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In manufacturing, 3D printing is already used to create production tooling and other low-quantity parts; manufacturers can customize to what they need, quickly. Replacement is as easy as reprinting parts. 3D printing in manufacturing will continue to expand and will become pervasive in industries at different rates, driven by technology, maturity, and cost reduction. 3D printing will become a commonplace manufacturing technology alongside more traditional processes like injection molding, forming, and milling.

Currently, 3D printing is most used in industries and applications with low-volume, high-unit cost and the need for customization, where costs of 3D printing are outweighed by the benefits. However, technology improvement has been pushing the limits of the technology and unlocking its use in mass production applications. Uses such as external medical devices, custom consumer products, and aerospace and automotive parts designed for fuel efficiency will become commonplace in the next five to seven years.

3D printing is already enabling innovation for both improved efficiency and new product capabilities. As the 3D printing technology itself improves, the innovations will be even greater, moving into increased level control, multiple materials, and even more unique structures.

3D printing will also enable materials to be increasingly customized for purpose. Just as materials in injection molding are blended and fit for purpose, materials for 3D printing will expand to be fit for purpose. The realm of possibilities for 3D printing is even greater because there are more custom applications to solve for, and material properties can be controlled within a design down to the voxel level.

3D printing will fundamentally change today’s complex supply chain, moving manufacturing closer to consumption. The massive supply chain advantages of 3D printing coupled with consumer trends will enable manufacturers to cost effectively serve consumers, closer to where they live.

3D printing enables cost-effective customization. Close interaction with the end customer will be necessary to customize products to meet their needs. Locating manufacturing closer to consumers will allow them to iterate towards the end part; whereas a global supply chain would have large transportation costs that would minimize the ability to test out customizations. The customization needs will be different based on the consumer population; the product for the US consumer will be drastically differentiated from the product for the consumer in India.

In nature, a parasite is a creature that lives off of an organism of another species, known as the host, and gets its food from or at the expense of its host [113]. In the intellectual property ecosystem, Heled argued that patent trolls (non-practicing entities) may be better understood when viewed as analogous to these biological parasites [114]. In the examples reviewed in this article, however, more often than not those patenting open-source inventions were not patent trolls but instead active 3-D printing manufacturing companies. These companies are better examples of patent parasites as they can kill their host. Thus, in the context of this article, the open-source 3-D printing community is the host providing nourishment to patent parasite companies that extract IP (food) from the community and patent it to the detriment of the host community. In the open-source community, there has always been some degree of freeloading [115], but this did not directly harm the community and did not become parasitic as freeloaders generally only hurt themselves by not having others build on their specific technologies because of the lack of resharing to the community [116].

With the example case studies reviewed here, a new form of patent parasitism appears to be on the rise in the 3-D printing technology space. The most common method observed in the case studies involves (1) letting the open-source community innovate and develop a technical solution, (2) waiting until that innovation has been widely tested by the open-source community and in some cases even commercialized by an open-source firm, and (3) surreptitiously patenting the technology by hiding the core ideas in the claims while using a vague (and sometimes irrelevant) patent title and abstract to obfuscate any attempts for the open-source community to police it. In the worst examples exemplified by cases 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3, this is done in another language in a clearly lax patent office (China) that fails to do due diligence in searching for obvious prior art in English. If these patents are weaponized either by the firms that invested in them or by non-practicing entities that purchase the patents, the vibrancy of open-source 3-D printing technology first founded in the RepRap project could be crippled. As Průša mentions in his article [63], patent trolls pose a formidable challenge. These entities, often non-practicing organizations, exploit patent rights beyond their actual value, stifling innovation and forcing companies to engage in legal battles. The rise of patents related to 3-D printing further exacerbates the situation, creating a potential roadblock to technical progress and inhibiting the growth of 3-D printing for another two decades. Patent parasites that simply patent existing open-source technologies are potentially an even greater threat than patent trolls as they directly attack the goodwill so effective at driving innovation in the open-source paradigm.

