Stratasys Sues Bambu Lab For Patent Infringement
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- Stratasys has filed a lawsuit in Texas against Bambu Lab over allegations of patent infringement. The infringements are related to purge towers, heat beds, clump detection and more.
🟨Lawsuit Documentation: insight.rpxcor...
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Bambu Lab issued a statement about this lawsuit on Reddit ( www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1eoskxh/a_brief_statement_about_the_lawsuit/ ):
"We have taken note of the relevant information. As of now, we have not received any formal documents from the court, but we are closely monitoring the situation. We will actively respond to this case in accordance with the appropriate legal procedures to protect our legitimate rights and interests.
Bambu Lab has always advocated for and upheld the principles of respecting and protecting intellectual property. Through continuous research and technological innovation, we strive to provide our users with the best possible 3D printing experience.
We also advocate our industry peers to drive the development of the sector through genuine technological innovation."
From everything you have being reading there mate, according to the US (or any country for what matters) laws cannot be pattented; purgin towers, heated bed, heck I was using them in 2014, 2013, made by my hand or bought online, irrelevant, that makes all the pattented techniques Public Knowledge prior to the patenting moment (2016-2017) hence Bambulab and anybody else including you, a Mr. nobody, can sue to strike down such pattents as illegal since: NOTHING naturally occuring or already public knowledge can be pattented.
Basically "Yeah, we saw it."
I hate corporate jargon so much NotLikeThis
They are screwed
@@johnstuhlmiller6317 Who "they"? Bambu or Stratsys? Because Stratasys' claims are so weak the only way they'd win is if BambuLabs let them. In fact Bambu Labs could shut them down before they even went to court.
Stratasys is what kept 3d printing away from the masses for years
Now its ironic, stratasys are are name that is pretty much banned in the comapany I work for. They now all use machines from Renishaw and other brands similar but this is because stratasys are known for things like this. Horrible company and so far behind the times with their products so they try to destroy others, time to make their company known for what they truly are. Dirt.
What they're doing isn't legal. Patents can be revoked if the technology is not new. The earliest patent they have goes back to 2016. 3d printers have been around much longer than that.
Well, to be fair, they did make all the initial progress. They "came up" with it.
@@dejanbrice8774 Renishaw, isn't that the company that makes those touch probes for CNC machines?
@@soundspark Renishaw do make probes also yes.
They had their chance to enter the consumer market when they bought Makerbot. They screwed up and made $7000 printers using proprietary consumables. Either compete or leave us alone.
why dont you leave them alone and make your own if it is so easy
It's really not that hard to build your own. But why build your own if there's a machine that has all the features you need at a reasonable cost? Then again, I've thought about doing it for fun in my Copious Free Time™.
@@420247paulits not easy? Literally everything is open source. You can legit copy paste other printers and change tiny details, basically become creality.
Please refer to them as STRATASHITS in future, it will help the issue gain notoriety
If it was up to statasys, not a single one of us would have a 3d printer. Patent trolls.
A troll, to the potential patent infringer, is also known as an inventor to the rest of the world.
@@CurlyWoof well problem is some things can be invented independently, and troll is company unable to innovate that was innovative in the past
Can you sue Apple?
@@shawnshawn8685 what really apple invented?
@@CurlyWoofnot when they patent stuff they never have any intention of using.
If you can't buy them, then sue them, that's stratasys in a nutshell.
The very fact that they're doing this may mean they're desperate for money. What aren't they telling their investors?
@@_droidTheir investors are all capital management companies. These people only care about making money. Companies that only make money off the labor of the population, modern day slavery. Blackrock and Vanguard own 70% of all stocks on the market. I'm convinced that society will have to come to terms with the fact that we all live under the thumb of these billionaire dynasties. But then again, they own everything, from the banks, to the media, to the politicians. Pointing them out, or calling them out just gets you called a racist. And RUclips automatically deletes those comments. We've been had, they own us.
Look at their stocks. They have dropped dramatically and is still dropping right now to an all time low. They are desperate for money. So why not sue the best printer company out right now?@@_droid
What they're doing isn't legal. Patents can be revoked if the technology is not new. The earliest patent they have goes back to 2016. 3d printers have been around much longer than that.
@@JordanLyon-w8ewhy do you keep pasting this? It doesn’t represent a correct understanding of the issue.
The entire 3D printing world need to unite against this or we're going to see a big increase in the cost of printers.
Real
😂😂😂 “the 3d printing world “ is that like the imaginary gay community or the imaginary black community. These things don’t exist, it’s just a few shouty people with an agenda.
Yeah they filed their patent in Teaxs which apparently favors patents, so its a high chance they will win and what ever amount Bamboo Lab's has to pay will be passed on to the customer. I won't be surprised if Blackrock is behind stassatsys and what's going on now.........🤷♂️
Please refer to them as STRATASHITS in future, it will help the issue gain notoriety
I interviewed for and received an offer which I declined for an engineering leadership position at Stratasys. During the interview process one of the executives at Stratasys explained to me how "nerd" was a derogatory term and not a good thing to be. I knew right then their culture was not one of engineering and making but one of exploitation and money above all else. Stratasys has been severely limiting the 3d printing field for 30 years with their patents and their refusal to make their products accessible to most. Drop the suits Stratasys, free 3d printing for all of us, not just you and your rich cronies.
