This is about a bad patent that is preventing slicers from making brick-layer prints that would increase strength enormously, despite the fact that there is clear prior art that has expired for nearly a decade. The patent is full of bad references to the prior art and clearly shouldn’t have been approved - even if the person saying it isn’t a lawyer, it’s obvious.

The new bad patent from 2020 would keep the invention away for another 20 years, and do real harm to the development of 3d printing.

The creator asked viewers to share this with people in the FOSS slicer community. I don’t know if that’s anyone here, but lemmy is pretty FOSS-happy. Also the FOSS communities here might be interested to hear about how this patent is hamstringing development of FOSS features. I don’t have the time right now to search through the communities so any crossposts would be welcome.

  • @RegalPotooEnglish
    14•13 days ago

    Unfortunately, the way patent suits work it could be enormously expensive to defend something like this, even when the patent is clearly bad.

    You’d be arguing that the patent is invalid to start with, but the court would probably start from the position that you are actually infringing a valid patent (it was granted after all), and grant an injunction to prevent further harm (“stop giving people the software until we can work out if there is any merit to your claim that you aren’t infringing”). You then need to put together a case to show the prior art, and you can bet that they’d contest every single point. This whole process could take years, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars that you won’t get back even if you win - there isn’t really a provision to recover costs in patent cases because there is the assumption that every claim is made in good faith

    • @grueEnglish
      7•12 days ago

      the court would probably start from the position that you are actually infringing a valid patent (it was granted after all)…because there is the assumption that every claim is made in good faith

      In other words, one big aspect of patent reform needs to be fixing the patent office itself so that it hires patent examiners who are actually competent to evaluate the applications for prior art.

      • @RegalPotooEnglish
        9•12 days ago

        That’s probably an impossible task - getting enough people who are experts in every possible field enough to judge novelty and innovativeness wouldn’t be feasible.

        An alternative is the way the Dutch assess patents - they don’t, and grant them automatically on filing, but that means you remove the assumption that they are valid on their face if they get challenged

      • @ForgotAboutDreEnglish
        5•12 days ago

        Probably better to make those submitting false patents pay a large fine.