3 ms·

Previously discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30493997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30493997 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2

• Nextgrid 5y ago
  Can it be worked around by making the design use an existing nozzle, given they can be acquired on the secondary market? A lot of the "badness" of printers is in the software, so having free software but a proprietary print head will still be an upgrade.
• btrettel 5y ago
  I did a PhD on sprays and I am a former patent examiner. I'm pretty skeptical that nozzle patents are a bottleneck here. Maybe other patents are but I don't think there's been a lot of innovation in inkjet printer nozzles since then, though I'm not an expert specifically on inkjet printer nozzles. I skimmed both links and didn't see any discussion of nozzle patents specifically and only a bit of discussion of nozzles. Edit: If someone can point to a particular active patent that would actually prevent someone from making an open source inkjet printer and they actually have the money to invalidate the patent, I wouldn't be surprised if I could find prior art to invalidate the patent. The examiners don't get a lot of time so a large fraction of patents are not actually valid.
  • phendrenad2 5y ago
    Okay but patents only last 20 years, maximum, right? So what's stopping someone from copying a design from 20 years ago? Consumer/small-business class printers from 20 years ago were just as good as printers today.