I hope this suit results in all these bogus patents being thrown out.
how lawyers will make money without that garbage
Calling it right now: Bambu doesn't purge to a tower, it purges out the back. The tower is for priming. That's why it's called a prime tower. This is not the same function.
Exactly. Verbiage matters in the legal world. The tower is used to prime the nozzle, not purge.
wow
I agree and the purge tower is a feature that appeared in one of my builds which is constructed by gcode and not inherent to my A1 Mini. The purge discharges to the left into a self cleaning tray that discharges onto my desk.
Stratasys is like the RED of the camera world and single handledly holds back the entire market by being a patent troll
I never knew this was going on o.o just learned something new so thanks!
Thankfully, RED was purchase by Nikon. My guess is that Nikon won't continue that behavior :)
Imagine if one of the auto manufacturers had patented the speedometer...
Nikola Tesla did, actually.
Yep lolol
thats what this comes down to. only worse than that. its like if ford patented the wheel, the bearing, and the steering wheel.
I was thinking the same thing with auto parts LOL.
@@slappomatthew exactly!!!
Personal opinions of a retired patent attorney and not legal advice -- (1) ED TX is a patent owner friendly docket, and a fast moving patent docket. (2) Patent litigation is expensive! If you are bringing a patent action (in ED TX) plan on spending at least $2 million. If you are a defendant in a patent action in ED TX and choose to fight, plan on spending at least $500k to get to trial, and more to get through the trial. Then there are appeals, which can take years. (3) By bringing this action, Stratasys is placing these patents in play -- one of the things the trial court can do is find that (one or more of) the claims and patents at issue are void and unenforceable, and this does happen. (4) Many consider that the US Patent Office does not do a thorough prior art search in issuing some patents. Let me tell you, patent litigation means these patents are going to be reviewed by many, looking for prior art arguments to knock out key claims and/or the entire patent.
In your personal, not legal advice, opinion, is the "660 patent" invalidated by prior art? It was filed in December of 2014, but the application wasn't published until June 23, 2016 (and the patent wasn't granted until March of 2017). Digging through the Prusa website on the wayback, I find they released the I3 MK2 with a heated bed with removable PEI build platform in May of 2016, at least a month before the publication of the application.
Edit: so I guess the issue with dates would really be the effective filing date of the '660 patent being in 2014 or thereabouts. I'm not sure about the novelty of it, though. Most of that was already in common use, and "wherein the polymer coating is not a polymer tape" does not seem like a huge leap, going from applying a polymer as a tape to having the polymer applied to the surface permanently.
Nice to hear from a practitioner
> US Patent Office does not do a thorough prior art search
You used a very mild language here, sir.
@@PawelKraszewski They never research since this isn´t really their job. Same here in Europe. 99,9% of all patents are never used for anything. You can patent a lot of useless stuff or even stuff that isn´t really worthy to be patented which still goes through. In the end it´s the court of law in a case like this which decides. Same for Apple, Samsung, BMW and what have you ...
There is plenty of prior art in these patent claims, it seems Stratasyst have patented existing tech with malice, with the sole intent of tying up any competitor in legal costs whilst at the same time having no legitimate claim to the IP, it seems to be a case of "we have lawyers on retainers, lets keep them busy by keeping any competition away from us"
Many patents granted in the US are thrown out in Europe, whether that is because Europe searches for prior art I am not sure, I do know they threw out an application by Slice Engineering for the patent to fix a hot-end with three screws.
This sounds like if Coca Cola was suing other soft drink companies for making soft drinks because they used aluminum cans.
I mean yeah they can sue, you always can but I doubt any of the allegations will really stick, we will see.
Or water...
I’m no expert here, but I’m pretty sure all those “patents” were already in use by other companies like prusa before 2017. What are garbage company Stratasys is.
They will lose the case based upon this . Patent law is fairly strict. If products exist prior to the patent being granted, the court can nullify the patent.
the prusa mmu was released in 2017. the patent for claim 1 was granted in 2016. Therefore the patent supercedes. I could go on but I think its clear stratasys have grounds.
Bambu has made thier entire company based on stealing otger companies technology. Thier extruders and print nozzles and heads are all from Voron , Prusa or Creality. Now we see thier multicolor tech is from Stratasys.....Its about time time they got caught and are being made to pay.
@@chris_thornborrow The heated bed patent has prior art to invalidate it. Search for "3D printing guides: Everything about heated beds!" on here and you will find a 9 year old video that predates the patent by 2 years.
@@chris_thornborrow Anycubic had the coated glass bed on their printers in the same year (2017) the patent for coated beds was granted. I'm sure Anycubic will offer evidence of the development of that bed that will invalidate that patent also.
This is basically just a description of a 3d printer.
What is the fuck? Prusa has been using purge towers long before Bambu Lab ever existed! Now all of a sudden they all can't coexist and share features?
What do you mean by now? Stratasys pulled this same shot back in 2013.
