Source: adafruit industries blog
Is Stratasys a 3D printing patent troll? Stratasys v. Bambu Lab – saw Nero3D the Canuck Creator’s tweet…
PDFs, here and here. The patents relate to methods and systems used in 3D printing, such as the management of build platforms, material deposition, and the detection of contact forces during the printing process.
What’s a solution? And not just for this, but really any 3D patent trolling… a structured prior art database is probably the easier first step, because then anyone who is targeted by one of these could use it to go after the patent. There have been other efforts to do similar things, and the relatively focused scope of 3D printers could make it effective. An organization like the Open Source Hardware association could help lead this effort, coordinating the community for a fund that could be used to preemptively invalidate 3D printing patents and build a giant structured corpus of prior art to use in shared defenses.
Could also be a “donate” button on a Prusa order on check out “donate to the invalidate 3D printing patents fund” which would be the prior art database.
