Guess I’ll better throw this in here myself to catch the reactions, before someone else throws it in here.
Yes, I’m not a fan of patents. But I understand the reasons why we as Ultimaker need to take these steps. Patent law pretty much requires it, as there is no other defense. It’s the reality of today. The world was so much simpler 4 years ago when Ultimaker was small…
Thanks @Daid_Braam ; Ultimaker has still been a great contributor to the greater 3D printing community and I don’t think this is a slippery-slope for them. They do need patents in order to protect themselves, and they’ve done a lot of innovating these last few years.
As long as something like Cura becoming closed source doesn’t happen, I think it’s just fine that they’re filing for patents.
Patents are a necessary evil in order to protect the innovators of society. I appreciate the honesty of Ultimaker and their machines are top notch. Highly recommend them to anyone looking for a step up from hobbyist grade machines.
…I left cura long ago, when I found it difficult to use with non ultimaker printers. Maybe they changed it since then, but as long as more things like that don’t creep up we should be ok
I just want to point out that I predict a lot of people will be hypocrites about this. To be fair, Stratasys has always been closed, and MBI eventually went closed, but I don’t think it’s entirely fair to mercilessly skewer Makerbot for patents and then turn around a few years later and say it’s peachy-keen for Ultimaker. And I do think it’s fine for UM to do this. Makerbot’s problems weren’t their much-hated IP choices, but bad management and bad hardware design.
There are two uses for patents, one is to defend aganst patent trolls, the other is to attack (as a patent troll).
There is a growing movement of companies using them only in defense, allowing fair use of thier patents. It also allows them to make deals with other companies to share their patents.
So the question is, will they use the patent to attack those who cannot defend themselves, or will they use it to defend themselves when attacked.
@Stephanie_A Tesla gave us a really good example of this, of course. (Sharing electric car tech for the common good.) But people rightfully pointed out when Tesla announced their patent-opening decision that there is NO explicit license granted by statements saying “we won’t sue good-faith users.” It has no legal teeth – the company can decide to sue later.
The cynical interpretation here is that these “defensive patent” and “open patent” statements are pure PR efforts, with no actual bearing on the company’s IP enforcement. Business threats can still be sued by claiming bad faith use, and hobbyists were never worth suing in the first place.
That said, I think UM has good intent here. We just need to keep an eye on this stuff. For example, if UM IPOs or sells to a big player, the “defensive” patents can quickly become offensive. (Pun intended.)
I agree with @Ryan_Carlyle . I am skeptical about “PR claims” that “we will always be good guys”.
E.g. who knows who buys who in the end and how the intellectual property is handled then…
Still I understand the issue as there are no real solution in the real world. Too bad there is no easy legal status to put an invention in the public domain as this would be the only real deal: patent but then, make it free to all.
I also need to go and read about the patents themselves to see if/how really novel they are. But I would not be surprised that a maker here or there already did it some time ago, or that the patent legalese is over-reaching.
Here again one could say “it is how things are”. But things are broken and complying to the system is probably not a way to help fixing it. I really have mixed feelings. Is growing bigger really a reason to play the game? Ultimaker slowly drifts away from what they were imho, and I am glad it happens to them, but they no more look like a bunch of makers for sure. Lots of PR, higher prices and polish on the marketing makes me a little nervous.
anyhow, thanks @Daid_Braam for keeping such an open stance 
The press release is really dull or “professional”. Say, prior art already exists as a defense, so stating that “filing patents” is obvious and natural sounds more like usual corporate bullshit than anything else to me.
Sorry but I cannot help but read it like “we would better patent just in case”. And honestly, I really would frankly better hear it like this and without the counterproductive “…but we will tell lots of reasons why it is better for you”.
@Jeremie_Francois I’m personally also conflicted on this whole area. It’s really really difficult. On one hand, I rather fight the broken system. But at the same time, without defense, we’re putting the jobs of all the our people at risk. Which was fine when we where <30 people. But we employ so many people now.
I personally think that the whole patent system is broken. It’s hardly about innovation and protecting the innovators. It feels more like hammers big companies use to hit each other. And hold over small companies to force them into submission. Prior art is often stated here. Guess what, that’s hardly checked, patents with prior art are granted all the time, and want to enforce it? Take it to court, with a bag of money of course. With the big companies, it’s not about the technical parts, it’s about the numbers.
As for Ultimaker. The truth is that we will have to see. I’m not directly involved in the whole patent part, and the founders are pushing for keeping it open and for defense. And they could have sold the company for money a long time ago. But didn’t, which means they have more important goals then money. So that is positive.
@Daid_Braam : agreed, and I heard that the founders refused to get bought.
UM eventually grew on its own to a point it became “serious” (at least! there were times when the lead time was ridiculous and US people had no distributors…). No surprise though, becoming “serious” brings in/need a lot of professionals in marketing, corporate stuff, and whatever improve sales… Well, they do their job I guess, and they systematically sound biased to me (to say the least).
What is nice is that the absence of greedy external shareholders reduces a lot of the risks, both for the company and for the community
There is also a discussion going on at our forums:
https://ultimaker.com/en/community/39121-ultimaker-files-its-first-patent
Nallath is awnsering questions there, he was much more involved with the whole Ultimaker patent part then I was. So he is much more qualified to respond to questions.
Note that I made the personal decision not to be involved in the whole patent part. As I want to focus on the technical side of our products.
@kenneth_rooks yep custom machines came back in the next version.
@Luis_E_Rodriguez I’m really into slicer for now, may give cura another shot down the line.
@kenneth_rooks I try them all too! Need to give slicer another look.
I’m somewhat surprised by many of the comments here. I have contemplated all day on this.
To play this game Ultimaker will need a big patent war chest, lots of significant patents and IP, not just one or two.
So the question is - will all new development and innovation inside Ultimaker be turned into patents? Because that’s what I would expect now. The problem with this is that for a patent to be filed, no information is disclosed, so we no longer get open-innovation.
It stands to reason that anything shared openly from now on, is probably not worth patenting.
So deciding to go down the patent route, for whatever reason, is somewhat incompatible with open-source and open innovation.
I know Red-hat have a patent promise, Ultimaker could also pledge something similar, but the main issue I see is that the first we see of real innovation from Ultimaker is in a new patent.
I wonder if they will include software patents / methods / Cura and how does Youmagine fit into the mix.
I appreciate Ultimaker has big plans and goals for the company growth, but it feels a lot like they have outgrown the community and users that built them up in the first place…
That makes me feel rather sad for the future.
I’m not anti-patent (I do think the patent system is broken beyond repair) but I am not in favour of open-source companies switching to a patent or IP protection system, trying to do both, seems impossible for hardware.
@Nathan_Walkner It’s also likely that IP patents increases the value of the company for if / when an event like sale or acquisition happens…
Filing patents is one way to try and protect a company own intellectual “property”, i.e. one’s own economic viability. Patents works mostly by reducing the freedom or even by endangering the viability of others. In this respect @Richard_Horne really pinpoints the problem: it does not fit well with the idea of open source in any case.
I did not want to sound harsh, but as @Thomas_Sanladerer once said (about BQ), “You know, sometimes, all it takes is a kick in the nuts to get things going.”
@Lukas_Mathis true, asking for “faith” from an open community while you start filing patents is weird.