In a follow up to a story that we ran last month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has announced that as of April 12 they have challenged six patents on the grounds that they disrupt innovation.
“If there's something that drives us crazy, it's when patents get in the way of innovation. Unfortunately, we often don't find out about the most dangerous patents until it's too late—once they've been used to assert infringement. That's why we were encouraged by the new provision of the patent law that allows third parties to easily challenge patent applications while those applications are still pending”, says the EFF. “As of today, we've now challenged six pending patent applications that you helped us identify as applications that, if granted, would particularly threaten the growing field of 3D printing technology.”
In partnership with Ask Patents, the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and individuals, the EFF has been scouring patents, blogs, white papers and symposium proceeding to find documents that prove prior art was established before a patent was filed and that those patents are void due to “obviousness”.
Below are the six patents, and their prior art, which the EFF believes are void:
- Fabrication of Non-Homogeneous Articles Via Additive Manufacturing Using Three-Dimensional Voxel-Based Models
- Build Materials and Applications Thereof
- Method for Generating and Building Support Structures With Deposition-Based Digital Manufacturing Systems
- Process for Producing Three-Dimensionally Shaped Object and Device for Producing Same
- Additive Manufacturing System and Method for Printing Customized Chocolate Confections
- Ribbon Filament and Assembly for Use in Extrusion-based Digital Manufacturing
So far the patent office has accepted the EFF’s submissions and will begin reviewing the EFF’s applications to determine whether their claims are valid. According to the EFF, if the above patents are voided it would “protect the diverse, exciting uses of 3D printing that are gaining in popularity each day, from small hobbyist printers to large-scale, high-quality commercial fabrication using materials ranging from titanium to chocolate.”
Image Courtesy of the EFF