Big news coming out today about 3D Systems suing Formlabs, and subsequently Kickstarter, for patent infringement. We thought we’d do a little roundup of some of the news around it.
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Big news coming out today about 3D Systems suing Formlabs, and subsequently Kickstarter, for patent infringement. We thought we’d do a little roundup of some of the news around it.
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Technically, the kickstarter “donations” are from “members” of a closed “private” non-profit group. Under current IP law they were not retailing the product yet, and are not subject to damages.
I dumped DDD stock this morning in anticipation of a counter-suit from Form1. DDD could sue Kickstarter for copyright and trademark infringement of saleable rights if they had produced an identical model, but in this case the design was unique.
DDD risks invalidating their IP as precedent exists with the invalidated Philips patents on multi-layer PCB photo-lithographic production.
In the early 1990′s there was a published image of a 3d printed shuttle in expensive UV cured epoxy that included sacrificial scaffolding. If someone finds that magazine image, DDD systems is going to get roasted in court for a re-issued patent where 95% of the claims are prior art.