[steveklabnik]

This whole copyright vs 3D printing thing is interesting, but the bigger, more important battle right now is actually patents vs. 3D printing.

The entrenched players in the industry have large patent portfolios, and this hurts the ability of projects like the RepRap to actually make improvements. We probably could have had all of these kinds of projects years ago, but the patents are only now starting to run out...

[kiba]

What evidences to suggest that these kind of projects didn't start because of patents?

[steveklabnik]

First of all, IANAL.

Secondly, it would appear to me that MakerBot, for example, is pretty blatantly infringing on the FDM patents that Stratasys has. Those are about to run out Real Soon Now, though, so they're probably fine.

Third, the industry has shaped up the way that it has because of patents. There's a reason there's 14 different ways to do 3D printing. Yeah, some are better at some things than others, but realistically, we'd really have like 3 or 4 processes if there were no patents to force new hardware companies to reinvent the wheel all the time.

The fact that there's pretty much a 1-1 mapping between companies and processes suggests that it's difficult to start a business in this area, due to the large amount of capital needed to invent a new way of doing things.

[kiba]

It does seem to me that new companies can't start, but I doubt somebody really interested in 3D printing research would really care?

[steveklabnik]

But we'd move forward faster if we had both startups and university research working on the problem.

I'm not saying that it quashes all of it, just that it's set back personal fabrication 25 years.

[kiba]

I'm not saying that it quashes all of it, just that it's set back personal fabrication 25 years.

Forgive me for my historical ignorance, is there any sort of open hardware movement 25 years ago?

If not, than replication technology 25 years ago would probably have a different character.

[elai]

The parallels between the makerbot/reprap and the Altair 8800 in 1975 is very interesting. It couldn't do much, but it marked the start of the "personal" computer era. Microsoft made it's first piece of software for that machine.