Time to quit Thingieverse. Stratasys are suing Banbu for having a heated printbed

…Seriously.

In a (abbreviated) nutshell Stratasys are suing Bambu over the following:

  • US9421713B2 - Additive manufacturing method for printing three-dimensional parts with purge towers
  • US9592660B2 - Heated build platform and system for three-dimensional printing methods
  • US7555357B2 - Method for building three-dimensional objects with extrusion-based layered deposition systems
  • US9168698B2 - Three-dimensional printer with force detection
  • US10556381B2 - Three-dimensional printer with force detection

Yep, heated bed, purge towers, pressure advance and input shaping. Oh, and the basic 3d printing model itself.

Since Thingieverse is owned by UltiMaker, itself part owned by Stratasys I’m considering pulling all my designs from Thingieverse and just using Prusa/Cults instead.

Stratasys has tied into UltiMaker AND MakerBot? I knew they’d purchased MakerBot but thought UltiMaker was still independent.
They have ridden the coattails of 3DP patent protection for decades already, their time is up.

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Well, that sounds like horse shiit because the reprap movement would not have happened if the patents were not expired. At least half of those are basic stuff that was in patents that expired and then the reprap movement happened. Different countries have different laws, but still it sounds like horse shit.

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Patent Trolls will slightly modify their patents to say they are current and the patent office takes their money, allows the change with the idea that the courts will figure it out. So the Trolls use the courts and huge legal fees to threaten competitors. Bambu was not a competitor until they became one of the most popular vendor of 3D printers. They didn’t go after Prusa.