If the same rules shall apply to everyone, how would you give your local manufacturers an edge over cheap (or not so cheap) imports ?
The patent war started decades ago, we are just getting far more creative now
Just wait until the war we seem to see here actually starts to get public attention LOL
We already have around 90% of the human genome PATENTED - mostly through US companies and their subsidiaries.
And see far worse in other areas.
There is an awful lot of things we might consider common goods.
Not all of them are protected by patents, most are protected by design features or appearance.
In the USA and some other countries you have a patent registered in your name even if you did not invent anything at all.
Recent changes also widened the range for patents.
For example:
In the past you get a patent on something like a process to create some new chemical but NOT for some code you wrote or an algorithm and such things.
This lack of ‘proper’ protection of non physical ‘inventions’ translated directly to the hunt for new patents.
If you can copy something that has no patent yet in ways that won’t infringe other rights of those who created or invented it than you are a winner.
And so some piece of code that started out as open source can be yours for a few bucks so to speak.
Enough iterations and changes over time result in YOUR code no longer being open source.
But of course you kept providing those source files as per licence T’s & C’s.
with suddenly holding a patent that not only covers your code but also the general functionality of it you locked out everyone else.
Trying to develop their own now mean having to pay for the right to do so and you get rich quickly while eliminating competition.
What started with the lightbulb is now a patent run for whatever you can imagine.
Just limited by your imagination and ability to put into the correct patent form so it will be accepted.
Oh, what about the lightbulb you ask…
Well, there was this mid level inventor that thought there is a market for electric lights.
But being just of average skill and competence while having a keen sense for business he got creative…
Many tried but failed to invent a ‘lightbulb’ that both works reliable and is easy enough to manufacture.
Our keen inventor just picked all the already existing patents and samples out there for related light things and paid a bunch of inventors to give him great ideas to make it work.
He combined several patents with little to no changes to declare it something new.
Since it somehow worked as advertised (mostly) he got the patent for what we know today as the incandescent lightbulb - in all variations.
Turning a thief into a rich man while ending in history books as the inventor of the electric light, the man who changed the world LOL
You can do what you like for PRIVATE use without having to worry about patents and copyrights…
But once you try to sell anything based on it…
And if you do this as a company then things can get very costly indeed these days.
That not even part of the printer - bambu printer itself has no code auto prime tower, it’s being commanded by the slicer gcodes. They have no base for suing on this, probably Bambu Studio will have that missing feature. Guess what, slicer is open source, someone like Orca will keep it going and ignores the bully.
Yeah. Well, trolls or not, the lawsuit exists and is an undeniable fact that will have to be dealt with by BL, sooner than later. Whether this lawsuit is intended to put out a very successful 3D printer manufacturer (that definitely menaces Stratasys’ market share in the US - and possibly in the rest of the world - ) or it’s simply just a way to discourage and hinder any form of competition, that remains to be seen.
As a private individual and end user, I really couldn’t care less for Stratasys’s “reasons”, or for their “power play games”. I do care, however, for having a good quality and reliable product (3D printer ) that I can afford at a reasonable price, which, as you have seen in the video posted on top of this thread, it ain’t the case with any of the Stratasys’s printers.
On the other hand, Stratasys might be entitled to defend its IP rights (though, from what I could gather online, they seem to have obtained those IP rights mostly by acquiring (hostile takeovers???) various other companies, and not really through their own R&D).
BL came out 2 years ago with a novel and innovative printer that has shaken the 3D printing market, and forced plenty of the existing 3D printer manufacturers to rethink their business models and forced them to step out of their comfort zone in order to keep up with BL (or else risking to become irrelevant). That is, in my humble opinion a good thing (at least for the regular end user, but also for the development & further improvement of the 3D printing industry). Am I worried what’s gonna happen and what the impact will be on me, should Stratasys win the lawsuit? Not really. Firstly, because, no matter the outcome, I still have my BL printer and gonna continue using it as I see fit, whether Stratasys likes it or not. Secondly, the cat is out of the bag, and the change brought by BL printers to the market cannot be denied, or swiped away as irrelevant, nor forgotten. End users have seen that innovation can be done, that better and innovative 3D printers can be produced, and manufacturers have now no other option but to continue developing and coming out with new features and improvements to their 3D printers or else risk being left behind and stepped over by the consumers. And that does applies to Stratasys as well. In the end, whether BL survives this or not, it ain’t that relevant to me, as the changes brought by BL printers to the market cannot be undone, and the existing manufacturers have now no other option but to continue what BL has started. The end users (trough their choices and purchases) will make sure of that. Win or lose, BL has brought a very long awaited change and innovation in an otherwise laid back industry. There’s no going back now for them.
