I’ve not found much of a difference but have had it save print blemishes occasionally when extruding into the tower catches a bit of filament that didn’t get kicked fully off the nozzle in the wipe.
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You are understanding it perfectly. My point is, people hate that companies use open source to patent their own ideas. I get why that is not popular, but I argue, at some point, this stigma needs to go away. Patents don’t last forever, nor should this stigma.
Ah ok. I think only hard core open source enthusiast hates it. And IMO not because of the patents they filled but because BL printers are closed source, meaning it’s harder to modify them.
IMO, People were so used to unfinished printers that it was unbelievable for them to not be able to improve and modify the printer to their liking (and I was one of them).
But if it’s well done close source printer is really not a problem. And more importantly close source is the only way to achieve the kind of integration that BL did on their printers with their ecosystem (like the “one click” printing from the handy app)
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It seem as if some folks believe there is some overall good that results from patents. Its purpose is to protect the hard work someone did by protecting their IP. I’m sure in some cases is more guesswork than actual work but that’s all part of the game.
Also the government isn’t going to step in for the benefit of consumers. It’s a legal process where lawyers win. No one cares about us.
If you don’t like companies using you open source ideas then patent it or keep it to yourself
The time the government did step in was when the Wright Brothers tried to tie up the very new aircraft industry with patents. They lost that argument. Maybe they needed better lawyers?
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I think if they win or settle, the result will likely be a licence fee Bambu needs to pay them.
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I think the prior art might well kill the suit if Bambu wants to fight it and invalidate the patent. The heated bed prior art seem pretty convincing and if Makerbot published info about purge towers before filing a patent then that one is out too (even if Stratasys bought Makerbot).
There are way to extend the life of a patent from 20 years additional patents that build off it but the Makerbot 2013 prior art, even if they patented it, is past the 20 years utility patent lifetime.
This one is going to be interesting to watch. It will be a long drawn out fight and they are very unlikely to get an injunction on imports if Bambu can show any likelihood of prevailing on the merits.
Alternatively Stratasys may cut Bambu a low cost deal in order to lay down a marker that people are paying for a license which would then give then more psychological pressure to hit the smaller players with.
[Context I’m not a lawyer but I now have 6 patents to my name with 7th about to issue and I’ve been involved in litigating two of them as well as being an expert witness in another patent case]
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I know some people on the forum aren’t fond of this guy, but his youtube video does seem to provide some missing color on the Stratasys suit:
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hes one of my favorite. Not an ounce of fan boy in him. Hes on our side instead of the corporate side. Anti-shill
Figure 6 seems to describe the spool tagging technology. But, they could deactivate that feature.
…
Actually, I had him pegged as a Creality fanboy. He is definitely a Bambu hater after they cut him off.
Don’t know a lot about him so I’ll leave it at that.
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This isn’t Stratasys against Bambu or Afinia… This is against any manufacturer going forward!
I ran 3 Stratasys machines for right about 3 years and they are boring because they limit the customer and the reason they limit the customer is because they are Boring and will never be anymore more than a big over-priced black box that has nothing innovative on the horizon.
I look forward to seeing them go down in flames on this suite…!
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My favorite part of all this is how many people cry when someone copies bambu. Try and not be so invested into one company.
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I thought the most interesting thing about the NBR video wasn’t actually the details of the suit, but rather Bambu’s financial performance. Just like NBR said, I had always thought of Bambu as a self-made startup initiated by a small group of talented engineers who leveraged kickstarter into the products and company we’re all familiar with. Maybe that’s all true, or maybe it’s partly myth, but he claims Bambu did $200MM last year in revenue and has raised something like $600MM in venture capital. Wow! What a rocket to the moon. Just imagine what that would value the company at. Obviously far more than what MakerBot got acquired for.
Now, assuming all that is true, the upshot is clear:
The Good News
Bambu should have more than ample money to fine tune the hell out of all the print profiles for every nozzle diameter and every layer height! And if not before, then certainly now. C’mon Bambu. You can do it! 
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Does kinda mess up the “new company cant afford more tech support” idea or “cant afford to easily send replacement parts” “Cant afford more shippers” etc
Go back 1 year and i said they were going to take the majority of printer sales and that hopefully they would atleast invest smartly or open source more whem that time comes. Here we are. When every other company is struggling.
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Looks to me that Stratasys is not amused that there is a better and cheaper product on the market as so many other brands that use the same principle and price level.
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Yeah, you wouldnt go after the people that are barely profiting off of it first. You hit the top and everybody else falls in line. It shows that they arent just patent trolls. Or else they would be going after everybody. Even the tiny companies that cant afford top lawyers.
If someone took your protected model off makerworld and sold it to 1 person, that may not tick you off. If that same person starts selling more of your design than you even sell, you sue. We would all do the same. Especially if we owned actual patents. And if a patent is granted its because they went through all the steps. They arent just trying to patent air. Bambu has plenty of patents and guaranteed they would sue too.
What am I missing it is not possible to patent something that is already in the public domain.
A patent can be granted but if there is evidence that it was not novel then its not worth the paper it was written on.
Its always been important to maintain secrecy and NDA’s before filing for a patent so how can patents so new be upheld in court?
I’ve been an expert witness on a number of tech cases where I could prove something was in the public domain before the filing date and that voided the patents.
Is the US different?
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They have patented enclosure. So they kinda patented hot air ^^
That’s a lot of hot air “baloney c.r. a.p.” coming from Stratasys (uhm… that’s me attempting to be “politically correct” … instead of plainly saying “that’s lots of horse sh1t”). 