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He's an engineer, not a politician. You don't get to vote on what he works on or decide what is important to him. Sintering is an emerging 3D printing tech now

by Zikes 11y ago

He's an engineer, not a politician. You don't get to vote on what he works on or decide what is important to him. Sintering is an emerging 3D printing tech now that the patent has expired. We can't predict what all the potential applications are or what impact it will have on society.

50CNT 11y ago
That's an interesting point on patents isn't it. Things become emerging tech once the patents on it expire.
- matthewmacleod 11y ago
  That's not really an inference you can make. In this case, that's happened – but there are plenty of recent, popular technologies that are also patented. Look at any modern smartphone, for example!
  - 50CNT 11y ago
    Yeah, but it does seem like interesting tech that was kept under wraps gets a comeback tour once patent protections run out. Consumer 3D printing is an interesting case, because the wealth of extrusion deposition products came after the patents ran out. Same thing now with interesting developments in SLS. Patent runs out, some enthusiasts rig up their own, exchange knowledge over the web, and turn industrial technology into open hardware products. I think the thing here is that companies owning these patents just never thought about the consumer and hobbyist markets. But their patents prevented people selling and innovating in these spaces, thus letting these markets lie fallow. What happens to markets when the legal monopoly stops selling? Now consumer electronics is a field where there's a lot of motion. But imagine the Smartphone(tm) was patented, and the owner of the patent decided to do industrial PDAs instead and abandon the consumer market. They still prevent others from selling to the consumer market, even they don't loose anything from that except some vacuous "potential revenue". Trademarks elapse when they're not used, and names can be used in different markets when there's no chance of confusion (Nissan Motors vs. Nissan Computers). Patents (outside of I think 2 renewal dates) don't quite work that way. The question is, do they prevent technology from jumping into different markets by virtue of their broadness?
  - deckar01 11y ago
    Smartphones are a really bad example. Those patents created an arms race between a small group of large tech companies. If you try to limp into that market you will get sued from every angle. The only winners are those who make pacts based on mutually assured destruction[0]. [0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_patent_wars https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_patent_wars

by Zikes 11y ago

50CNT 11y ago

That's an interesting point on patents isn't it. Things become emerging tech once the patents on it expire.

matthewmacleod 11y ago
That's not really an inference you can make. In this case, that's happened – but there are plenty of recent, popular technologies that are also patented. Look at any modern smartphone, for example!
- 50CNT 11y ago
  Yeah, but it does seem like interesting tech that was kept under wraps gets a comeback tour once patent protections run out. Consumer 3D printing is an interesting case, because the wealth of extrusion deposition products came after the patents ran out. Same thing now with interesting developments in SLS. Patent runs out, some enthusiasts rig up their own, exchange knowledge over the web, and turn industrial technology into open hardware products. I think the thing here is that companies owning these patents just never thought about the consumer and hobbyist markets. But their patents prevented people selling and innovating in these spaces, thus letting these markets lie fallow. What happens to markets when the legal monopoly stops selling? Now consumer electronics is a field where there's a lot of motion. But imagine the Smartphone(tm) was patented, and the owner of the patent decided to do industrial PDAs instead and abandon the consumer market. They still prevent others from selling to the consumer market, even they don't loose anything from that except some vacuous "potential revenue". Trademarks elapse when they're not used, and names can be used in different markets when there's no chance of confusion (Nissan Motors vs. Nissan Computers). Patents (outside of I think 2 renewal dates) don't quite work that way. The question is, do they prevent technology from jumping into different markets by virtue of their broadness?
- deckar01 11y ago
  Smartphones are a really bad example. Those patents created an arms race between a small group of large tech companies. If you try to limp into that market you will get sued from every angle. The only winners are those who make pacts based on mutually assured destruction[0]. [0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_patent_wars https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_patent_wars