They can claim it unless it falls exactly in their model build. Any variation and it fails. Company is in trouble and making a wide sweeping money grab. Like the SEC.
Its whichever code they used. If its exactly the same as stratasys, they can be sued. Knowing that bambu studio is based on prusa slicer, its likely prusa's code.
This is only happening because bambu lab marketed the X1E to Stratasys's main buyers. They could care less about the consumer market.
Purge tower is just deposition/discarding of "waste" material. Or, if you think about it, just depositing material, in certain order... which what 3d printing IS. They just fish for money.
@@weasel101Their (Stratasys) stock price is $7.60 right now, compared to a high of $50 in February 2021. If the company wasn't hurting for cash right now and circling the drain, they wouldn't be making this Hail Mary call. Fuck those guys, I hope they go under
Our company looked to buy a Stratasis printer, do t remember which one, but it was bottom of their product line. We were quoted $45k and 1kg of their ABS was $300. I built us a RatRig instead for less than $2k
so they're suing bambu for making 3d printers (and software) that does the same thing as virtually every other printer manufacturer on the market.
they might as well also sue prusa, creality, qidi, etc.... so sad 🙄
Agreed ridiculous but patent infringement is an issue. Hopefully the court will come to some understanding to the severity of those claims and either deem an issue with the patent or realize they can not target 1 company...
@@generation-x406they can’t target just 1 company, either they defend their patents and sue everyone or don’t sue anyone at all. Their patents will most likely get revoked.
probably already did
Love to know how patents like these stand up to anti-monopoly laws in a Judge’s consideration
"They may as well also sue prusa, creality, etc" ... if they win this one and establish precedence, they absolutely will.
So FDM 3D printing entirely. They just want to end the industry that’s not them. Effing a holes. Their cheapest model is $100k, they don’t compete in the same markets at all. They see success and want their $
Their customers are buying BL printers and finding they are capable of doing a large chunk of what they had previously needed the expensive printers for.
they are in the same market, they have the same capabilities.
they are just in different price brackets
FDM term is a trademark of Stratasys. They invented the term in 1990 !!
Its all because of the X1E. The target audience is enterprise for that unit.
Stratasys doesn't care about the consumer market. If they can prove that bambu lab stole code, they are likely going to have to come to an agreement to pay the license fees to dismiss tge case, or pay a hefty fine. Whichever is cheaper.
Nah they want royaltys, also bambulab are doing the same thing trying to patent everything they can.
For example using multiple plates withing a slicer and 3 bed screws
Corporations suing over vauge patents is just professional hating. 💯
Please refer to them as STRATASHITS in future, it will help the issue gain notoriety
It'll get thrown out. The patents exist in the 90's for most of the exact same things. Patent office approved things they shouldn't have. Happens all the time. They'll show the previous patents and the ENTIRE INDUSTRY BUILT ON THOSE VERY PATENTS EXPIRING and case dismissed.
It most likely will not come to that. This will almost certainly not go to trial. A cross licensing deal is negotiated and the case is dropped.
@@sbrubak And Bambu (and other affected companies) will likely raise their prices to cover any royalties.
The entire 3D printing industry has a lot of incentive to financially back Bambu fighting this instead of settling.
100% agree, none of the allegations will stick in my opinion, they simply try it anyway and see what could stick. This sort of thing happens all the time. With Apple and Samsung and 1000 other ocmpanies.
@@RoofusKit Well bambulab are doing the same thing patent anything they tink they can. So you will just feed the next patent holder then
Isn't the purge tower just gcode as a result of the software and not something built into the printer itself? The printer hardware alone has no functionality to do a purge tower.
Well kinda, but as many people happily says 'I can send my print with 1 click', so on Ender 3 with Marlin it is clearly nothing to do with the printer, but with software. And when you can click to print just from the printer screen without any slicer at all... = )
They are saying that they are infringing on the patent because the printers can print a purge tower at all
@@shiroiokami9 They can say and sue all they want they are free to do so, we will see what really will stick. In the end I am guessing 99% will be simply dismissed by the court.
Simple to solve this though. Just print another model on the same plate.. print a figurine of the stratasys logo with some flies on it and a pile of plastic dog 💩 in lieu of the purge / prime (whatever) tower.
Every time you would have primed or purged, just add do the dog 💩 stratasys and flies figurine.
And we all can join in mocking their idiot claims whilst performing the same task that they are trying to make proprietary.
@@JWScott007 This is actually a great idea, we should use this design for all prime times to the end of time from now on.
they made this patent when the world was without knowledge. today every printer use the prime tower.. what a clowns
Idk how they got a patent on "prime tower" its just a neat way to get the job down without just spitting it out all over the plate
I'm not a patent lawyer (or any type of lawyer)... The third allegation (referencing patent '357) might be referencing the Arachne perimeter engine? Also the description is just wrong. 3mf is not a file format that printers can understand, it's gcode that is sent to the printer. 3mf is for saving your print jobs to re-load back into the slicer at a later date preserving all the print settings and object layout on the printer bed. I would hope that paragraph 59 could be argued as invalid based on that technical error.
Stratasys is diabolical for this. No one wants there mini fridge sized printers that prints crappy models.
