Read more.All your 3D printing are belong to us.
Read more.All your 3D printing are belong to us.
Maybe we could start a class action lawsuit against the Go Compare ads....
And this is why patents have failed in their original purpose. Innovation can be stifled just by a bigger competitor starting litigation - It doesn't matter if you've infringed or not - How can a small company defend itself against this sort of action? Accurate 3D printing will be coming to the masses despite '3D Systems' attempts to corner the market.
I notice that in the press release they don't mention any specific patent number or specific process which they believe has been infringed upon. The tone of things appear to more be vague generic accusations aimed at having a chilling effect on competition then actually protecting work they've done to design something novel and non-obvious. Obviously we need more details to judge, but perhaps a reasonably priced product competing is more what bothers them.
This is a great example of patents outside of software being problematic.
The problem for me is what I think a patent should be for, vs how they are used.
I think that if your making something which requires stupendous amounts of R&D to end up with the perfect result you require some proteciton. For instance drug companies have to spend so much money on trials, they need to have some garantee no one can say "well GSK have proved this is safe, its easy to make, I'll make it". Otherwise no private industry can ever fund testing. The same is true of any big R&D.
But when you hear about SpaceX saying they aren't going to use patents for half their stuff, because they are no deternt to chinese cloning, and in fact provide instructions, you know they are really failing.
In the case of formlabs, I don't think we really know what is going on. The plantiff clearly is not just a troll, they actively produce competing products and have spent a lot of money in R&D in producing them.
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It's entirely possible that the patents are valid. As someone who experience the other side of the coin I don't think that patents have failed completely. I work at a company which has patents on creating a 3D image from a series of 2D photos. Sony used this patent knowingly in their cameras, something which they admitted finally after we took them to court (well, to the ITC). The annoying thing is that they decided to remove the feature from the cameras instead of licensing it, and they're now removing it retroactively with a firmware update, screwing users, some of whom bought the camera for this feature.
Edit: Anyway, I think that suing Kickstarter is stupid. I hope 3D Systems ends up paying for that.
Just going to wander off the specific topic a little...
I am an economist and for years I was sort of won over by the arguments of patents as a necessary evil in some of the examples above - pharma usually being the chief among them. The old "why would firms spend £300m on a drug if someone can copy it straight away"
I then read a very interesting paper discussing the Italian pharmaceutical industry before and after patents were introduced. What Italian pharacuetical industry I hear you say? Exactly - what had been a very successful industry vanished almost over night when patents were introduced.,
Basically I think patents have massively lost their way. The whole initial argument was that you revealed to the world how your invention worked so that everyone else could build upon and improve the ideas it contained and for making that sacrifice you were rewarded with a limited monopoly. This doesn't feel like what patents are about anymore.
I have come to the conclusion that patents are only good for the monopolist companies, and should be abandoned, and if you feel that's crazy and will stop innovation, then read the paper below!
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/ip.ch.9.m1004.pdf
Should start a thread of this topic Champman99, I've wanted to really read more about India.
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