How Patents Have Held Back 3D Printing
from the retarding-the-progress dept
The purpose of the intellectual property system that we have is to promote the progress. When there is strong evidence that certain elements of it hold back the progress, it seems like something that should be explored. Glyn recently wrote about the plans to make 3D object plan files available on the Pirate Bay. In that post, he pointed to a great interview with Michael Weinberg from Public Knowledge, who had really been at the forefront of getting people to think about the legal consequences associated with 3D printing. However, there was also one interesting side note in that interview that didn't get nearly enough attention. It's that development and innovation has been held up for the last couple decades -- not because the technology wasn't available, but because of key patents that are apparently needed to build 3d printers. Those patents have started (but aren't entirely set) to expire, leading to the sudden interest and growing affordability of such printers.We've seen this before, but here it's a modern example: work simply wasn't done on many of these efforts in part because there was no competition. And, in fact, there are still a few patents that really do hinder things, and this is a problem. Considering just how much good these 3D printers can do -- especially as they provide more power, do multi-color, and a variety of other features, it kind of makes you wonder just how much we've lost by having tons of researchers just sitting on their printer projects out of a fear of getting sued.
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Filed Under: 3d printing, patents
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Lawsuits are the great invention of our time
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Re: Lawsuits are the great invention of our time
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Re: Lawsuits are the great invention of our time
There I fixed it for you...no charge.
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Re: Lawsuits are the great invention of our time
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We should abolish the entire "IP" system. It chokes innovation. That's what it's for.
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It's interesting, the fight on the copyright front is pretty much a rehearsal of what's to come on patents. Except that breaching copyright is much easier since everything is digital and you can replicate, remix and rebuild with almost zero cost. Patents is different, you need money to some extent to build new stuff because you need physical materials. If you get sued for copyright issues you can just say "ok, I 'quit', won't misbehave anymore" and let the pirates do the distribution for you. Patents is a whole different story.
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No one I have challenged has ever come up with a single good piece of evidence to support this argument - whilst the instances of evidence against it are legion.
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Throw your mind back to the nacient British Empire, you know, the one the sun never set on. Mostly it was built for trade and trading. The British and the Dutch hit on this idea that perhaps setting up monopoloy trading companies would, somehow, assist trade so firms such as the British East India Company, and the Dutch East India Company appeared mostly in competition with each other. Not at all in the territories the British, Dutch, French or whoever controlled or ruled but a sort of national competition. A rush to market to see who got the first tulips into Europe. And the cause of one of the first stock market bubbles.
Then Britian started to industrialize. Suddenly these companies seemed less and less useful. So that while Silk from the orient was nice, beaver pelts from Canada were always good (the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company) the entire idea of mercantilism as an economic good rapidly declined despite the best efforts of the mercantile companies to avoid that.
Oh, and there was this small issue of a rebellion in 13 colonies on the east coast of America who seemed to want to become industrial rather than stay attached to mercantilsim that was successful too.
Industrialization brought with it what we call capitalism and free enterprise which the British and Americans promptly decided meant the trade had to be free as well. Beaver pelts, silk and tulips weren't what people wanted any more. Raw materials, wood, coal, grains and a host of other commodities were far more important that the stuff the great Mercantile companies traded in and had monopolies over.
Along with industrialization came concepts such as copyright and patents, It only made sense, at the time, that there should be some pay for the people who came up with knew ideas, knowledge and such have a short period to make a few bucks on, after all.
Fast forward to today. Copyirght and patents have served a useful purpose over the years. Authors and inventors have become extremely wealthy as well as folk heros. (To the point where most people forget that Edison bullied his way into most of his patents and is suspected of simply stealing the rest of them. Hey, it worked, right?)
Now we're at the point where the original purpose of both copyright and patent are becoming lost in this recent development called "intellectual property". So the best way to "moneitize" your property is protect it forever.
In that sense the 3D printer is a warning about what can happen when the notion that ideas are property runs amock takes too deep a hold.