Don’t their printers cost like huge megabucks too?
@@daledon69You don't even know about the filament yet. Got bored and did some research and...
*Their ABS+ is 200 bucks a spool for a 900g spool*
And get this, that's not even the cost for the official store
@@air8536 yea their target customers are totally different
@@air8536 Has anyone told them it's not 1990 anymore?
Manuacturers should really unite and finally invalidate a ton of Stratasys' patents or this shit will continue for decades to come.
😂😂 “invalidate their patents”
@@Iskelderon Why unite with Bambu Labs? The sane company that filed patents with processed already used in open source community?
Stratasys are patent trolls. pretty sure they sue every 3d printer company. this is the very reason why open source is so important
Open source is a communist dream but not feasible
@@PioneerPrint3D What?
I think this is the first non industrial manufacturer infringement they have issued.
Great video, thanks for posting; just to help give a frame of reference, buying a current Stratasys FDM printer is far more expensive than some of the second hand prices you mentioned. At the lowest end of the range, the F170 is $20k $28k, depending on options/bundles. Above that, the F370 is $65k-$79k, the F770 $104k-$140k. Last I checked the top option the F900 was >$400k.
Ultimaker was already using "prime towers" to print with PVA soluble filament back 2016 on their commercially available printers. That's before Stratasys applied for the patent.
Stratasys at least partially OWNS Ultimaker...
“However, I can read” 😂
lol. Glad for it, so “I can watch” 🤪 - thanks for the great content!
Stratasys claims to be “…one of the pioneers in the field of three-dimensional (3D) printing technology…” and yet they struggle to put out revolutionary examples of such innovations and now are desperate to make money off of suing successful companies that implemented the idea better….if they were such “pioneers,” why are they wasting time suing and not innovating? Oh that’s right…because they don’t know how to. And it’s funny how they target the biggest company to use the purge tower method while prusa and other companies use this technique. Such a disgraceful company only in it to keep their technology to themselves and not share it with the world. They’re claiming patent infringement on the most general functions….functions that almost ALL 3D printers in the world these days have. Seriously….Stratasys is just jelly that Bambu is the company they hoped to be but failed. I hope that selfish company dithers away.
They could be tarheting bambu because of the closed source nature of the company (and MONEY🤑🤑🤑)
Lol just read up on the company they have inovated a lot, but they have also just invented shit and patern it and done nothing they have 1300 active patterns or something making 500m last time i checked.
I don't know how this company ended up with all these patents. But, the jig is up on these "professional" fdm printers. It was one thing when printing wasn't mainstream, and running a printer was basically managing problems. But, those days are done and nobody wants the price, sales experience or large footprint in their shop. Not when they can spend a tiny fraction and produce 4-12x in the same space.
Bingo. Stratasys is basically in denial that the business conditions of 1990 are long gone. No more are printers used only by NASA/JPL at exorbitant rates.
Stratasys assumed they would always beat consumer 3D printers because they used to be hard to setup. But now with the new offerings by Bambu, FlashForge, and Creality they are loosing enterprise customers. They ignored us for way too long and now that they see they can't survie off of Polyjet and being a Legacy brand they want to sue. This is a frivolous lawsuit to handicap their competitors.
I spent $150k on a stratasys. Then 10k on a wash station. To print PC and abs! Now we use bamboo. I'll never go back. No one hates stratasys like their customers.
Why did you need a wash station for an FDM machine?
This is bullshit. If Bambu Lab is infringing on a patent for a purge tower, then so is every other slicer program and printer on the market.
When I heard what Stratasys was trying to do here, I did a search and your channel came up. You explain it well, and clearly. New subscriber here, need to keep up with these shenanigans. Well done sir.
I have known stratasys for years. They are a very preditory company. They don't like competition.
What I want to know is why they're trying to sue Bambu when they don't even compete in the same space. And these have been out for years, why now? This type of stuff really sucks.
Exactly, and Bambu has been around a few years now. I guess they are not liking the success Bambu Labs are having? It is pathetic
I love your disclaimer..."but I can read". People underestimate the value of reading so thank you for reading it for us 😊.
I have the stratus printer that costs well over $100,000 and I have a bamboo X1 carbon it is far far far better than the expensive stratosphere machine I would never buy another printer from Stratus never never never again. I'm not aware of what Strauss's prices are currently like but the site that you quoted was used machines and a few years ago they ranged in price from 100 plus thousand dollars to $500,000 maybe that's come down a lot but there's still a really really expensive nice video it will be unlikely that this will find its way through the courts in less than five or possibly even 10 years good job thank you
From what I can see, Stratasys doesn’t have a consumer level 3D printer. They invented the light bulb and other companies created manufacturing processes to mass produce them for consumer use.
Great analysis. I would suspect that prior art exists for at least some of these claims. 2016 is fairly late in the game for heated beds and slicers with different numbers of walls. Of course they filed in the patent-troll capital of the world, the Eastern District of Texas.
