May MakerBot get their collective butts banned from the USA Patent office!
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:31927 Now this item mentions that it is based on old Patents. The patents are probably from the CNC world. MakerBot/Sratasys would probably try to claim this expired patent violates their patent for auto bed leveling.
I invite everyone to compare the recent MakerBox/Stratasys patent filings to old patents that are already in place and then if possible ask the original designers of the old and probably expired patents if it is OK if you use their patent and what they think of MakerBot/Stratasys trying to claim their expired patent is actually MakerBot/Statasys intellectual property.
Just because a patent is used for something new and some jackass knows how to write essays about someone else’s work does not mean they deserve a patent.
You clearly don’t understand the patent system. Once a patent expires it is fare game. They enter public domain. If he used different pieces of different patents in a way that hadn’t been done before it would be issued a patent, there is nothing illegal in improving a design. Apple has been issued many “questionable patent’s” they completely stole programs and “functions” from PC’s ported for mobile, called it there’s and got the patents. I think you should do a little patent research.
@Tankapotamus I do not agree with about anything our piece of shit patent office does.
“A patent is an intellectual property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted.”
That is right from http://www.uspto.gov/patents/index.jsp
MakerBot was not an inventor of many of the things they tried patenting.
On another note, I think a number of the congress men and women need to go fist themselves.
MakerBot is pulling the same shit that Microsoft pulled many many times (and as you mentioned Apple) and this shit must stop.
You can patent improvements to other patents, new and novel uses. For a bed probe, this is not new and novel as it’s still used on a robot platform, its no different than a cnc mill in that regard. All of the calculations, movements, and implementation is the same.