Charging too much rent to used a patent seems to me to slow wide spead adoption of the patent and what it contains. Whereas a lesser fee/rent may get more product out there faster meaning the smaller rend actually makes the patent holder more in the long run.
But no, in our spreadsheet dominated world, the returns have to come early and this means high rents.changes. Perhaps, ovr time to make more later because the dream is to keep the rent the same once the 3D printer market takes off.
In the meantime a development may be held up for years because of the cost of the rent on the patent. Either until it ends it's protected life (never if the SOPA/PIPA crowd had gotten their way) or until someone cleanrooms a way around it.
From what I've seen the uses of 3D printing are huge ranging from design or proof of concept in three dimensions to a different way of producing art.
Which brings me to this. As Mercantilism had the danger of slowing or halting the move to industrialism so, now, copyright and patents -- seen as property -- may slow the development of what's coming next. By weeks, months or years.
That being the case, they've lost the valuse and purpose they once had. In both cases, advancing the state of the art. As they're being postitioned to do just that, then then, I'm afraid, it's time for both concepts to join many others in history's dustbin when their time had past.
To paraphrase the bible money isnt the root of all evil; the love of money is. Copyright and patent purisists (as well as trolls) fall into the latter camp.
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Led by Clive of India - who inspired the Clerihew
"The thing I like about Clive
is the fact he's no longer alive
There's something to be said
for being dead"
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Shame on you!
Patents do indeed stop growth! We should stop patents!
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There is also mention made of patents that have apparently held back development of these printers for the "last couple of decades". Sounds as if the groundwork for an argument is being set up that printers of this type will flouish once these unnamed patents expire, as Boldrin and Levine did with respect to James Watt and steam engines. Of course, their view of history has been debunked repeatedly, so what is it here that is different?
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[citation needed]
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This paper led to a rejoinder by Boldrin and Levine, which was once again debunked by the authors of the above paper, which can be found at http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=10&ve d=0CGEQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2F128.252.251.212%2FCLIEG%2Fdocuments%2FApril2009%2FWattAgain30March2 009.pdf&ei=R1opT4KxKsXZ0QG9gKHHBg&usg=AFQjCNGBkHN9nN86xIwsD2ITwyixwOLdmA
Revisionist history to support what is intended by Boldrin and Levine to be some quantum of proof of a causal relationship that Watt's patent "stifled" progress in the development of steam engines in the UK is too opportunistic to be taken at face value. It is intellectually dishonest since it makes no attempt to explore other, much more plausible, factors having nothing at all to do with the fact that Watt held a patent(s).
My comment here is not intended to insult Messrs. Boldrin and Levine's work, bu merely to point out that there were a whole host of factors associated with the state of metallurgy in the early 1800's that they quite likely overlooked or did not understand.
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Will you stop being deliberately obtuse. I'm not even sure what your point is, you don't seem to have one and so you have to resort to nonsensical statements that don't even seem to be presenting an argument.
and the rest of your post is nonsense you made up out of thin air.
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"Progress" is used in the 1700's equated with learning/education. It is emminently fair to ask how it is being defined nere.
It is hardly nonsense and making things out of thin air to ask questions relevant to the assertions being made in the article. Statements of fact have been made, and yet no citation(s) have been presented. At this juncture, if anything has been taken out of thin air then it is certainly such unsubstantiated statements.
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Microsoft just bitch slapped Barnes & Nobles in court.
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No it hasn't!
Yours however has.
(see - I can argue as well as you!)
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Several questions
I do, however, have issues with the "types" of patents being issued: software, business process and design patents being the worst offenders here...but that is a rant for another day.
Related to discussions about patents is, of course, copyright. Can someone please explain to this humble foreigner how your courts could possibly take the phrase from the constitution:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
And extrapolate that to mean that an Authors children, and grandchildren, should also have those rights? It seems, to me, to be squarely at odds with what the constitution actually says!
Now, I may be missing some uniquely American interpretation of "Author" to mean "The Author and all descendants". I realise that in Aldred vs. Ashcroft the supreme court focused on the word "Limited", but why wasn't the word "Author" considered? After all, it has a very specific meaning, Limited is more...soft.
