Copyright vs. 3D printing

The entrenched players in the industry have large patent portfolios, and this hurts the ability of projects like the RepRap to actually make improvements. We probably could have had all of these kinds of projects years ago, but the patents are only now starting to run out...

On the other hand, the past is full of interesting example of PATENT FAIL like Whitney's failure to enforce the cotton gin, but he got rich with producing munition for the US army, while at the same time inventing the concept of interchangeable parts.

We saws that American writers hating their competitors from England because of the massive piracy of British literature leading domination in the American literacy market. Some English writers managed to make more money from the American than he could collect via some amount of royalty years. It was only when large publishing house finally change their tune that the American finally recognize British copyright.

We also saw James Watt's partner using the parliament to extend patents for Watt's steam engine invention. This waste to tremedous wasteful effort from Watt suing various people for violating his patents. In reality, Watt was just one of the many steam engine inventors, who hampered other steam engine inventors' ability to make a living and build on top of his work. He also ironically got hampered by some other guy's patent, forcing him to use inferior design for his steam engine.

There's an interesting bit about the English/American writer thing you mention, specifically Dickens. From chapter two:

    The amount of revenues British authors received up front 
    from American publishers often exceeded the amount they 
    were able to collect over a number of years from 
    royalties in the UK. Notice that, at the time, the US 
    market was comparable in size to the UK market.

    More broadly, the lack of copyright protection, which 
    permitted the United States publishers’ “pirating” of 
    English writers, was a good economic policy of great 
    social value for the people of United States, and of no 
    detriment, as the Commission report and other evidence 
    confirm, for English authors. Not only did it enable the 
    establishment and rapid growth of a large and successful 
    publishing business in the United States; also, and more 
    importantly, it increased literacy and benefited the 
    cultural development of the American people by flooding 
    the market with cheap copies of great books. As an 
    example: Dickens’ A Christmas Carol sold for six cents 
    in the US, while it was priced at roughly two dollars 
    and fifty cents in England. This dramatic increase in 
    literacy was probably instrumental for the emergence of 
    a great number of United States writers and scientists 
    toward the end of the nineteenth century.

There's also a part in the book about the steam engine stuff, too, but this is already getting long...

1: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.h...

Forgive me for my historical ignorance, is there any sort of open hardware movement 25 years ago?

If not, than replication technology 25 years ago would probably have a different character.