Questionable Patents From MakerBot 56
An anonymous reader writes "OpenBeam USA is a Kickstarted company that builds open source aluminum construction systems (think high-quality erector sets). One of the main uses for the systems is building 3D printers, and creator Terence Tam is heavily involved in the 3D-printing community. He's now put up a blog post about some disturbing patents filed by MakerBot. In particular, he notes a patent for auto-leveling on a 3D printer. Not only is this an important upcoming technology for 3D printers, the restriction of which would be a huge blow to progress, it seems the patent was filed just a few short weeks after Steve Graber posted a video demonstrating such auto-leveling. There had also been a Kickstarter campaign for similar tech a few months earlier. Tam gives this warning: 'Considering the Stratasys — Afinia lawsuit, and the fact that Makerbot is now a subsidiary of Stratasys, it's not a stretch to imagine Makerbot coming after other open source 3D manufacturers that threaten their sales. After all, nobody acquires a patent warchest just to invite their competitors to sit around the campfire to sing Kumbaya. It is therefore vitally important that community developed improvements do not fall under Makerbot's (or any other company's) patent portfolio to be used at a later date to clobber the little guys.'"
Oblig Prior Art Question (Score:1)
I assume 10 others are asking the same question as I type this, but wouldn't a video demonstrating the tech published weeks before the patent was filed constitute prior art, rendering the patent non-novel and invalid?
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Okay, stupid me, this is why you RTFA first: it specifically discusses this and explains how to submit prior art evidence to the USPTO. /doh
Re:Oblig Prior Art Question (Score:4, Informative)
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http://hackaday.com/2012/04/23... [hackaday.com]
This has been published April 2012, the provisional patent is from October 2012, so Makerbot wasted some time and money, by the look of it.
Depends; these days, you have to actually submit prior art evidence to the USPTO and someone there has to agree that it's prior art. Otherwise, the patent stands.
So even though "we" know there's prior art... has anyone submitted this to the USPTO?
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Re:Oblig Prior Art Question (Score:4, Informative)
The author of original article/blog mentions towards the end that he submitted 3 prior arts to USPTO.
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My mistake; this is completely correct. I didn't notice the original submission date.
Re:Oblig Prior Art Question (Score:5, Informative)
wouldn't a video demonstrating the tech published weeks before the patent was filed constitute prior art, rendering the patent non-novel and invalid?
You obviously don't understand the US patent system. The patent office basically rubber stamps patents (often helping the submitter reword things so they can pass it). The patent holder then uses it to shake down companies for money and/or destroy competition. Prior art or the validity of the patent is pretty much irrelevant when the system is stacked such that the cost to fight an invalid patent is outrageously expensive and completely unrecoverable. It has absolutely nothing to do with protecting inventors or, heaven forbid, promoting the progress of science and useful arts. It's all about destroying competition or making easy money for patent attorneys and their ilk.
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In the standard procedure, the application is kept secret for 18 months; then the application is published; the USPTO will then wait another year or so (depending on the back log it could be much more) before deciding whether or not to grant the patent. In this time slot between publication and decision, competitors co
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It's not that a gay person is atracted to a man's rectum per se. A gay person is attracted to another *man*. And then when it comes to sex he has to make do with what's available. And by the way, loads and loads of straight people like anal sex (you don't get pregnant, feels quite good) , but people don't seem bothered by it when straight people do it.
MakerBot, enemy of open source and 3D printing (Score:5, Informative)
And here they are, attempting to patent said extruder drive design: http://www.freepatentsonline.c... [freepatentsonline.com]
They're taking things from the open source RepRap community and attempting to patent them. Do not support MakerBot. Do not buy their machines. And advise everyone you know not to purchase their machines should they be considering it.
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Absolutely. MakerBot turned evil quite some time back. Bre is Not A Nice Person in many, many ways.
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First this [slashdot.org], and now this. MakerBot needs to DIAF.
Prior Art Disallows Patent Applications PERIOD. (Score:2)
All it takes is copies of prior inventors work & videos that show someone else showed the idea first & filed with the patent office and then any later patent application/s are deemed unpatentable.
Been that way forever.
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$1500 is the filing fee to submit prior art documents against a patent application filing.
Lots of these are filed every year.
Re:Prior Art Disallows Patent Applications PERIOD. (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the exchange on stackexchange.com referenced in the article, apparently you can submit up to 3 free. Beyond that, there's a fee.
Re:Prior Art Disallows Patent Applications PERIOD. (Score:5, Informative)
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First to invent versus First to file does NOT invalidate the existance of prior art.
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Please expand on what you mean here because as far as I understand it we are talking about a very specific technology being implemented and demonstrated, and that very same technology then being patented by someone else.
