Patents aren't granted forever. They expire after 20 yrs. The real barrier isn't the printer, but the cartridges and those designs keep changing. So if you want

Patents aren't granted forever. They expire after 20 yrs. The real barrier isn't the printer, but the cartridges and those designs keep changing. So if you want to have a successful open source printer design it needs to have a ready source of open ink cartridges as well. I honestly hope this will happen in our future. But we're in the era of extortion capitalism with walled gardens and captive customers.