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Re: Several questions
The exclusive right does by it's very definition allow for assigning of those rights.
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"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
And extrapolate that to mean that an Authors children, and grandchildren, should also have those rights?
Very large and repeated campaign contributions, that's how. (It's mostly Congress doing this, not the courts, the courts just defer to Congress - on that one I have no explanation)
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Want to print a adjustable wrench? bet it is covered by a patent. Same for a wiffle ball or any number of other things.
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I'm game. How have patents held back 3D printing?
Or is this just another in a long line of articles taking great pleasure in making mountains out of non-existent molehills?
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Further, it requires that we ignore the benefits that patents have brought, such as the development of a couple of different general concepts for 3D printing, not to mention that, in the last decade, the industry for these devices has been growing and expanding very rapidly... with patents in play.
Sorry Mike, but you appear to be trying to re-write history again, ignoring reality. Would this have something to do with your friends at The Pirate Bay suddenly expressing an interest in the field?
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The argument isn't that patents stop innovation, just that they slow it down. and they have slowed it down, tech has advanced mostly due to the fact that patents weren't traditionally created/enforced on many technological advancements.
See, for example, see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka4L0jGF_-Q
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Here is another interesting reference from Andrew D. Todd
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100627/2304419976.shtml#c1108
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The other side is the questions of "would they have developed it in the first place?" and "would they have allowed the secret out for others to see?". The patent system creates a buffer where secrets don't have to be so secret, where an individual or company has a period of time where they can use their patent in an exclusive fashion, or license it as they see fit.
What would slow down progress would be if companies felt compelled to hide inventions until they had a totally complete product for the marketplace. It has taken nearly a decade to go from reasonable proof of concept examples to machines that can be purchased just like that. What would have happened if the first company with the idea would have hidden it until they had today's machine? Would things be faster or slower?
From appearance standpoint, because you hadn't seen the technology before, you might think it faster. But if they sat on the idea for 10-15 years playing around looking for an end product, are we really any better off?
As for your example, do you really think we should throw the entire system to the curb because of a couple of idiots looking to patent something that is totally obvious and already existing?
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Too right!
For another example look at Frank Whittle anf the jet engine.
He secured development funding a couple of months after he let his patent expire. That rather kicks out the argument that patents are necessary to bring in investment.
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Good luck.
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There are two or three different ways to do 3D printing. One uses a system to put very small dots of a material in place, and harden it. Another completely different idea uses a laser to cause a powder to harder in certain locations, creating each layer as it goes.
As one was patent before the other, it is logical to draw the conclusion that patents encouraged two separate paths. There are other promising technologies out there that do not use either of these.
Without a patent, it is likely that the first method created would have been widely adapted, and the desire and need to develop an alternative lost.
A patent may block a single path to a desired result, but that in turn encourages people to look for other ways to achieve it.
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A patent may block a single path to a desired result, but that in turn encourages people to look for other ways to achieve it.
This assumes that the only reason to try an alternative is if the primary path is blocked by a patent. If there is an unmet need, someone will explore it. So if the dominant technology is inadequate in some way, someone will find an alternative. If the dominant technology satisfies the market, then why do we need patents to force others into some other path that the market doesn't demand?
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BTW, it is easy to envision "technology" that at the present time satisfies market demand. However, the same is most certainly not true when it comes to "inventions". The former is never foreclosed, and the latter's effect on a specific market for a specific product/method/service is almost invariably modest, if at all.
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You looked at only one side. If the dominant technology is "good enough", will anyone want to spend money to develop an alternative? Perhaps they will, one day. But there is no pressing need if you have a somewhat functional technology already at hand for free - and no real motivation to work for an alternative.
If the end result is desirable, and one path to it is blocked (by patent or other) it creates an incredible need and desire to find an alternative. It is one of the best things about the patent concept, you can wait until something is no longer patent, you can license the technology if available, or you can find another unique way to achieve the desired result. We get more options, we get more access to information (patent must be published, which reveals it's methods) and we get ways to license and use it.
