3D printer maker Bambu Lab faces patent infringement lawsuits that could threaten hobbyist 3D printing in general
3D printer maker Bambu Lab faces patent infringement lawsuits that could threaten hobbyist 3D printing in general
An OG in 3D printing is taking on a new, but highly successful, upstart in the industry
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18550496
Daily reminder that IP law is fucking stupid.
And always about protecting the hegemony of the rich and powerful.
It's never about the struggling artist/inventor just wanting to be paid for their work as the lobbyists and the politicians they own pretend every time they want to fuck over regular people some more.
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That's like all of 3d printing, that's pretty scary. If they win on all 5, seems like it'd kill consumer 3d printing entirely.
Why can they even patent stuff they didn't invent?
Better lawyers. Patent law is so f'd up. Few understand it and those that do take advantage of it.
I read the heated bed patent and it was about the way it's built, so I'm not convinced it's a general hot bed patent but something more small detail about how they are using it.
I suspect someone will need to do more research and this article is a knee jerk reaction
Eastern District of Texas is extremely favorable to patent trolls. It’s not a coincidence that they filed the suit there.
I hope one day it will be illegal to shop for judges to shut down tech companies
That seems geared only towards FDM printers, so SLA (resin) is still ok-ish? I do suppose those really big powder printers could also suffer.
So when do we have fun with the ip owners in moonbase alpha?
Patent trolls doing patent troll things. Stratasys no longer provides usable value to the enterprise market and they're stagnating bad, their only hope is to start suppressing competition through overly broad, unrefined patents obviously tailored to provide a blanket market lockout.
They've done it before and they'll do it again. Fuck Stratasys, uncompetitive monopolistic fucks.
I hope it gets tossed out of court considering companies have been freely using these patents for years and their just now going after someone because Bambu has been so much more successful than a lot of the cottage-type companies who'd previously been building most printers. You can't simply wait for a big fish to decide to start enforcing your patent rights because by then it's been used to much without any push back that you've effectively given up the rights.
There is certainly a lot of precedent for them not defending patents, especially those now expired.
Unfortunately this is the Texas circuit court so any kind of critical thinking or obvious precedent won't matter, and the biggest corporation will win by default until appealed. We will just have to hopee Bambu has the resources to survive in the US market until then, as the court will likely force a stop sale injunction or large penalties on device sales.
Lmao, as an idiot trying to get a 20y/o stratysys running at work, I can see why they're trying to sue.
Their machines are trash and wildly outdated, DRM spools locked into cases and disposable beds are GARBAGE.
Turns out they spent a lot of time developing the 'cutting edge' FDM tech from 30 years ago and can't quite keep up with their coreXY counterparts.
The old adage: Young companies innovate while old companies litigate.
Disposable what?!?!
The print beds are SINGLE USE injection molded ABS(I think it's ABS, anyhow).
They snap over the heating element and seem to be a gigantic waste of resources. You can tell R&D was pushed to make their machines as profitable as possible by avoiding reusable parts.
You can't refill their spool cassettes either without some RFID hacking.
It's fuckin' bogus.
We have 3 Stratasys printers at work and yeah, you're absolutely correct.
To add, their 'professional' slicer program "Insight" is the most user hostile piece of software I've ever laid my eyes on. Straight out of 1992 levels of awful. The workflow, the UI (if you can call it that), everything.
The other 'user friendly' slicer is "GrabCAD Print", an Apple style piece of garbage. It lacks everything beyond basic functionality, yet lately they've been pumping it full of subscription locked features.
Honestly, fuck this company.
Edit: nevermind my reading comprehension is stuck at kindergarten level
Good news is, you will never be able to stop hobbyist 3d printing.
Sorry patent trolls, you can't make aluminum extrusion, stepper motors, an extruder, and a short circuit illegal.
The problem is that most people aren't making RepRap printers from scratch, they're buying kits which has everything included.
Bambu makes decent gear, I don't think we want to have the only option being Chinese machines which always makes compromises to make it cheaper. And that's coming from a person who uses Chinese printers.
These patents seam trivial obvious ones. Hope they get knocked down during the case.
Umm... Wow... Wtf?
Almost not surprising. Inventors and R&D businesses patent things all the time, then it takes a while to claim them. There was a guy in Australia who apparently invented WiFi (he calls it "wiffey") and he successfully asserted his patent against WiFi manufacturers worldwide such that they paid him a couple pennies in royalties for every chip manufactured.
The saving grace is that patents only last for 20 years. After that, anyone can use the design, like Gillette's double edged safety razor (which is why their modern razors are so silly and change every few years).