As previously stated, it’s frustrating as hell that 3D Systems can’t just reevaluate their overpriced products and actually try and COMPETE with other companies like the rest of the world. 

This has now got me thinking about other technologies that are only expensive because the copyright holder gets to set the price.

…under the patent system. Are you, like our friend Mr. Dilworth, really contending that nothing would spring up in its absence?

Could have fooled me.

You know why?

Let’s say I run a big pharma company and have spent 4 billion over the last decade to cure a cancer (I’d say breast cancer but that seems all to obvious.)  It passes trials and enters the market.  Six months from now my competitor releases the same drug for a quarter the cost.  They were able to do this by examining my product and either copying it or making something very similar…all the time spending very little on the R&D side of things.

You can rail on about how human drive and nature will win out, but humans can’t do squat without resources.  You can’t walk down to the corner store and pickup lab equipment like you’d need to cure cancer (even if you could you’d have to be that 1% to pay for it.)

That’s all not to say that someone couldn’t eventually cure it on their own, or as part of a small company.  But generally speaking having access to virtually unlimited resources typically expedites the process.

If you’re having a logical conversation, how come you haven’t answered my question about whether cancer research would be conducted in a world without patents?

You assume things would not happen without the system but I must advise you that your argument only stands if you ignore one part of human nature to favour another. 

That’s silly. 

The base motivations of creative endeavour, greed, necessity, or any other motivation to innovation remain without a patent system, thus can such a system only hinder innovations by limiting knowledge pools.

A patent system is the opposite of a merit based system, whether you are an inventor or an economist.

BTW did you read the press release. So silly, 

“Why, they’ve built a 3d printer, so there’s gotta be something in there, right? cause we have patents that haven’t expired, see? And since we’re a big publicly traded company we can shitcan these upstarts with an injunction or two instead of making sure our products merit their market share when held up to competition.”

However, it appears to be a simple fact that business people and their lawyers don’t think their salaries should be subject to the same laws of commerce that Walmart jobs are: “If you don’t want the money we can find someone else who does.” This is what history tells us.

Do you think people would stop looking for cures for cancer if there was no patent system? Then why is that the subtext of pro-patent logic?

Why should private risk be guaranteed by government protections?   Plenty of people take a risk and get a loan for an education.  It fails a lot.  I don’t want to assume their failures. Do you?

They why are we protecting these people? What protections do they need?

Why do I have to bankroll a governmental patent army so that someone doesn’t have to continue working?

there’s actually a really good TED talk on the subject.

http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

I’d rather that companies spent all their R&D money designing useful products instead of navigating the patent minefield. They’d produce more useful stuff for less money.

Intriguingly, this same company coined the term ‘stereolithography’ back in 1986 (see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereolithography They were genuine innovators in this field, but it made me wonder how they could be patenting stereolithography in 1994 using a word that they coined for apparently the same process in 1986. What they actually claim in this patent was a thick goop with some other strategies so they could write overhanging shapes and skinny bits that would not otherwise survive unsupported. This is clear in the summary but it is not clear to me in the claims, and that is the only place that counts.

Some of the late claims are a bit more specific. I suspect they may have a case. They certainly have enough to make a very long and messy court case. I guess we’ll just have to wait until 2014.