Mike's "patents block innovation" and "patents block us" is basically bullshit, with exceptional cases being used to try to prove the whole. Yet all around use are technology marvels, many made with patent technology, that might not exist without patents and process by which they can be licensed and used. Ignorance is bliss, and in this area, Mike is a very, very happy boy.
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If the dominant technology is good enough, then who cares if anyone develops an alternative? By definition, it's not needed, because the other is good enough.
We get more options
No. No additional options are opened up by a patent, only more restrictions put in place.
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If it offers advantages, then yes, they will. If it doesn't, then it's not necessary.
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(If a new method *was* necessary because it offered actual advantages over the original method, rather than artificial advantages manufactured by the nature of patent law, they would already be motivated to create it DUE TO THOSE ADVANTAGES.)
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The Airplane was held back by the Wright Brothers Patent Trolling
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The change needed is relatively simple...
So you can submit your patent, you have 5 years exclusive use (and even that seeems a bit long). At this time you can purchase a 1 year extension to your 'patent' (at a cost of say $500) to a maximum of 10 years. I am not sure if, as part of the extension, you need to demonstrate the patent is part of a product you are selling.
There must also be a process to allow somebody to raise an objection to a patent renewal based on non-implementation.
A similar approach could be taken to copyright.
There is no ongoing cost to maintaining IP.
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Re: The change needed is relatively simple...
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The reason for patents
On the other hand - this method is relic. We need somtehing new, because it clearly holds back the whole progress.
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Re: The reason for patents
The copies are only illegal because of the patent system - hence this argument relies on pulling itself up by its own bootstraps.
In other words - from stealing the fruits of his work.
It's not stealing...
No the official excuse for patents is that they provide an incentive to invent and (crucially) disclose the invention.
The concept that there is anything inherently wrong about copying somebody else's idea was really only invented after patents were in place.
At least the first patent law drafters (in 17th century England) were honest about what they were doing - when they called their new law "The Statute of Monopolies"
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Re: Re: The reason for patents
Wait, all that information is proprietary.
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Competition may be a great way for the best idea to come to a front, but it happens with much greater efficiency when there are no locking mechanisms stopping ideas flowing in any direction. Intellectual property and it's litigation are the greatest stumbling block to innovation. Not just how they are handled, but the fact of their existence.
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Patents protect the little guy too!
The Intermittent Wiper was invented by a guy named Robert Kearns. He went around showing his invention to the auto makers and they stole his idea. He sued and won.
Ideas are power. People who invent things should be able to make them without everyone else trying to steal the idea. Unfortunately in capitalism, everybody wants to make a buck.
Its a necessary check and balance system to have patents. It prevents the big guys from always getting away with stealing ideas and levels the playing field a bit.
The American Dream is to be able to achieve your dreams. Patents allow it! Regardless of their faults, patents are a valuable asset in the US, especially from the rest of the world.
Did you know that in the US you can patent a business process, not just a machine?
Food for thought!
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Re: Patents protect the little guy too!
You're new here, aren't you? ;-)
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job security
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I know...lets let the general public design the airplanes we ride in too!
THAT IS MORE SCARY THAN ANYTHING I CAN THINK OF, EVERYONE MAKING EVERYTHING THEMSELVES AND SELLING IT TO EVERYONE TOO.
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So your argument against this technology is that there wouldn't be anyone to accept responsibility for its users' actions? Also, what do you do with a stroller that would lead to the child's death if a part broke? I think you're using it wrong.
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IP Does Not Exist
You are a moron if you think progress would not happen without these interventions. Progress occurred faster for the last century because technology and accumulation of knowledge accelerates the pace of progress cumulatively, similar to how better computers help you build the next better computers.
I suppose the scumbag patent defending history re-writers think the wheel was patented and "protected" by the cave man government, and that the cave man inventor would have just said "Why bother?" without this guaranteed monopoly!
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