Josef Průša has declared “open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead”.
In a piece on his own website, the founder and CEO of Prusa Research detailed some of the factors that are causing huge pressure on community development of 3D printers. He writes:
“I cannot talk about all of the open hardware, but I can share experience from 3D printing. And it is not good! Open hardware in 3D printing is dead – you just don’t know it yet.”
The root of the problem, Průša believes, is abusive patenting of 3D print methods by Chinese companies. He describes “patent spam”, where companies file patent claims for “every little variation” of methods already present in the community.
He cites a rather incredible example. Shenzhen Anycubic Technology Co Ltd has received a US patent (US20250144881) on what he believes is essentially Prusa Research’s original MMU1 filament changer design. There are apparently countless examples of this approach.
Some of the patents are nonsense, but the volume of submissions is so large that many important 3D print methods are captured by patents. Průša believes that many are likely simple variations of community-developed methods that have been shared to develop 3D printers in an open fashion. These could now be in jeopardy.
Průša is concerned with the discrepancy between the costs of gaining a patent versus the cost to take down invalid patents, with many orders of magnitude difference in cost. Because of this, the questionable patents will likely stand even though they are often simply copies of open-sourced works.
How is Prusa Research reacting? Průša explains:
“We are working on a new community license so we are feeling more comfortable sharing as much as we used to share again with minimal risk of exploitation.
We are actively looking at the critical points which should be protected from the patent wall being erected and ways to do it. A possible option is to start an organization which would take care of this, to even out the skew happening now.
It is so bizarre to me that we got to a stage where you need to think about protecting your designs and inventions in order to share them with the community …”
I believe that Průša is correct in his assessment of the situation. The 3D print industry has matured and is now subject to typical corporate growth strategies, which often take advantage of patents and other methods.
In a way, this is just another colour of the ongoing consolidation in the industry. New technologies first attract a large number of entrepreneurs who set up operations. Some survive, some grow, and others do not. A few engage every lever they possibly can to grow, including the use of patents in the manner described by Průša. Eventually, there are only a few companies remaining that become so large that new entrants — and open source options — have difficulty challenging them.
This seems to be where we’re at, and it’s not clear any other outcome is possible. This has happened in countless other industries, so it will probably happen in 3D printing as well.
Via Josef Průša
