this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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3DPrinting

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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.

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[–] 4lan@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Being in this community has taught me that patents are stupid as fuck. Any time someone tries to bring up the topic, defending patents, I bring up how 3d printers could have been a thing when they were a kid. We were held back for 3 decades of progress because of a patent. Because of that we are essentially 3d printing like it's 1995 right now.

Without these patent trolls I truly believe we would all be able to be SLS sintering our own metal car parts at home. But instead we're still printing plastic toys