Stratasys is losing ground because their massively overpriced ecosystem is getting outclassed by literally everything else in the market. So why improve if you can just sue your competition out of the US market?
Linking the patents listed, because I’m struggling to understand what technologies are spelled out in them:
- 9421713- purge towers apparently
- 9592660- heated beds/ removable build plates
- 7555357- something to do slicing workflow/ path generation
- 9168698 / 10556381- detecting that force has been applied to the extruder
I’m taking my best guesses here, so feel free to correct me if I’m misreading something.
EmilieEvans@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
I hope that one day the constant bullying of Stratasys backfires.
Overall the patent system is in dire need of improvement:
Right now we are at a point where the trivial patents are so dominant that I believe the patent system does more harm than good. Stopping progress/innovation instead of encouraging it.
Stratasys: probably doesn’t feel BambuLab at all at the moment
Ultimaker: there is some pressure. Dozens of companies are using BambuLab but they still have a customer group that isn’t yet addressed by BambuLab
MakerBot: Hell yes. Why would anybody buy a MakerBot right now? Their entry-level printer is at the same price point as a BambuLab X1C and gets obliterated by BambuLab’s performance. I also see how education facilities (schools, universities) are choosing BambuLab offerings.
riskable@programming.dev 3 months ago
It’s not just actually innovative parents that are missing from the patent system (which they are). It has also become so expensive to both file and litigate a patent that only big businesses and patent trolls can afford it.
The median cost to litigate a patent is five fucking million dollars (in 2021). What this means is that if your patented solution isn’t worth at least 2x that amount it is quite simply not worth patenting.
The whole system should be scrapped. It was fundamentally flawed from the start and has demonstrated over and over again that it does not scale. It’s not even worth it to keep pharmaceutical patents (there’s other, better, cheaper ways to come up with new drugs than $100 billion dollar commercial entities ripping us all off and spending half their budgets on marketing).
Moonrise2473@feddit.it 3 months ago
Exactly, patents that are just describe obvious stuff like “Method for sharing and searching playlists” (it actually exists) should be rejected or get just 3 years max
Stuff like this took more time/money in filing the patent application than the actual development
morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Obligatory I am not a patent lawer, but quick glance at the description, how the heck did that pass the novelty requirement?