If Stratasys didn't make such expensive crap that is not only expensive to use with expensive materials and replacement parts maybe they would be the Bambu Lab. Citing expired patents is a sure way to get their case thrown out of court. The truth is that Bambu Lab is eating their lunch and they are smarting from it. Maybe their engineers should get busy and design a Bambu Lab equal at the same cost as it seems that their product is inferior and at way to high a cost for a consumer product. Maybe Bambu Lab users should start a kickstarter campaign for legal defense for Bambu Lab and teach these bullies a lesson!
You are talking about a kickstarter for a billion dollar tech company🤣 That btw also trying to patent weird thing just to block other people.
Soon after I got into FDM, I started experimenting with making multi colour signs, on my printer that has no AMS. Pretty quickly, I figured that adding a small model in the corner of the builplate that the nozzle would go print at the beginning of each layer would be a pretty convenient way to leave the plastic time to properly transition and extrude cleanly when making a colour change. To me, it seems that such an idea is as basic as realising that you'll need to add supports under your overhangs, if you don't want to end up with a mess.
But who knows, with money and lawyers you can make any simple and obvious principle look like a shameful patent infringement I guess...
Edit : I was writing this while watching the video and was about to jockingly add that the next step would probably be them claiming that they have a parent on heated build plate or microswitches or stepper motors.... Little did I know that it's exactly what they went on to claim in the text, right after I posted the comment.
It's outrageous. It's like if mercedes would sue any car company that uses wheels, or windshield wipers or seatbelts in their own vehicles.
Come on ... a purge tower patented in 2016 and that was granted? No checks on prior use? The US Patent system is so ridiculous.
Normally it moves slowly... but they filed in East TX for a reason. Historically, Patent trolls usually win there.
Yeah, that these kinds of suits can even be filed in places where none of the “infringement” took place should disqualify the suit entirely.
I think the fact that Bambu has been out and made multiple printers, had recalls, and is a successful company is why they are being singled out. They changed the field for 3D printing and have the most to loose, which is the most to gain from Stratasys.
My local collage campus has 11 X1C’s. They had Fusions but the Bambu printers are just superior for 1/4 of the cost.
If stratus does not sue every single other printer manufacturer on the planet, this is a one off ploy against a very young, very astute company. If I’m clear on the stratasys has been the main reason consumer 3-D printing did not take off at least 10 years earlier. It’s also filed in the eastern District Court of Texas, where all the patent trolls love to file because the judges in that district tend to side with the plaintiff. Did they file it intheir home state? NO. Why don’t they make a ruling that the case has to be filed in the home state of the plaintiff? That way, no one particular district court could start showing favoritism and becoming hub for patent litigation.
Imagine you invented such a ground breaking technology and now you're known as the villain in that technology's space. Instead of embracing innovation they keep trying to stifle it; and unsuccessfully at that too. That would break my little inventor heart.
I assume Babmbulab denied buyout and hence being sued. And I'm almost certain people would find enough prior art to send Stratasys' claims to hell.
well, hold on.. how can you sue a 3d printer company (bambu aside) for using a purge tower? that's not a function of the printer, that's a function of the slicer.
absolutely any 3d printer can use a purge tower if you slice the file that way, so you can change filament mid print. but that's a software thing, not a printer thing.
and.. can't slicers get around the patent by simply printing a second model with random colors for the color change? i.e. it's not a purge tower, it's a second model being printed at the same time.
what, I can't print more than one model if the second model is random colors?
this part is BS. the sensor stuff... a lot of it seems.. overly broad.
and.. it might be hard to argue 'loss' if stratasys doesn't make any fdm printers (those seem like laser sintering on their website) .. meaning, there is a market separation.
there might also be an argument for market separation (no market overlap) if you're selling in the $20k printer market and someone else is selling $1k printer market.
these are two VERY different markets.. it's like saying that a motorcycle is infringing on your monster truck business. it's not. it's completely different markets.
no one in the market for a mo0nster truck is going to buy a motorcycle. no one looking for a motorcycle is going to buy a monster truck.
likewise, if you're looking for a $20K printer, it probably does things a $1K printer can't do. therefore a completely different market.
likewise if you're looking for, say, a $250 bambu a1 mini... you're not in the market for a $20K printer. they're not the same markets, they don't serve the same use cases, they're not the same customers, and there wouldn't be any financial losses with both existing.
unless.... stratasys is willing to admit their $20K printer doesn't outperform a $1K printer... if they make that claim, then it makes sense. and it would be hilarious. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
stratasys invented the FDM term in 1990, it is even a trademark of them !!!
@@Ro3Deee if they haven't protected their trademark for "fdm" in the past 10 years of 3d printing companies using it, they're unlikely to retain title to it. that's how that works. this is how 'aspirin' lost its trademark, and google fights aggressively regarding using 'google' as a generic term for 'search'. 10 years is a long time to "let things slip" as a whole industry uses the term now. they can't claim "we didn't know others were using it"..
regarding purge towers, Bambu can simply stop using them and therefore avoid infringement claims, and simply defer to their poop chutes.
other slicers could build a poop catcher which would act to redirect poop instead of putting in a tower.. but it's still an iffy concept to go after the hardware vs the software on the tower concept.
and the better solution might just be a 'sacrificial part' print which isn't technically a tower, it's a model, but achieves the same outcome.