This patent could be used by the patent owner (that is, a 3-D printing manufacturing company) or sold sometime in the future to non-practicing entities (e.g., patent trolls) to limit the technical development of materials for 3-D printing. To prevent this from occurring, an open-source algorithm [73] has been developed to retain materials in the 3-D printing commons by obstructing (i) broad patent claims (e.g., the example list of thermoplastics in this case study), (ii) vague and generic claims (e.g., all organic materials or materials containing carbon), (iii) formulaic patent claims (e.g., in the example patent such as those covering both aqueous and non-aqueous fluids), and (iv) combinatorial claims (e.g., in case study patent “combinations or copolymers thereof”). The open-source 3-D printing material algorithm obstructs making obviousness clearer for patent examiners and lawyers because the idea (or so-called intellectual property) can be easily generated by a simple algorithm. For an example of the obviousness of prior art, let us consider a hypothetical situation of a material-constrained world where only three materials exist: sugar, cocoa, and peanut butter [73]. To make a candy product, a company cannot patent any combination of the mentioned materials as the material combination can be seen as obvious and thus non-patentable. Similarly, selecting from larger material options and patenting any material combinations falling under thermoplastic polymers for 3-D printing should not be allowed.

Avik Roy 24, 5/22/2024, “The Democrat-Led Bill To Raise Drug Prices By Protecting Patent Trolls”, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2024/05/29/the-democratic-bill-to-raise-drug-prices-by-protecting-patent-trolls/#:~:text=The%20bill%20would%20enable%20patent%20trolls%20to%20prevail,interest%2C%20like%20a%20nonprofit%20public%20interest%20law%20firm//clara

How patent thickets raise drug prices

“...Open source projects and their maintainers are uniquely vulnerable to attack by hostile parties such as patent trolls (sometimes called “non-practicing entities”) and companies rent-seeking over so-called standard-essential patents. The projects and their non-profit fiduciary hosts are not of a scale to be able to manage the usual defenses of large corporations, while the individuals themselves may seem worthwhile targets for avaricious litigators. When a project faces a patent attack, it is thus frequently defended by others as a matter of civic duty.

The rule changes that the Patent and Trademark Office propose would greatly limit the ability of open source projects to be defended by these third parties. This would both chill the innovation and progress arising from open source software - which contributes billions to GDP - as well as embolden malicious litigators seeking reward where they have no claim simply because their victim is unable to defend themselves…” – Open Source Initiative (Public charity advocating for and enabling the benefits of Open Source)

A number of organizations in the pharmaceutical and health industries submitted comments in opposition to the substance of the ANPRM proposals, including Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Fresenius Kabi, Association for Accessible Medicines, Edwards Lifesciences, I-MAK, and Generation Patient.

A core theme in these comments is that weak patents are frequently used to delay medical progress and competition – increasing costs for patients and reducing access to potentially life-saving medicines and technologies. These organizations all align on the importance of protecting existing PTAB processes, so that PTAB review can continue being used as a tool to challenge questionable patents and therefore promote medical innovation.

The U.S. healthcare sector is now also a technology sector. Every stage of our healthcare system is dependent on modern technologies, whether it be the development of new medicines and treatments, the tools that doctors utilize to treat patients, or how patients track and manage their own conditions. As the link between healthcare and technology grows stronger, however, there are also new obstacles that stand in the way of continued innovation. Among them are destructive patent infringement lawsuits.

Medical device industry continues to turn to AI

Second, our results highlight the dichotomous reactions in R&D investments between defendant firms and their technology peers after NPE lawsuits. Cohen et al. (2016, 2019) show that defendant firms substantially reduce their R&D investments after NPE litigations, consistent with the notion that legal and settlement costs crowd out innovation activities at targeted firms. In contrast, our study provides large sample evidence supporting the survey evidence (e.g., Chien 2014) and theoretical predictions (Reitzig et al. 2007; Henkel and Reitz 2010) of the “chilling effects” of NPE lawsuits in that peers increase their R&D investments in response to the NPE litigation risk. Such an increase in R&D investments, however, is less efficient in generating valuable and impactful patents.

