Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent?

I'm an attorney who litigates patents. I also write about IP litigation at https://ipde.com.

A patent can be invalidated by a court during litigation or through procedures at the U.S. Patent Office, such as inter partes review or an ex partes reexamination.

When asking whether an earlier patent renders a later patent invalid, the fact finder will generally look at anticipation and obviousness. Anticipation means that every element of the claims is literally present (explicitly or inherently) in the earlier patent, under 35 U.S.C. § 102. Obviousness means that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious to a person of skill in the art, under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

How do you figure that out? You have to look at each claim individually. If the fact finder determines that the earlier patent discloses or renders obvious every element of the claim, then the claim is invalid.

This comparison is easier said than done, because it is going to depend on claim construction, meaning how the claims are interpreted. In theory, they are interpreted according to how a person of skill in the art would read them, but in practice there is an art to claim construction, and it can be difficult for anyone to predict how a Court or the U.S. Patent Office will construe claims (especially since it is often judge- or examiner-dependent).

I won't get further into burdens of proof and legal standards, but both anticipation and obviousness tend to be a high bar.

From a very quick review of the two patents you posted, it looks like claim 1 the second patent claims, for example, "lowering the vertical axis of the bead height of a bead disposed between a bead on either side thereof." From a quick look at the specification, this may refer to staggering the vertical size of the beads themselves in each row.

It looks like the earlier patent discloses staggering the alignment of the columns of beads, but I don't see (from a quick glance) whether or not it discloses staggering the size of the beads. If it doesn't disclose that element of claim 1 (however the court or PTO interprets it), then it can't anticipate that claim of the second patent. Of course, it could still render it obvious if, for example, there is another prior art patent that discloses varying the beads in the claimed way, and if a person of skill in the art would have been motivated to combine them (assuming the combination also meets all of the other elements).

Each claim in the second patent will need to be looked at individually. Even if claim 1 were invalid, for example, other independent claims may not be.

Keep in mind that everything in this post is hypothetical and I am not your attorney. If you want to try to invalidate the patent, you'll need to get your own attorney involved or otherwise get one to take up the cause, including to take a real look at the patents and prior art and to figure out how best to proceed. It is not a small task.

disclaimer, I am not an expert in patent litigation but have been involved in and hold several patents) also, hold my beer and watch this.

Having read the claims on both patents (US2023/11813789B2, US1997/5653925A) , it still seems pretty sus to me on both sides of the fence.

The basic concept of of the geometric layer pattern is identical in the claims and illustrations in both patents, but the expired patent mentions this in the context of "density" and "porosity", while the newer patent describes the identical process for for the effect of interlayer adhesion. This -might- be enough to make a meaningful distinction.

The new patent fills in a little bit more detail on the process, and is much more narrow in scope. But...the expired patent claims -do- specifically mention strength in terms of density in claim 6: "the pressurizing Supply source is adjusted to provide a porosity in the article of between 1% and 9%, so as to form an article of a strength sufficient to maintain the integrity of the article."

Claim 6 refers to claim 3 which refers back to the primary claim of modifying density through the feed pressure and geometric distribution (specifically brick-like, as depicted in figure 2 - preferred embodiment) deposition of the filament.

In all, it is surprising to me that the patent was granted as is. I have had filings rejected for much weaker similarities to existing art when basing a patent on new applications of existing processes... and this is arguably not even a new application.

The described process (hexagonal or brick-like bead geometry) is identical to the process shown in figure 2 of the expired patent and described in the preferred embodiment.

What is missing from the expired patent is a specific claim on the geometry of the preferred embodiment given in figure 2. This could be construed in a sense to say that the preferred embodiment itself was not the subject of the patent, i guess?

In any rate, the 2023 patent clearly does not describe any actual innovation, but rather an attempt to lock down a competitive advantage by locking everyone else out of an invention that has been clearly documented since 1997 and released into the public domain for 6 years prior to this patent.

Although the patent holder appears to be using the patent in a proprietary, in house process, this still smacks a bit of troll dung.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that there was exactly zero innovation here, and the patent applicant was clearly aware of the prior art, perhaps even being inspired by ambitious nonspecificity of the expired patent. His figures 1 and 2 (the primary basis of the new patent) could just have well been lifted directly from the Stratasys patent.

This might be one for the courts. What we need is someanon to fork slic3r with this feature added and dump it on torrent.

Again speaking generally, attempting to invalidate a patent is going to cost more than $10k, but $100k should be enough to do an ex partes review petition. If you want to do inter partes review, which is much more involved but may also have a higher chance of success, it's more expensive. The total cost will depend on what attorneys you use and how they go about it (which also impacts the likelihood of success).

Non linear slicing is also patent protected but there are some projects that modify slicers to do it.

I did some experiments with bricklaying using a macro in S3D and in all honesty it’s not worth it.

It doesn’t work all the time causes a lot of slicing edge cases on complex models and the cost in print time outweighs any strength gains.

For properly dried filament and a heated chamber the adhesion gains are within the margin of error.

I can also quite confidently say stratasys also currently does not implements it in GrabCAD* which is their slicers/CAM software and I’m not aware of any of their partner slicers/CAMs that do it either.

*There is a chance that they do it as a post processing step in their printers especially the super high end ones either globally or for select locations within the model but I’ve handled quite a few FDM prints on Stratasys machines and I’ve never actually seen it in a production model.