BambuStudio has option to purge mixed media into infills of model being printed if there's a place and space. And as mentioned - this is purely slicer software thing, not even printer's firmware. And BambuStudio is based on PrusaSlicer...
Bambulab playing the same game, trying to patent the use of several plates in a slicer "CN114013044A" thats just i slicer too.
bambulab trying to patent anything they can too not shure why you lads trying to defend these corpos.
IF they are not gonna sue everyone then its abuse
Oh, don't worry. If they win they'll sue everybody and you'll have to pay $5k to get a heated bed.
@RichFreeman it's crazy I doubt they win but never know
@@TrippyyTreyyy Yeah, for these guys it is a numbers game. File 50 lawsuits. Lose 40, win 2, get license deals on 8. All of them cost your competitors money and drive up prices in the market, or scare companies from making better printers that compete with your own higher end printers. They don't care about not winning every case.
@@RichFreeman they do when every one of these lawsuits cost them $2 million dollars to file
@@bigtimeny315 obviously they can't lose all of them. But some get settled.
Definitely an abuse of the US patent system that doesn’t any longer protect inventors but instead allows a simple idea with absolutely no proof of concept to hurt the market and the end consumers. Our system actually allows a patent that is vague and not possible at time of filing to benefit the filer once a real investor solves the problem that the patent holder was too lazy to actually do.
If I'm not wrong few years ago someone tried to patent wheel and almost succeded :)
the patented "heated build plate"
get real. Why not just patent spooled filament.
Hey, that’s a great idea. Let me go file that now and then I’ll make it public domain.
Stratasys suing only because of Bambu having big impact in the 3d printing industry. If it was a flop ,they would not be coming after bambu. I think other 3d companies are feeling the pain many users are buying bambu and ditching stuff like prusa , creality, etc
So this means Prusa has never been a threat but the 3 yr old Bambulab is?
@@FireDragon3D I think it's more so because bambulab has much cheaper, reliable, and faster options like the P1S than prusa with their ~$1k printers. Bambu is making people that never would buy a 3D printer buy them, making them much more popular and therefore a threat.
It's also key that people and companies are buying bambu printers instead of the 10X more expensive industrial printers.
Prusa is not an American company, Bambu Labs is registered in USA.
@@chris_thornborrow That's an interesting thought. Prusa can not be sued in a US court. But they could be barred from importing if they were found liable. Bambu is not a US company either, so I wonder for what business reason they register as a business in the US..... As such, they can now be sued.
In general Patents are only valid if the invention covered within the Patents is not already part of the public domain. Hence if referred infringement relates to heated build plates, that might most lightly be dismissed, since heated build plates where common knowledge way before the said date.
The question that remains if Stratasys refers to a Patent renewal or to the first granted date of the said Patent.
So basically they believe they own all ideas in relation to 3d printing. I hope this is thrown out. Patents shouldn’t cover vague ideas but specific designs.
Stratasys, in my opinion, is suing Bambu Lab since the latter filed several patents. Bambu Lab (+ their other companies) filed several patents in last years, are easy to find.
Some are very generic patents.
Bambu Labs is not an open source company,.
From a point of view of Stratasys any patent, even minor, that overlaps its patents is a problem for its intectual property tights and development of products. Instead an open dource dedign it is not.
What a load of… ridiculous they should be taking every 3D printer manufacturer to court if that’s the case. Bambu could likely just stop shipping to the US
Ok but I think this can be easily dismissed because there is prior art on most of these… e.g. the patent for load cell on the printer is from 2015. All you have to do is find prior art like a printer before that, and it’s all good
I'm not a lawyer, but by the sounds of that lawsuit, they might sue most other manufacturers as well, which is highly unlikely.
On one hand, it's nice to see someone truly taking Bambu Lab to task for at least some part of their long history of outright theft of the IP of competitors, customers, and everyone in between.
On the other hand, it's Stratasys and they chose the court most friendly to patent trolls. If they were interested in growing their business, they'd make good and reasonably affordable prosumer-grade printers...instead, they'd rather continue servicing only their core industrial customer base and try to squeeze the rest of the market for whatever cash they can get out of it.
Whoever wins here, we all lose.
They took this long to file ? if somebody stole my idea I wouldn't wait 2 years to file
In order to sue, you need to demonstrate financial loss. The longer you wait, the stronger the case. This also explains why they dont sue lots of other companies.
@@chris_thornborrow Makes sense
@@chris_thornborrowyou can see the loss if you look up their current share value in the market. Right now it's been the lowest it has ever been and is still dropping last I looked it was at $7.20 a share and you can see it in the months behind and even years behind it's been in a decline for a long time. I guarantee you that all these other manufacturers will group together for fear of being sued and they will have the best lawyers to back them up.
If they sue bambulag over these patents, they have to sue every single 3d printer manufacturer…
US Patent law needs a shake-up, Slice Engineering issued an infringement claiming they had a patent for fixing a hot-end with three screws, how ridiculous is that?
And build my own mount with 4 screws! They won't see that coming! How many screws a product uses is so stupid of a thing to control. How it mounts maybe, but screws? Haven't those been around for hundreds of years at this point?
