And so it begins

[Joe Kerman]

http://traverseda.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/makerbot-blatently-steals-and-patents-a-community-design/

[Have Blue]

This is my surprised face.  Stratasys is undoubtedly calling the shots for MBI now, at least when it comes to expanding their patent pool.  I can't wait until they start chipping their filament spools as well...  (seriously, I can't wait - I love hacking Stratasys machines to take third party filament...)


On Saturday, May 24, 2014 2:42:12 PM UTC-5, Joe Kerman wrote:

http://traverseda.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/makerbot-blatently-steals-and-patents-a-community-design/

[Matthew B. Starr]

Patents are filed all the time for things that already exist... and rejected all the time for that reason. Shame on Makerbot for trying to patent it.. but the failure is also on the side of the patent office. Since the time stamp of the thingiverse publication predates the patent application filing date, the widget was in the public domain prior to the patent filing and thus should have been voided due to the requirement that a patent be a 'new' thing. The patent office messed up here... and since the evidence is easily seen here that the widget was not 'new' at the time of filing then the patent will easily be void... any company that cares too will easily infringe on this patent knowing that it won't matter.

In short, makerbot just wasted a bunch of money on a patent application that is useless.

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Matthew Burke Starr
WARF Ambassador & Graduate Student
Materials Science Program
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, Wisconsin, 53705
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