When Patents Expire: An Observation with 3D Printers in Mind

Patent law, the researching of patents, what it takes to justify your patent, what exactly is patentable... It's formidable subject matter.  It's come up before, as I play in the FIRST LEGO League, help with Science Fair invention projects and the Entrepreneurship merit badge for the Boy Scouts. 

I still wouldn't know how to figure whether an idea is patentable.  My philosophy is always that if there's something I didn't know or that I don't understand, there's a few people out there who have the same thoughts.  It's very confusing.

I found out some information this week while I was attending SigGraph, 2013 in Anaheim.

You see, I've been doing a LOT of videos of 3D printers (and a whole bunch of fabrication machines and other things) at the Maker Faire, at shows and conventions, at the LA Makerspace in downtown Los Angeles, Crashspace in Culver City, at the Discovery Museum in Orange County and at DeezMaker in Pasadena. 

It never occurred to me to ask how so many companies could suddenly get started doing such similar things.  Perhaps the MakerBot design was sufficiently different from any preceding design and they chose to make it an open design, in the way some source code is "open source". I.e. Everyone has access to it, everyone can build on it, everyone must make their modified source available to everyone else to work on.

But a conversation with a creative in Anaheim this weekend pointed my thoughts in that direction.  He showed me the Stratasys machines which were created by a fellow called S. Scott Crump and his wife, Lisa Crump.

It seems that S. Scott wanted to make a frog for his daughter.  In trying to make this frog, he came up with the idea of using a glue gun loaded with a special material and applying the material layer by layer.  Then he came up with the idea of automating it.

Kids can be quite the inspiration, can't they?

Yes, S. Scott took out a patent.  It was 1989 and open source and open hardware had not yet been invented.

Fast forward 20 years and the patent had expired.  Based on what I've read, it's really hard for people like you and me to know exactly when a patent expires, but it seems that on the high end, it's 20 years from the day it was filed.  Don't take my word for it, though, I'm just telling you what I think and my thoughts are based on what I'm reading.

This opened the door for MakerBot Industries to get started.  A group of creatives - not engineers - got together to make their own.  Voila!  Projects like Rep Rap, the open project which has 3D machines printing parts for 3D machines, and many, many new companies can produce extrusion printers.

The patent expired.

And today, I'm reading a post titled "Get Ready for the Big Bang as 3D Printing Patents Expire". 
http://boingboing.net/2013/07/22/get-ready-for-the-big-bang-as.html

My brief summary of part of that article:  It seems that the patents covering laser sintering will expire in the next couple of years.  Laser sintering is the melting of a fine powder to fuse it with the powder below and around it.  The technique produces a very smooth, even finish.

Very, Very Interesting.

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