While everyone was innovating, Stratasys was shoveling money into their lawyers to file patents. Since the USPTO is "first to file", it will be up to the companies to challenge the filed/granted patents to have them thrown out for prior art, obvious, or non-novel. Tens of millions this will cost anyone that wants to stay in the 3D printer space.
Stratasys needed to file a lawsuit against a company to make an example, might as well be the one that dipped a toe into their market.
This lawsuit has no teeth. Problem is, they have to sue everyone, not just one company. In order to protect a patent, they must go after every infringing party, including open source developers. Effectively they lost the patent.
Not true at all. They can pick and choose who they want to sue based on the aggresion of the theft.....
Nope, no legal requirement to sue everybody. You can pick them off one by one, just go after the big ones, or knock off a few of the smaller ones to try and bolster the apparent validity of your patents, or whatever you want.
@@artiem5262 Exactly
@@artiem5262Yep, but you only have a 6 year window to do it. Not pursuing infringments leaves them open for a valid legal argument of failing to protect their patents.
Failing to properly defend and protect your patent can potentially cause you to lose legal claim over it.
A friend of mine bought a Stratsys MOJO printer for several $K and probably spent a couple K on material and ot produced crappy prints. He saw the work of my X1C and bought one. He has printed far more perfect prints for a lot less $. Stratasys is on real thin ice here and I hope they either go down in flames or learn a very well taught lesson. In any event based on what I have seen and read I would never recommend them or any of their products, that includes Ultimaker and Makerbot.
If you want to "help" the defense, see if you can come up with paper receipts for prior art for each of the patents. I think the standard is "used in commerce". if you have purchased a coated build plate before the application date, or purchased a heated build plate and have the receipt offer that info to Bambu Labs legal team. If you want to punish Stratasys, look at their patent portfolio and try to find prior art to invalidate as many of their patents as you can. I think there is an open source organization that specializes in this sort of thing, but they only do it for other open source groups, so they may not be interested in helping.
If they set precedence with this case don't be shocked if they come after the other companies as well. They're claiming pei sheets and heated beds that's every single 3d printer of 2024.
Many US patent applications that are granted in the US are thrown out in Europe, I would love to know how many of these patents were granted or thrown out in Europe.
I dont know how it is going to end, but all the patents claimed to be infriged by bambu can be directed to the software side, like toolpath and sacrificial tower, that are developted and kept by the communit of ORCA Slicer and Prusa Slicer. The camera lawsuit is ridiculous, and the NFC is used from stratasys ever since their first systems, but they used eprom, not NFC, because they didnt existed, but by the end of the day, this is a dead end. The single point here for Bambu is the Bambu driver, that could be a problem for Bambu, on those points about the network.
“I’m no a Lawyer……. However, I can read”…. Love it. Keep up the good work Figure Feedback! I enjoy seeing your posts. From Aus with love.
Not to mention the filament costs... I believe around $290 for a 60Ci3 roll of ABS.....
Imagine losing so bad in a market that you have to sue to make any sort of money
Stratasys owns a sizeable share of Ultimaker, which is one of the companies suffering the most with Bambu Lab success. Stratasys is the number one enemy of the consumer 3d printing community. Their patent on fdm 3d printing in general expired in 2009, but they still hold a significant number of patents, including patents over dual extrusion print heads.
it also explains why they went down in quality and up in price, I'm surprised they just haven't completely pulled the plug on Cura, to say all future dev / use is paid only.
My company has a f370 and it's a nightmare. More failed prints then successful prints. The extruder are 1200 a piece and there are 2 of them, they only last for like 1000 hours. Their filament is proprietary and a 60 cu in spool of abs is 250 not counting the qsr that has to be used every print. It's so bad it's astonishing anyone buys them for the crazy price they cost just to get into
Recently Stratasys rep brought me a sample print of a part I produce, the quality was horrible, took 15 hours to print, and expensive to produce. On the other hand, the Bambu Lab printer printed an outstanding quality part, took less than half the time to print (6 hours), and much cheaper per part but not cheap quality like the "commercial" printer.
they need to counter sue and void their bs patent, literally keeping society from progressing.
04:27 so just a simple change in the slicer to not use a purge tower, to send it the way of filament poop as used. ? Laurie. NZ.
I can confirm their stuff is very expensive compared to the average consumer market pricing. They lock you into using their bloated system and resins reducing cost effectiveness for prints.
So any 3d printer manufacter/part supplier and/or slicer software is violating these patents is basically it.
yep
If its for consumers, stratasys doesn't care.
If its for enterprise like the new X1E, that is their main demographic so of course they will defend their patents now.
Bambu lab will have to either come to an agreement to pay the licensing fees or pay a fine for the "damages".
I dont think bambu lab is going anywhere, but they need to play by the rules like HP, Formlabs, MarkForgrd, and Ultimaker.
They are targeting Bambulab as one of the biggest, this is all stuff most modern printers and/or slicers can do or are able to do for ages. Next they add that Bambulab has printers, that come with an enclosure
We need to flood Stratasy with complaints and petitions and whatever it takes... these a-holes are trying to monopolize the 3d printers.... makes me mad
"Without authorization" sounds like 2 key words.