I somehow doubt that the Chinese government will get involved in such matters, especially when it comes to IP rights. By getting involved in this, the Chinese government would practically open the “Pandora’s box” and make itself an open target for a wide range of worldwide lawsuits on IP rights infringements (which is an undeniable fact, given the huge amount of products manufactured - under license or not - in China). Considering the larger number of 3D printer manufacturers in China, it may be that the Chinese government could decide to assist the Chinese companies, with either financial and/or legal support, but not more than that.
The choice for suing a company (or several) for infringement of the IP rights (or for any other legal reasons), remains with the plaintiff party. The fact that a plaintiff party goes only for companies located in a specific region doesn’t constitute an unlawful or illegal action. It may be a very conscious decision from the plaintiff to go against companies that have a lower chance of winning, and by doing so, the plaintiff has a legal precedent that could be used as a strong deterrent against similar infringing companies in the US, forcing those to either settle or to purchase licenses.
Are such practices fair and ethical? Most likely not, but as long as they are not deemed unlawful, and get the desired message across, such practices are viewed as “fair game”.
A basic principle in law refers to the fact that if something is not specifically forbidden, then it’s allowed.
everyone bugging for no reason imo. SSYS, while they may have decent printers, are a terribly ran public company. They are all but a scam in the stock market - with their stock doing literally nothing over the past 20 years. a classic case of insiders eating every ounce of profit. $100 down to $7. (marker cap fading from $2.5B to 500M)
it will get thrown out or Bambu will pay them a royalty and life will go on.
The only thing that bothers me is this is taking place the usual patent troll cases do, Texas.
Samsung vs Apple back in the day, and several others because Texas is the place to sue. Especially if you’re US based.
It’s a troll case designed to bring income in to help the company, not to protect any IP. They simply want it licensed for guarenteed income. I would wager outside of using it as a vehicle to sue they could care less about it.
They will either settle, immediate influx, they will take it to court and win/lose, it’ll be thrown out. Either way there will be a solution that will allow printers to continue. Always is a work around.
An embargo on BL in the states isn’t likely to happen. There’s a lot to go through to get to that point, and it will take months if not years and you’ll know well ahead of time. In recent memory Apple is the only one I can remember and it lasted 2 weeks. This was after appeals and more court back an forth.
If BL has the money to sink into lawyers then all is good. If not they’ll cave and license the patents.
Everything is fine. Just sit back, watch and worry when there’s time to worry. Now is not that time.
And yet, no other manufacturer, not even MakerBot/Stratasys, came out with a printer with characteristics even close to the ones BL had put into their X1C and the following variations.
Let me make myself clear: I do not condone nor support IP theft, but neither can Stratasys claim ownership over prior existing art (think of RepRap & the open source community creations). Let’s just remember of a previous alleged infringement claim in: Stratasys Drops One Patent from Its Lawsuit Against Afinia - Make: and the legal arguments presented by Afinia to counter the allegations of IP rights infringements: Afinia Responds to Stratasys: Your Patents Are Invalid and Your Threats are Anti-Competitive - Make:, and the fact that, apparently, a number of patents invoked by Stratasys have, according to some media, lapsed.
Now, we could continue to argue back and forth among ourselves, but such a discussion definitely won’t solve any of BL’s current legal issues. At best, might keep us occupied finding information and documents supporting our arguments, and at worst, might turn this topic into a heated yet unnecessary debate about “who’s right” and “who’s wrong”.