It's not like the typical Apple vs Samsung fan fight where we're saying the latch on my gate is prior art to slide to unlock, it looks like they are actually taking an existing technology and patenting it. Not even a technology that was in the process, but one that was demonstrated and shown
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Can we please stop spreading this stupidity?
The difference between first to invent and first to file has absolutely nothing to do with prior art. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
It only comes into play when two patent applications are filed for the same invention in roughly the same time because it is how it will be decided which one will be accepted.
(And, should I elaborate this even more, in this case there are no conflicting patent applications, it's about prior art and prior art has nothing to do with first to fil
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All it takes is copies of prior inventors work & videos that show someone else showed the idea first & filed with the patent office and then any later patent application/s are deemed unpatentable.
Been that way forever.
...the gotcha is the "filed with the patent office" bit. Has anyone done this? Also, it's easy to add a few extra words to a patent application to say "...but not like that prior art; this one has X as well!"
Re:Prior Art Disallows Patent Applications PERIOD. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's only "first to file" if the other party is seeking a patent on it too. Prior art means it's not patentable by anybody if Makerbot was first to file but there was prior art. Also remember that if they filed a provisional patent application, then that is their filing date, so any art shown after that is not prior art (I have no idea if that's the case here). Additionally, the filing date of the patent was 10/29/2013 (even though the publication date was a couple days ago). So if the prior art was shown after that (conceivably as early as 10/29/2012 depending on if there was a PPA and its filing date) then it doesn't count as prior art. It could be argued for obviousness if a bunch of others came up with it independently, but that generally comes down to who has the biggest legal budget.
I actually read the patent claims (not the detailed description or TFA, however). What's different about the patent and what's been in use for a while is that the sensor is triggered by a force on the "tip of the extruder" rather than sensors mounted to carriage. Normally in 3D printer terminology, extruder != hot end, but the diagrams and their description shows that they consider the hot end nozzle the "extruder tip."
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...that I get to ignore patents and make whatever the fuck I want?
For personal use, yes. If you're caught using a home-made object patented by someone else in public, especially for financial gain, you'd better be licensing the patent or you're in for a loss at the patent court.
And in this case, you could find it increasingly difficult to actually BUY a cheap 3D printer as all the makers get sued for patent infringement or end up caving and paying licensing fees that dramatically increase the cost.
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You can generally get away with making whatever you want if you're not making money off of it and it's for personal use. Once you start making kits and selling them, you're more likely to get sued.
I used to like them (Score:1)
That's how competition works (Score:1)
I never would have bought a Thing-O-Matic kit... (Score:2)
.. if I had known MakerBot would start doing questionable patent stuff like this instead of the openness they seemed to promise back then.
Check the dates... (Score:4, Interesting)
So I quickly checked the publication date, and recalled that Steve Graber, whose work we have been basing off of on the FSR auto levelling for the Kossel / Kossel Pro, had published a video of his setup last year:
https://plus.google.com/110997... [google.com]
Sure enough, the patent was filed 20+ days after Steve Graber had published his video demostrating probeless auto-levelling.
Steve Graber's video is dated October 6, 2013. The patent application was filed October 29, 2013. That sure is damning... but wait, what's this in the very first line of the application?
RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Pat. App. 61/719,874, filed Oct. 29, 2012, the entirety of which is incorporated by reference herein.
This is a non-provisional application of a provisional patent application that was filed a year earlier, well before Graber's video. His video may be "art", but it's not "prior".
This is not to say that (i) the patent application is valid and should be granted; or (ii) that MakerBot is above reproach, or anything else about it... but just that the article author seems to have gone off half-cocked.
Re:Check the dates... (Score:5, Informative)
Claims aren't needed on filing (Score:1)
At, least that's the situation in Europe. You only need to file a description and accompanying diagrams. Claims and abstract have to be submitted within 12 months.
As long as you mentioned your glue head can be "switched on" somewhere in the (usually lengthy) patent description, then you can claim for that a year later.
What you can't do is claim for something NOT described in the application. This is why applications tend to cover everything plus the kitchen sink. To the uninitiated it looks like someone's t
Defensive patents? (Score:3)
Some patents are filed defensively. The patents is filed so that no one else can file. The patent is not intended to be defended, one does not have to, but is a defense against someone else getting the patent. In some cases it is less expensive to file a patent than to get a patent overturned.
Thingiverse = Stratasys Patent Fishing Pond (Score:1)
There is no good sense in planting a flag in the enemy's back yard to mark the location of your good idea.
Not supporting Makerbot at every turn will take a toll on their sales, but odds are that Stratasys must sell 500 Makerbots to earn what they do with the sale of a single Fortis system. When they decide to shut down Makerbot, it will be with a sigh of relief and no noticable hit to their bottom line. I shudder thinking what end user support is like with those crappy Makerbot machines.
Ultimately the only