Overall, assessing the impacts of NPE litigations on different related parties is crucial to fully gauge their societal impacts. By identifying much broader wealth and real effects of NPE litigations on at-risk technology peers than what has been identified in the existing NPE litigation literature, our study could potentially inform the current regulatory and policy debate pertaining to NPEs. In particular, the insights of the study will assist policymakers in making a more thorough cost-benefit analysis with respect to NPE regulations.

A higher probability of being sued increases the expected legal and settlement costs for atrisk technology peers. However, this is not the only reason for their market value losses. The other source of market value loss is that at-risk technology peers might respond to higher NPE litigation risk by increasing R&D investments in “workaround technologies” that could adversely affect these firms’ operational performance. To identify the impact of NPEs lawsuits on at-risk technology peers’ R&D investments, we analyze at-risk technology peers who are not sued by NPEs in the previous or following five years for patent infringement related to the same patent class when a defendant is sued by an NPE (i.e., non-litigated peers). As these firms do not incur lawsuits, we are able to avoid the confounding effect on the changes in R&D investments due to higher legal and settlement costs, as documented by Cohen et al. (2016, 2019).

We first show that such non-litigated peers nevertheless incur an average CAR of -1.1% in the [-1, +1] three-day window when a defendant is sued by an NPE, suggesting that these firms ex ante still face a significant probability of being sued. Interestingly, we find that non-litigated peers exhibit significant increases in R&D activities in the five-year period following an NPE case filing. Thus, non-litigated peers behave opposite to the defendants who have to cut R&D due to higher legal costs (Cohen et al. 2016, 2019). The increase in R&D activities of non-litigated peers, however, is in line with the the survey by Chien (2014), which finds a “chilling effect” of NPE lawsuits in that at-risk firms not yet sued take actions to lower the likelihood of subsequent NPE lawsuits. It is also consistent with the game theory predictions of Reitzig, Henkel, and Heath (2007) and Henkel and Reitz (2010) that a non-litigated peer may react by proactively replacing the NPE’s technology with a non-infringing alternative (i.e., “workaround technology”).2

The PTAB has helped hold patent trolling back, cutting costs and increasing U.S. business activity by  since Congress created it. Unfortunately, the PREVAIL Act would erode public access to patent quality review by erecting unnecessary barriers to challenging bad patents.

Sound policy should be grounded in data. It is important to correct the record on a few of the most misleading narratives from the hearing, before lawmakers do anything to advance policies that would once again leave innovative American companies vulnerable to wasteful lawsuits.  

In the intricate landscape of intellectual property, the term “patent trolls” has emerged as a contentious issue, sparking debates on the detrimental effects on innovation and economic growth. Patent trolls, often operating as individuals or companies, acquire patents not with the intent of producing or utilizing the inventions or ideas they protect but rather to exploit legal avenues for financial gain. This practice involves suing other entities that allegedly infringe on these patents, creating a litigious environment that poses significant challenges to genuine innovators and disrupts the normal course of business.

The impact of patent trolls on innovation is multifaceted. By wielding patents as weapons in legal battles, these entities make the process of creating and improving inventions more arduous and costly for individuals and companies alike. The very essence of patents, designed to incentivize innovation by providing legal protection and exclusivity, is subverted when wielded as tools for litigation rather than fostering genuine invention. This article delves into the various dimensions of the patent troll phenomenon, examining its drawbacks, consequences for innovation and economic growth, and potential strategies for mitigation.

If you ask entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley what's holding back innovation, patent trolls will surely be high on all of their lists.

Why are patent trolls so deleterious? Well, these companies exist for no other reason than to gobble up patents and then file frivolous lawsuits over semantic patent violations against any target they can find, with the hope of cashing in with a big settlement. Needless to say, this can wreck the finances of startup companies. (If you want more details, listen to this brilliant This American Life investigation of patent trolls from 2011.)

A United States patent grants an exclusive right to make and use an invention for a limited period of time. For one to be granted, an invention must be useful, novel and not obvious. But technology evolves quickly, and what seems obvious today, was less so just a few years ago.