While everyone is entitled to have and express his/her opinion(s) (or research) on this matter, let’s not forget that we all here are concerned by this matter’s legal outcome, though to a much lesser degree than BL is. For BL this could become a matter of survival; for the rest of us (end users) might turn out to be just a headache finding replacement parts and technical support (should BL go under), at worst, having invested (hard earned) money into a product that potentially could turn out to have a much shorter lifespan than we initially expected when purchasing it.
To me, Stratasys is a disease. Companies like that are anti-innovation. They don’t progress the industry themselves and they stop everyone else from doing it too because they want to have control and money. Their actions hurt everyone though. IP protection is supposed to help companies protect their innovations, but they’re used by companies like this to prevent others from innovating while they stagnate. Just look at how much the 3-D printing industry has exploded with growth since those original patents expired that those companies were sitting on. The 3-D printing industry that is today is what it is, as big as it is, despite companies like Stratasys.
@johnfcooley , you reminded me of the years I spent researching and reading up on issues of IP and patents. In particular following cases of patent trolls, And other abuses of the patent system in the corporate world. It makes my blood boil. I am at the opinion that patents are used far more often to stifle innovation than to protect innovation. They are used by greedy people to manipulate and twist money out of people doing real work, And they are wielded by large corporations as weapons to stifle their competition when they can’t compete.
Don’t say it will never stand up on court. I work in tech and see patent trolls all the time. I work for a fortune 500 financial firm, thea largest broker in the country, and many years ago, a patent troll ended up with rights for a super generic “means to access remote desktops over the internet” and they were sueing all enterprise customers of Citrix. And won… Patent trolls are worthless scum and are strategic in their strikes. I hope the courts smack this company back down, but I doubt it. American parent system is so broken.
True, but let’s not forget that BL was the very first doing it. And to avoid any missunderstandings and any potential further arguments, no, I’m not a BL fanboy (see in this regard plenty of my previous posts where I’m coming hard on BL for its failures towards its customers), so I won’t go into an argument on the “superiority” or “primacy” of BL machines. I bought a BL printer after doing my own due diligence, after researching the market and the existing machines. I chose BL because its existing printers responded best to my checklist of demands and expectations and I could afford to pay for it. All the rest is irrelevant.
I wasn’t arguing any of that and wasn’t in any way saying you were a fanboy. I only said that BL didn’t innovate the things covered in that patent. They licensed it presumably just like Creality.
I also said nothing about superiority of any printer. I suppose I need to be clear I was not attacking your printer choice or anything. I only stated a fact and provided a link to a patent. That was it. I did not mean to upset.
I also bought a Bambu because I liked the features. At the time I was unaware of any others who had the same kinds of features and don’t know that anyone else had announced color printers with AMS units at that time.
Apologies MZip, my bad. I haven’t been clear enough when I made that point, that I wasn’t referring to you, rather making a “preemptive” statement, as I’ve noted (like most likely you did too) that there are users on the forum that seem to enjoy applying this label (BL fanboy) to those posting something positive or favorable about BL, or arguing for the superiority of BL machines over others.
Well technically Bambu printers purge into the poop chute, and the tower is actually just a prime tower. So bogus lawsuit imo. Call it a prime skyscraper and you’re good
Actually, they created FDM printing… they had that patented to. I agree that they are failing to implement innovation the way we want it, but they appeared to have laid the groundwork and patented everything the market is currently based on. Sucks, because if we had to rely on MakerBot/Stratsys, we would be spending $2,000 on slow printers that are open framed and single material/color. Or $6,000 for a slow closed frame IDEX printer. Neither one particularly enticing.
However, the more I think of what’s going on, I’m starting to wonder if the Chinese companies simply decided not to pay the licensing fees. Maybe Prusa and the other American manufacturers have just been paying the fees, and thus there significantly higher prices. To me, the oddest thing was how it was targeted at Bambu, but if Stratasys did offer a reasonable licensing fee and some paid and some didn’t, it would make sense why the suit would be more targeted.
I think there is a lot to be determined. And I would love to hear from Stratasys on their “Why”.
It’s more a prime tower than a purge tower to be honest. The goal of the tower is not to purge but to build pressure inside the nozzle after having purging the filament.
What’s weird to me, if it’s true every 10 years old printers are infringing their parents.
So why this wake up call now, and why only targeted to bbl?
All printers and decent slicers have those features for ages.
