Carbon3D's CLIP patentability
Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2015 7:56 pm
Great forum everybody. I'm been following a lot of your discussions. My background is in automation engineering (over 20 years) and business development (part of which has included patent and IP law).
Having read and heard a lot about the subject, I would like to put in my 2 cents about Carbon3D and CLIP. The following is my own assessment and opinion so feel free to debunk it and bash me in the head in case I'm off base.
Here it goes: I suggest that people not take Carbon3D and their CLIP technology as necessarily novel or even patentable at this point in the game.
Technically Carbon3D's "new" technology is patent pending, which means that their patent filing is currently in "application" mode, nothing granted or enforceable yet. They can put whatever they want into their claims at this point and any or all those claims could eventually be rejected as invalid by an examiner come prosecution time (likely 2+ years from now).
Furthermore, when it does go to an examiner, their entire application and process will likely be thrown out as unpatentable in my opinion. Why? a little deep digging reveals that it may not be novel. US patent # (issued 16 June 1992, and by now expired) likely describes the important parts of this invention. Curiously, this patent is missing from Carbon3D's disclosures in their applications, so they either missed it or didn't include it in the hope that the examiner (and others) would miss it.
Now it is entirely possible that I'm reading that patent wrong as it relates to Carbon3D's claims. The main point is, they do not have a patent yet and their application(s) may be thrown out or have to be severely modified to a point of extreme narrowness (and usefulness/competitive advantage), simply by the very likely chance that there are several patents just like this one, equally missed or ignored, that will in fact describe their process, rendering their claims unpatentable due to prior art.
I'm assuming that those who invested over $140M in this company recently have done their homework on the patent issue and either see this as low risk or simply don't care much about owning patents as they may believe that Carbon3D can win on marketing, PR, and execution alone going up against the big boys in the industry.
Having read and heard a lot about the subject, I would like to put in my 2 cents about Carbon3D and CLIP. The following is my own assessment and opinion so feel free to debunk it and bash me in the head in case I'm off base.
Here it goes: I suggest that people not take Carbon3D and their CLIP technology as necessarily novel or even patentable at this point in the game.
Technically Carbon3D's "new" technology is patent pending, which means that their patent filing is currently in "application" mode, nothing granted or enforceable yet. They can put whatever they want into their claims at this point and any or all those claims could eventually be rejected as invalid by an examiner come prosecution time (likely 2+ years from now).
Furthermore, when it does go to an examiner, their entire application and process will likely be thrown out as unpatentable in my opinion. Why? a little deep digging reveals that it may not be novel. US patent # (issued 16 June 1992, and by now expired) likely describes the important parts of this invention. Curiously, this patent is missing from Carbon3D's disclosures in their applications, so they either missed it or didn't include it in the hope that the examiner (and others) would miss it.
Now it is entirely possible that I'm reading that patent wrong as it relates to Carbon3D's claims. The main point is, they do not have a patent yet and their application(s) may be thrown out or have to be severely modified to a point of extreme narrowness (and usefulness/competitive advantage), simply by the very likely chance that there are several patents just like this one, equally missed or ignored, that will in fact describe their process, rendering their claims unpatentable due to prior art.
I'm assuming that those who invested over $140M in this company recently have done their homework on the patent issue and either see this as low risk or simply don't care much about owning patents as they may believe that Carbon3D can win on marketing, PR, and execution alone going up against the big boys in the industry.