I do not understand the connection between the patent concerns in the article and open-source 3D printing. In particular, the patent issues seem to be the case for all non-Chinese 3D printer companies, whether open source or not. I am not sure how sharing your designs makes this worse (I suppose with the original drawings it's a bit easier to write a patent in bad faith - but certainly not necessary). Something like a defensive patent grant might make a lot of sense (see Opus, AV1 etc) but that's also independent of whether the implementation is open source or not.
Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
161–170 of 450 posts
Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
#162The real story here is that IP ownership is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. Open-source and community-led IP contributions are grossly under-protected because of this, and those with capital become unopposed predators. This is a special-case of the more general observation that the justice system is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. The answer is something you very rarely hear: the US (especially) needs…
That would bring down the price of patent spam even more. The problem is the cost of protection relative to the cost of attack, you can't do much.
What if you have to pay a fee for each patent application that gets rejected?
Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
#163[dead]
Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
#164This could have been an interesting take from anyone but Prusa. While they've earned themselves a great deal of goodwill from past contributions to the ecosystem, they're a failing company pivoting to dark patterns in an attempt to cling to relevance. It's heart breaking to see they still haven't been able to take a good hard look at themselves, and understand their own role in why they are scrambling. Blog posts lik…
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Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
#165The real story here is that IP ownership is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. Open-source and community-led IP contributions are grossly under-protected because of this, and those with capital become unopposed predators. This is a special-case of the more general observation that the justice system is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. The answer is something you very rarely hear: the US (especially) needs…
No. The real story is China weaponizing the global IP system in an imbalanced manner.
IP ownership is not inherently capital-intensive in the US.
Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People seems generally uninterested in fixing this too. What problem do you think needs fixing?
Being entirely dependent on Chinese manufacturing to make anything. This also has the downstream effect of no one young learning how to make stuff, which then leaves you as a society that is forced to buy everything from China, and puts China in an excellent position to rug pull American society if they want. I can tell your first hand, that the engineers in the hardware/physical product space probably have an averag…
> and puts China in an excellent position to rug pull American society if they want
Those nations that were close allies of the US before 2025 are watching American society "rug pull" itself straight to hell right now with little to no effort at all from China.
Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
IP is just too strong. The terms are ridiculously long (especially for copyright), there are multiple workarounds for "fair use", such as DMCA, and patents on simple concepts like linked lists are not laughed out of the room. All of this stuff needs to be weakened (and shortened). Part of the reason Chinese companies are able to iterate quickly on technology like 3d printers or drones is that it's possible to simply…
The more I look into it, the more I'm convinced that current state of IP law is the rot at the core of western worlds technological stagnation. The rise of monopolistic megacorps, lack of independent innovation and enshittifcation can pretty much be traced back to the wide free market violating reach of current IP law. This article just highlights it and shows how China weaponized this weakness of the west and is suc…
>Meanwhile our own innvative companies and individuals get ground into dust by the boot of patent lawyers wielded by megacorps.
So they sell a large part of their company to capital who can afford to acquire and defend IP. In this happy case they are only ground into 90% dust.
Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
#168One must admire China’s pivot from 30 years of essentially ignoring IP and patent law to the detriment of Western companies, to now weaponizing IP and patent law against the rest of the world.
If you read into how/why Hollywood film industry was created, it isn't something new.
Interesting, I didn't know.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Compa...
Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being entirely dependent on Chinese manufacturing to make anything. This also has the downstream effect of no one young learning how to make stuff, which then leaves you as a society that is forced to buy everything from China, and puts China in an excellent position to rug pull American society if they want. I can tell your first hand, that the engineers in the hardware/physical product space probably have an averag…
> Being entirely dependent on Chinese manufacturing to make anything. I'm sorry, it's very hard to take this sort of concern seriously. The express goal of US's take on neoliberalism was to dump all manufacturing onto countries like China while abusing IP to prevent anyone else, China included, from ever being able to compete. Now that the rules that the US abused to stifle innovation are being used by someone else t…
> Now that the rules that the US abused to stifle innovation are being used by someone else to protect their own investment, you suddenly cry foul?
I don’t know about the person you replied to, but I think a lot of us have watched US factories closing down and moving to other counties in the last couple decades and it’s just been a constantly disappointing train wreck. Auto manufacturing moving to Mexico and Canada, various factories shutting down because they can’t compete with foreign prices or volume, and politicians who happily didn’t care beyond lip service - the only reason it matters to any politician now is because trump brought attention to it (though accidentally) with the stupid tariff business.
The people who actually could’ve done something have sat here for the last few decades and been largely inactive other than giving deals to Big Tech to open data centers while making empty promises about “bringing jobs back” because no one was offering the kind of kickbacks that Bezos and Musk can throw around, and now they’re only making any stink because it looks better than not.
Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
#170Their business model might be dead, I don't know. But the latest Prusa printers are as far as I know not really open - I can't download the schematics for free and make a clone, can I? And also a truely open schematic that I could download that way wouldn't be affected by patents, as long as I'm not selling it. Granted, commercial development with open core might be in trouble.
But first, that is not a technical nor a business problem, that sounds like a political problem. Prusa is literally the leading european name in the 3D-printing industry. Surely they can get an appointment with some government officials, who are concerned about manufacturing capabilities and future technologies - who pull some strings, and then every patent clerk will receive a memo to double check the relevant patents when someone tries to register them.
Second, Chinese patents have a different weight than EU/US patents. As he writes, they are a dime a dozen. Probably not worth caring about, unless they are targeting the Chinese market. And if they are, the best defense would probably to register some patents their themselves.