@Nathan_Walkner the market may be ripe. Many new users probably have no no care about historic communities of inventors 
@Lukas_Mathis interestingly, Jaimie (from UM) liked my comparison to the MAD doctrine. But he missed that everyone pays when it works, or dies when it fails – certainly not only the players 
I guess we all agree that patents are very much a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” sorta situation. I can fully understand why Ultimaker is filing patents, and I’m not necessarily against it. The question is where the line for defensive use of the patents will be drawn (notice how the definition is rather vague on Ultimaker’s side).
Private and academic use aside (which patents have no grasp on anyways), what if a PrusaResearch implemented a patented solution? What if it was Zortax? How about TEVO? Makerbot? 3D Systems?
Releasing source files is all fine and dandy, but patents are totally independent on that. Just because the drawings come with a CC-BY-SA license doesn’t mean others will be able to use them freely when the publisher also holds patents about the design.
@Nathan_Walkner defensive patents are a dead end in the same way open source is one: you are deliberately signing aways rights for the greater good, but don’t necessarily get anything in return. Which plays into the hands of entities keen on taking advantage on good will.
In case of a MAD situation, everyone pays when the nukes start flying. But the entire principle of MAD relies on the idea that all involved parties are trying to maximise profit. In the context of B2B, this is a fair assumption.
As i’ve stated on the forum multiple times before; Open source does not bite with patents. On the contrary. Open source works because of intelectual property. When david started cura, he was able to force open source-ness because he owned the intelectual property.
Patents have been misused so much, that i believe that the system and implementation is broken. But just because most people use it wrong does not mean it can’t ever be used in the right way.
@Jaime_van_Kessel1 MAD: no, every one pays also for simply building the bombs (in addition to paying even more when getting them on the head).
E.g the very smart and functional magnetic power plug found on Apple products only exists on Apple products probably because of a patent. So only few benefit from it, and they pay for barring its use elsewhere. The hypocrisy is that the price of the patent is buried in the product price in the end.
Note that I can live with patents, but I feel like many of the justifications are unsuitable…
Cant find fault with this. In this world its necessary.