Do you think this will delay the production of new printers which is planned for the coming weeks and months?
So they are claiming a patent on the heated bed? That’s been around since day one!
I hope they stomp Bambu in the ground. Bambu is NO BETTER. If they were they would open source. I refuse to buy their crap. I got the Flashforge 5m works just as good at a third of the price.
They are not purge towers ... they are poop piles... Problem solved.
I know one of the patents was keeping companies like Prusa from doing an enclosed build chamber as standard, and for years the workaround was to publish open-source documents on how to take a couple of Ikea tables, 3D print some parts, add some plexiglass and you had a build chamber for your printer.
My guess is there's something in all this for them to go after Bambu specifically, possibly the closed source nature of their systems (not to mention the potential for spyware, can't trust the Chinese for that), or (and I don't know specifics) the other players may have worked out a license based on prior use or something else non-infringing, whereas Bambu just thought they could get away with it.
Great video! This is another example of a big business using the court as a weapon .
4:42 Pretty sure heated beds were used and published much before Dec 17, 2014 when Stratasys filed for its patent. The patent should be revoked.
name one printer that had a headed bed before 2014 (and the producer doesn't have a licencing agreement with stratasys)
Okay I don't know what I'm talking about but if you have enough money there is nothing preventing you from patenting an idea that is not yours as long as the original idea is from a small enough threat
Well technically i think they have a patent on removable beds with a liner to help removal "US9592660B2"
It is hard to comment on this issue because we do not know if other manufactures have some type of deal with Stratasys. Personally I have mixed feelings on the subject. As a mechanical engineer who has worked for different companies. The company should have some protections for their new designs. But I feel there should be a time limit on those patents thus allowing the market to have a chance to use and or improve upon that design.
There is a time limit on patents, but it is insanely long. The original patents for 3d printing tech have been around since the late 60s and only expired sometime in the early 2000s
@antoniomromo really, that's odd because I thought patents only last 20 yrs.
The fact that the US law allows and almost encourages this just shows you why more and more companies are moving out of the US.
So, they are deciding to defend patents issued 8 years ago, which every desktop 3D printer sold in the US for the past 8 years has violated without any lawsuit. Those technologies should be in the public domain now, since they are ubiquitous and Stratasys chose to not defend them for many years.
Pretty sure 9,421,713 is expired as of 2-27-2021 meaning patent is no longer enforceable. Only one I care to look up but many of these patents likely 20+ years old and will no longer hold up in court. Patents screw innovation by creating roadblocks mainly because if innovation can only mean find a different way to do it instead of a better and more cost effective way. If we limit patents further we would grow faster.
I never used the purge tower and my prints come out fantastic, honestly I don't even think it's needed, plus the purge option is enabled in the slicer so any printer can enable it and do a purge tower
It's not a purge tower, it's a prime tower. The lawyer that wrote this called it the wrong thing. lol
It can be done, surface quality is the only real advantage. The purging happens with poops and the infill if the option is set
@@ThisisDD yeah I know Purge Tower prime Tower potato potato, I still never use it and my prints come out fine
@@NoMercyFtw it only exists when using the AMS and you cannot disable it.
@@ariadnedanelle and I've used the AMS I have an AMS and you can disable it, it's in the slicer check mark uncheck it unless you can't disable it in bamboo slicer.
There are LOTS of patent troll lawsuits are filed in that court district... Interesting!
Just call it a “purge block”. They might pioneer it but they shouldn’t hold others from iterating and making it better. Stratasys is horrible for holding back innovation in order to profit from their old ideas.
You can get around a prime tower and nozzle sensors, but it seems tougher to me, getting around the heated bed and print surface one; this is bad :( ; heated chambers might have to be the way forward.
Just make 'extension' port and let 3rd party to sell heaters for your coffee cup, which are accidentally compatible with this port. And stop creating your own slicers, and just support community slicers.
Prime tower is just a slicer option, so no worries at all if your printer can't do this on your own.
Nozzle sensors can be got around, as I understand, using simple button instead of force detection sensor.
Prusa had a heated bed with removable PEI build plate in the I3 MK2, released in May of 2016, a month before the patent application was published and nearly a year before the patent was granted. (now, Arevo Inc, the original owner of the patent, filed the application in 2014, so I don't know how that comes into play)
The podcast is truly remarkable. I have a strong belief that any company caught stealing technology and patents from others, regardless of their reputation or products, should face legal consequences and be required to compensate. To illustrate, let's consider a completely unrelated scenario where President Trump was monitored during legal proceedings. I will refrain from further elaboration as this topic is sensitive to many. In my view, numerous companies are utilizing identical technologies. Should these companies once again infringe on patents and use technology developed by others, who invested in research and development, they must face financial and potentially criminal repercussions. Laboratories are likely to be the first in line for such actions. This is not a matter of opinion, but rather a matter of fact. I cannot emphasize enough that emotions have no place in business dealings.
It's funny that they patented something that was on open source, RepRap printers from 2010 or earlier. The Dawin was developed in 2008 and had a heated build plate. So...
well technically they patented a heated bed with a removable plate with a coating "US9592660B2"