Take NTP and Research in Motion (RIM). In 2001, Virginia-based NTP brought a patent infringement lawsuit against the Canadian company best known for the BlackBerry.

The economic burden of today’s patent lawsuits is, in fact, historically unprecedented. Research shows that patent trolls cost defendant firms $29 billion per year in direct out-of-pocket costs; in aggregate, patent litigation destroys over $60 billion in firm wealth each year. While mean damages in a patent lawsuit ran around $50,000 (in today’s dollars) at the time the telegraph, mean damages today run about $21 million. Even taking into account the much larger size of the economy today, the economic impact of patent litigation today is an order of magnitude larger than it was in the age of the telegraph.

Moreover, these costs fall disproportionately on innovative firms: the more R&D a firm performs, the more likely it is to be sued for patent infringement, all else equal. And, although this fact alone does not prove that this litigation reduces firms’ innovation, other evidence suggests that this is exactly what happens. A researcher at MIT found, for example, that medical imaging businesses sued by a patent troll reduced revenues and innovations relative to comparable companies that were not sued. But the biggest impact is on small startup firms — contrary to Haber and Levine, most patent trolls target firms selling less than $100 million a year. One survey of software startups found that 41% reported “significant operational impacts” from patent troll lawsuits, causing them to exit business lines or change strategy. Another survey of venture capitalists found that 74% had companies that experienced “significant impacts” from patent demands.

Over the last two years, much has been written about patent trolls, firms that make their money asserting patents against other companies, but do not make a useful product of their own. Both the White House and Congressional leaders have called for patent reform to fix the underlying problems that give rise to patent troll lawsuits. Not so fast, say Stephen Haber and Ross Levine in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (“The Myth of the Wicked Patent Troll”). We shouldn’t reform the patent system, they say, because there is no evidence that trolls are hindering innovation; these calls are being driven just by a few large companies who don’t want to pay inventors.

But there is evidence of significant harm. The White House and the Congressional Research Service both cited many research studies suggesting that patent litigation harms innovation. And three new empirical studies provide strong confirmation that patent litigation is reducing venture capital investment in startups and is reducing R&D spending, especially in small firms.

America’s essential system of patent protections, a key driver of economic dynamism, is under siege. Patents provide individuals and firms with an incentive to innovate by granting them a finite monopoly over their invention. Patent litigants, however, are abusing this system by targeting innovative companies that use proprietary technologies as product inputs to extract settlement payments, grinding research and development and product sales to a halt until the case is settled or otherwise decided.

Patent litigants, also known as “patent trolls,” operate by engaging with hedge-funded patent assertion entities (PAEs) or non-practicing entities that don’t innovate or manufacture themselves but acquire patents to build shakedown portfolios. These patent litigants use data mining to detect where these patents are deployed—frequently and unwittingly by third-party suppliers in a complex supply chain comprising the thousands of inputs that make up a typical electronic device—and then sue the final manufacturer for infringement. Patent trolls then exploit Section 337 (unfair import) investigations at the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) to coerce target firms to pay settlement fees in the millions of dollars. The ITC was chartered in 1916 to stop the import of counterfeit goods and was never intended to become the de facto domain of patent litigation, even if global supply chains mean that many of these patented technologies are imported.

It has become fashionable to minimize the harm caused by “patent trolls” and even to question whether they exist at all.

This is part of a larger campaign to normalize patent abuse by recasting trolling as the type of legitimate enforcement of property rights that is essential to a “strong” patent system.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board, or PTAB, is one of the only places in the nation where patent trolls can be held to account for the outrageous and harmful claims they make in their patents. Congress created the “inter partes review” (IPR) process, which is overseen by specialized PTAB judges, more than a decade ago. “Inter partes” simply means “between the parties,” and the IPR process allows members of the public to challenge patents that never should have been granted in the first place.

The IPR process is one of two main ways to challenge patents, along with challenging them in district court. The big difference is that the IPR process, while not simple or cheap, is much faster and cheaper than going to trial in federal court. Invalidating a patent in court can cost millions of dollars, while even a complicated IPR process costs a fraction of that.