Patent Pending

Show off your prints!!!
hybridprinter
Posts: 141
Joined: Sun Dec 21, 2014 8:04 pm

Re: Patent Pending

Post by hybridprinter » Sun Mar 05, 2017 6:23 pm

How about this scenario... You produce a new product, start selling it to your customers, then a competitor sees the product, makes something very similar and they patent it, would you now be unable to keep selling your original product which you invented and have already been selling (just because you didnt file a patent application)?

Wouldn't the above scenario be true in the 'first to patent' new law?

Isnt this same scenario why Ultimaker just filed some patent(s)?

User avatar
ednisley
Posts: 1188
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2014 5:34 pm
Location: Halfway up the Hudson
Contact:

Re: Patent Pending

Post by ednisley » Sun Mar 05, 2017 7:09 pm

hybridprinter wrote:would you now be unable to keep selling your original product which you invented and have already been selling
Based on Stratasys / Makerbot's behavior, I'd say "Yup, you're out of business":

https://traverseda.wordpress.com/2014/0 ... ty-design/

Basically, because they have the patent and you don't, your skies will cloud over with litigation.

You might be able to fend off a cease-and-desist order while simultaneously invalidating their patent and remaining a going concern. It's far more likely you'll go broke, because you're a dinky little operation and they're a multinational company; their monthly coffee budget exceeds your annual revenue.

For example, after funding two years of litigation, an outcome wherein you pay a mere 8% tax on your net might look really attractive:

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2014/12/0 ... ettlement/

If, on the other hand, you don't have a few megabucks of investor money weighting your wallet, then you're roadkill.

Caveat: I am not a patent attorney, nor do I play one in videos. I have, however, maintained a slightly more than casual interest in 3D printing patents, much the same way you can't look the other way while passing a really grisly accident…

https://softsolder.com/2012/06/29/funda ... g-patents/

User avatar
pyronaught
Posts: 684
Joined: Mon Dec 01, 2014 8:24 pm

Re: Patent Pending

Post by pyronaught » Fri Mar 17, 2017 3:02 am

I think that if the original inventor files a provisional patent but then never files for the full patent within a year of filing the provisional then nobody else can come along and patent it. The patentability is just dead at that point. So if you had a product that you didn't want to spend thousands on getting a patent but also didn't want anyone else patenting it out from under you and preventing you from producing your own idea then you could spend the couple hundred it takes to get the provisional and then just don't take it any further.

Unless you have the money to defend a patent, I don't see the point in getting one. Patent attourneys make around $500 an hour (I know, I had to hire one once), so that will add up pretty fast. Several famous inventors literally ruined themselves trying to protect their ideas using the patent system. The original inventor or the TV, Philo Farnsworth, was bankrupted and driven to depression fighting a very expensive patent lawsuit with RCA-- a much wealthier organization who was knowingly stealing Philo's idea with the intention of bankrupting him in the courts or delaying Philos production to buy time while reverse engineering his invention (and the bad guy won). That one is a classic example of how our flawed patent system failed a great American inventor and robbed him of his much deserved fortune. The Wright Brothers suffered a similar fate and would have come out much better if they just focused on building airplanes instead of putting all their time and energy into fighting patents with their rival Glenn Curtiss. In the end WWI nullified all patents and the government forced both Wright and Curtiss to work together producing airplanes for the war, which Curtiss originally offered to do anyway and the Wrights made a mistake by not partnering with him.

In our modern era when you have China acting as a huge knockoff machine it is almost futile to get patents on anything but the most lucrative of ideas. The Chinese will come in selling a clone of your idea and just wait for the patent lawsuit, then shut down the suit by "going out of business" only to start up a new company under a different doing the same damn thing so that you have to start over with a new patent lawsuit. They can close and restart business entities for far less money than it will cost you to sue them, and they will just keep doing it over and over because it is legal.
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.

Post Reply