Makerbot patents community designs?

[gr5 2,003]

Well this is heating up in the last few days - or maybe just yesterday. It appears Makerbot just filed a slew of patent applications including at least 2 different ones that take designs from the community. Including my favorite thingiverse inventor known as emmett. One design even talked about by makerbot thanking the designer of this wonderful improvement and then going on to patent it!:

http://traverseda.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/makerbot-blatently-steals-and-patents-a-community-design/

Even slashdot. Slashdot! Mentioned it. Wow:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/05/23/2133237/questionable-patents-from-makerbot

Another patent is for automatic bed levelling using the head as the probe first posted by the community (not electronically probing - mechanically - it's an interesting design - but from the reprap community).

 

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

Obviously, the topic has gained some attraction. And that's maybe exactly what Makerbot wanted.

While I can understand that people are upset about it, it might be the best thing to keep things calm and rely on the fact that the state of technology cannot be patented (at least in Europe). So the application should be declined if everything goes the way it supposed to...

 

[valcrow 144]

If true, this makes my blood boil...

We'd all have flying cars by now if it wasn't for patents.... It's almost as stupid ashttp://www.diyphotography.net/can-close-studio-amazon-patents-photographing-seamless-white/

 

[skint 61]

Conz posted it earlier in the feeder thread too mate

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4393-ultimaker2-feeder-system-improvements-and-ideas/page-28

 

[tommyph1208 55]

Say this in a Danish 3D print group on facebook too... Its stupid, its sad, its wrong and its bad... I hope to god MakerBot gets put out of buisness by China... (i know thats not going to happen, but one can dream)

[nick-foley 5]

Pretty unbelievable. Pulling all of my content off of Thingiverse now, moving to Youmagine. Hopefully Youmagine will get the attention it needs in order to be a truly competing service...

 

[nick-foley 5]

I'm just going to put this here...

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:342159

 

[drayson 74]

Would do this too but from my point of view the usability of thingiverse is far ahead of youmagine...

[nick-foley 5]

Would do this too but from my point of view the usability of thingiverse is far ahead of youmagine...

 

No question about it, youmagine has a long way to go. But it won't get better if everyone continues to use thingiverse...

 

[ultiarjan 1,221]

I'm still on thingiverse but these guys can't take a little stinger .... my "small table" design was featured on the front page today , so I thought I'd use the attention to make a little patent comment..... within the hour I was no longer featured

would be funny if more people add some links in there pages ...

I tried another one ..

 

 

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:350379

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:366902