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Comment on A Simple Software Change to Add "Bricklayer" Mode to Slicers Delivers Truly Water-Tight 3D Prints

Stratasys still has a patent on it

That’s putting it generously, isn’t it?

This video from a year ago goes into why the patent they have today isn’t valid. (Short answer: prior art. They patented it in 1995 and that expired in 2015 in the U.S. and 2016 in Europe. Then they re-patented it in 2020, which isn’t really something they can do, but the patent office granted it anyway, probably unaware of the prior patent. There’s kindof a “new claim” in the later patent, but there’s prior art for that as well in the form of a 2019 feature request on PrusaSlicer’s Github.)

I get that Stratasys has lawyers and money and might theoretically be able to win even a case with as little merit as a patent case regarding that 2020 patent would have. But I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say they have a (valid) patent.

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squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
That’s a core problem with the patent system:

Patent offices don’t really check for prior art. There’s a short period between patent applications and patents being granted where the public can submit prior art. If nobody notices that such an invalid patent is being applied for and thus nobody submits prior art, the patent is granted. Patent offices are of the opinion that it’s the responsibility of courts to sort out invalid patents like that.

Patent litigation is super expensive and time consuming. So if a huge corporation like Stratasys holds a patent, most smaller companies (and yes, in this context Creality, Prusa and Bambulab count as small) usually don’t want to spend all the time, effort and risk of a patent fight. Also, even if you win, you don’t get your legal costs back. So even if e.g. Prusa fights Stratasys over that patent and wins, Prusa will still lose all the money they spent on legal costs for the lawsuit. All over a feature that, while cool, doesn’t bring them any money at all if they implement it.
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