

What's the story with the Makerbot patent? - CapitalistCartr
http://boingboing.net/2014/05/30/whats-the-story-with-the-mak.html

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rayiner
I wanted to address one thing:

> Venture-backed companies are generally forced to file patents -- often very
> silly and overbroad ones -- by their investors, who are alive to the
> possibility of flogging them off to a troll in the (likely) event that the
> company fails.

If you're dealing with an R&D focused company, as opposed to a product
company, it is essential for investors to require the company to take out
patents. Without a patent, an R&D focused company is an empty shell with no
assets. All the technology is in a bunch of engineers' brains, all of whom can
walk out the door at any moment. If the company isn't successful, without a
patent investors are left with no assets of value, even if they produced
technology that is itself valuable. Competitors can come along and hire away
the engineers or just pick through the publications to glean the benefit of
the R&D that the investors may have poured tens of millions of dollars into.
And this is also where NPE's show their value: if investors can count on being
able to sell the technology to an NPE who might then try and license it out,
they are more likely to be willing to invest in the first place.

For a company like Makerbot, patents are going to be essential. Their brand
isn't worth anything. They don't have an audience of users that might be
disinclined to use a competitor for loss of the network effect. They've got
technology, which by virtue of their generally open nature, is easy for a
competitor to copy without the R&D effort they had to put into developing the
technology in the first place. And as far as I can tell, they're not running a
non-profit and have been the subject of tens of millions of dollars in
investment.

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fred_durst
To me personally there is big difference between spending millions in R&D to
develop something novel that would have never happened and spending millions
in R&D just to make sure you get there first. I rather have something 6 months
later free and clear than having to wait 20 years for a patent to run out.

It's a difference between creating something no one would have otherwise, and
simply winning a race to claim property rights on something.

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apu
But it's often not clear what the outcome of research will be -- unexpected
results can start off as being simply the next iteration of an existing
technology.

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jdenning
Personally, I don't think the community reaction has been overblown at all. If
nothing else, they have acted in profoundly bad faith by soliciting free work
from the open hardware community in exchange for the promise of an open
hardware business model.

They can't just say "you guys should design a bunch of stuff for us for free,
but any minor improvement we make is proprietary and WE'LL SUE YOU INTO THE
GROUND IF YOU TRY TO USE IT IN YOUR DESIGN!".

Patents and closed source software are the enemies of the Open Source
Hardware/Software movements. They lied about their intentions, and people feel
betrayed. If they had been up front about their business model, I suspect they
would have not received as much support from the community as they did -
support which was instrumental to reaching the status that they have.

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technomancy
So in software land, we have licenses which include patent protection clauses.
It's not particularly difficult for me to release my work under a license that
would prevent anyone distributing it from engaging in patent litigation. Why
haven't hardware hackers embraced similar practices?

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kanzure
> So in software land, we have licenses which include patent protection
> clauses. Why haven't hardware hackers embraced similar practices?

Copyright is one of the three main types of intellectual property in the
world-wide WIPO system. The other two are patents (hardware) and trademarks.
Guess which one gets to trump copyright licensing and exist beyond copyright
law?

This isn't an explicit answer, but related to your question:
[http://www.publicknowledge.org/news-blog/blogs/open-
source-h...](http://www.publicknowledge.org/news-blog/blogs/open-source-
hardware-and-law)

My guess is that a lawyer (which I'm not) would tell you that the patent
protection clauses you refer to only apply to the copyrightable material, and
not the inventions themselves (even in software).

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noonespecial
I think the disconnect here is that its not unreasonable, illegal, or even
particularly surprising that a company like Makerbot might seek these patents,
especially in light of their acquisition.

Our (the makers) problem is that it was _rude_. The community supported them
in large part _because_ of their declared support of openness. What they're
doing isn't like running a red light because they're in a hurry, its more like
farting on an elevator. The backlash is justified.

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Splendor
Why is this post separate from the Boing Boing blog with no ability to
comment?

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beschizza
A recent upgrade to the Discourse forum/comment system made the wordpress
bridge fall over. It's now gotten back up and comment links are working again.

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makomk
The inventions their parent company filed patents for were also very different
from the community-invented features that they're suing their competitors
over. This is not terribly reassuring under the circumstances.

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danatkinson
Needs a tl;dr. Clearly my attention span is shot on a Friday night. :(

~~~
rhizome
"People are freaking out too much; they aren't patenting _everything_."

