Brick Layers: Stronger 3D Prints TODAY - instead of 2040 😬

Interlocking Layers can make 3D Printing stronger - Stefan from CNC Kitchen showed us months ago. But nothing happened... Why? This is a fascinating story about old patents, new patents and Open Source Slicers.

Post on my Patreon, with links to the Patents:

CNC Kitchen original video, by Stefan:
"Brick Layers - Why did no one do this before?"

🤣 People asking about my Fountain Pen 🖋
It is a 20+ year old LAMY Safari "Charcoal"
You can buy them on Amazon, they are not expensive:

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IMPORTANT:
- Patents are public documents and include the names of inventors.
- My focus in this video is on the patent itself, not on the inventor or company behind it.
- This analysis is not intended to criticise or target the individuals or entities associated with the 2020 patent.
- For privacy and respect, their names have been blurred in the video.

_______________________________________________
Written, Performed and Produced by Everson Siqueira

This video contains a licensed item from Envato Elements:
License Certificates available upon request

It also contains music licensed from Epidemic Sound

[GeekDetour]

⚠About "SUPER THANKS": it is NOT a crowdfunding effort for legal action ⚠
❤Wow! Your financial support has been amazing—I feel truly humbled and thankful ❤
This video took many weeks of work; my initial goal was simply to raise awareness around the 2020 patent. Fortunately, I also discovered weaknesses and problems within the patent, and the more we share, the more encouraged slicer developers can feel to develop "Brick Layers" without fear.
As for direct legal action, I won’t be taking that on myself. I want you to know that your support is helping me as a content creator. I’m not yet sure if a legal action is necessary or the best way to go. 
But this is a fascinating topic, and I’m reaching out to attorneys who can help us better understand this area in future videos. For producing topics like this, your help is invaluable.

[jamieclarke]

Absolutely ridiculous that 3d printing is being held back by an incorrectly submitted patent

[JohnHansknecht]

*The answer is "go for it". Don't let the newer patent hold anyone back. As a patent holder myself, I know that a patent is only as strong as your ability to defend it in court. They have no defense in court. Their new patent is prior art.* Here is what would happen. They would see someone violating their patent and want to sue them. They would have to hire a patent attorney to sue them in court. This patent attorney is going to look at their patent and and probably send out a cease and desist order and notice of infringement to the offending party. The offending party would respond showing the prior art. Once the patent attorney is made aware of the prior art, they are going to inform their client that their patent is indefensible.

[rhl]

I'm a machine design engineer, and over the years I've notice many patents get granted for common sense things that have been widely used for MANY decades. No one in the past bothered to file a patent, because it was already common, and then someone comes along, re-"invents" it and files a patent, and it is granted. It seems the patent examiners have very little knowledge of common practices and don't really understand many of the supposed "innovations" they are approving.

[yetanotherjohn]

THIS is what makes the internet so disruptive to obsolete/nefarious business models. OUTSTANDING work!

[kristinmontclair]

I've been a patent lawyer for 29 years.
Had a VERY quick look at what we call the "file history" of the patent in the USPTO. That is a record of all of the communications between the inventor (or their patent lawyer) and the USPTO.
From the file history, the examiner in the USPTO apparently did NOT 'consider' (legal term) the 1995 Stratasus patent. In fact, the examiner explicitly said in the file history that the inventor SHOULD file an "Information Disclosure Statement" (IDS) listing all of the patents cited in the specification of the patent. It does not appear that the inventor heeded this recommendation from the examiner. That is, no IDS was ever filed in the application. Since the Stratasus patent was not listed in an IDS and was not cited by the examiner in any of the office actions in the file history, it was never 'considered', officially, by the USPTO.
This is NOT any kind of an automatic invalidation of the 2022 patent. It does, however, raise some very important issues that could result in the patent being invalidated at some point in the future.
I'll have a closer look at some things, including the currently pending divisional applications that are directly related to the 2022 patent. Interesting to see what might have happened in USPTO since 2022.
@GeekDetour can contact me if you have any patent procedural questions.
BTW, getting rid of patents would require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Good luck with that.

[UnCoolDad]

Speak to Christa Laser - a patent attorney who has spoken on the Stratasys patents, so has 3D printing knowledge and also has her own channel here.

[kreature]

Btw, they obviously knew of the old patent but either intentionally or unintentionally fudged the reference.
If we can prove damages they may be liable. The best thing they can do is pull the patent to avoid any lawsuits.

[hotfix]

It's going to take dedicated innovators like you to stop patent abuse. Thak you for making this video.

Stratasys already looks greedy with the Bambu Lab nonsense, and this is just the icing on the cake. please keep pushing this as the community really needs to wake up and start pushing back against them at all levels. I.E. If they want to play the part of the bad guy, then they should be treated like the bad guy.

I really enjoy your videos and am happy to support efforts such as this.

[smokajj]

I had a similar issue back in 2014, another company managed to patent one of our products from 1973. Our attorney negotiated directly with their attorney. The offer was if they did not file an infringement claim, we would not get their patent invalidated. I think patents mostly make lots of money for lawyers.

[Killy]

I support any effort that defend the 3D printing community from patent trolls.

[m_IDEX]

"All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again"

Prior art gold mine 👏👏

[tylermfdurden]

The most common slicers should just implement it. If the patent troll want to go to court, they can just laugh them out by showing this video. Get the patent thrown out and continue on with innovation.

[McGybeer]

Wow, I didn't expect the video to go this way. This is very interesting, and a great research work! 👏

[deycallmepablo]

I have never sent Thanks on YouTube before, but your video and work on this issue really inspired me. Thanks for fighting the good fight ❤️

[DarthPlasma]

It easy to find a loophole, simply add a "layer infill displacement" variable in the slicer, that on default it is zero but you can set it freely (to 0.2 half of nozzle diameter). This way the slicer programmers are not responsible but only who prints, but no company's will legally bring you to court for slicing and printing your own parts at home using this method

[kensmith]

Thanks! Junk patents seem to be over half of all new patents. Nobody is fighting them because you need very expensive lawyers and standing to even get in court with it.

[philipbengtsson]

I’m also no lawyer but it seems like there are some good arguments against the 2020 patent. I would urge anybody with the muscles to fight this, maybe a kickstarter would be an option to fund such a venture?

[knutkleven]

Thanks for bringing attention to this. Patents on a fundamental level is supposed to be a system that rewards innovation by giving certain rights to the inventors for a limited time, for the act of sharing the innovation publicly. Patents was supposed to be the OG open source platform with benefits for sharing, but it has to some extent turned in to a bureaucratic loophole/tool to ban progress and innovation by allowing ridiculous claims and scopes to be submitted. This needs to stop, just imagine how the world would have looked like today if Stratasys had managed to re-submit their FDM patents in 2012.. this one simple stupid corporate greed story held back 3d-printing for 20 years, and is still suing left and right for anyone trying to innovate. And the worst part is.. this is not companies fault, it’s the malicious incompetence by the patent offices that is supposed to manage this.

[kylek]

Seems another workaround might be to build a "plugin" system into a Slicer and then someone could implement the feature and release it anonymously. At that point, the company holding the patent is going to have to play whack a mole with hosting services that host that plugin.

The rest of us would benefit because we know where to find it and wouldn't be a target for violating if we don't run print farms (they'd need a large enough target to go after as they'd want to get samples of you using it in commerce).

There have been other alternative ideas to FDM that never make it out of theory/prototype for the same reason.