I think the seam concealing patent could be struck down as obvious. It’s just a lead in-lead out which has been being used in subtractive processes for decades.
The us patent office no longer cares if a new patent is “novel”. They can no longer decipher the novelty of a patent, considering the explosion of new patents and the inability to decipher them. They leave the proof of prior art to the courtrooms, which leaves an impossible burden onto the alleged infringer. The patent industry and the lawyers who serve them is a multi billion dollar industry, the government has no desire to shut it down, as it is backed by their wealthiest contributors.
Easiest way is to shorten a patents lifetime, or create a government program that is designed to actually handle patent cases and determine their validity, something that the current patent office does not do.
Fines for patents which are filed which are fraudulent or invalid should be steep and determined by the dollar amount that patent has earned the company.
Even when a patent is invalidated, the court system does not reverse previous judgements and damages.
To summary, patents are not valid for research purposes. To which, open source can be defined as research. So to make the patents useless, you could use the patents in an open source research group, say, http://reprap.org
Warning: I am not a lawyer, nor do I want to be. Use discretion.
I wonder how this decision can affect people in Europe and Asia.
However I can not understand this “patent” system. I think that it’s really stupid and insane.
Does this document help:
http://reprap.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Thermoplast_Extruder_Variations&oldid=391
It is made 13 months prior to the stratasys patent
Of course, if you don’t live In the US or intend to sell a product there, all this is somewhat mute. In the long run I think this will just encourage non us based companies to focus their efforts on Europe and emerging markets, rather than risk bullshit patent infringement lawsuits in the states.
@Nick_Parker Agreed. I saw that and thought the same thing. KISSlicer implements it - not sure when it first went in, though.
Right @Tim_Rastall , at this point if the U.S. continues the “war on innovation” that is the existing patent/copyright/intellectual property law then the innovators will simply be driven out to continue their work elsewhere.
Can you even imagine what the country would look like then?
@Jason_Gullickson Believe it or not, regulations have a historical tendency to oppress innovation.
There is likely more than a few people that have ideas just similar enough to standing copyrights, that they are unable to pursue their design. Even if they original holder of the copyright isn’t producing the item or making a profit.
A notable example would be patents for alternate energy devices and high efficiency engines. The oil industry has made sure that more than a few of them would never reach production.
@Runivis_Roan I think we’re making the same point? 
@Jason_Gullickson I’m not so sure. It appears that you support copyright, just not in it’s current form.
I suppose I’m not against some form of copyright, but in it’s current state it’s being exclusively used to snuff competition rather than protect innovation.
In it’s current state we would be better off without it.
@Runivis_Roan I gave you the wrong impression :). I guess I’m not opposed to hearing about a better system, but I’ve never heard of one I like, and I think they are generally unnecessary.