent application is published which is about 18 months after it is filed.
I will leave the moral implications to others, but people copy other people’s ideas all the time in business. Intellectual property laws are set up to define boundaries of what types of copying are deemed legal and proper competition, and what types of copying are not.
6 Likes
It most likely isn’t because the costs associated with that far outweigh the benefits.