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Comment by Htsthbjig | Hacker News Reader

That is the idea of a patent.

A patent is a document that makes it possible for someone else to replicate your idea. You exchange this knowledge for a monopoly as the only seller of this product in a given country.

But if other sources can't replicate your idea, your patent should be invalid.

Everybody can manufacture their own products, even if they are patented. What they can't do is sell them on the market.

What lawyers want is to receive a monopoly while giving nothing in return. They try to obfuscate the patent using strange verbs so examiners could not find prior art, try to extend the patent as generic as they can and even introduce invalid information so competitors could not replicate the thing, even after the patent expire.

Valid 3D computer files should be a requirement for a patent. The only reason they are not is because the patent office is obsolete.

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Everybody can manufacture their own products, even if they are patented. What they can't do is sell them on the market.

Actually, I believe this is false. It is my understanding that it is illegal to copy a patented invention even for your own non-commercial use.

If I'm reading it correctly, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) disagrees [1]

> Most of the Member States provide the private and/or non-commercial use exception under their statutes. Only the response from Australia informed that the exception was not included in its statutes, but provided by common law as a “non-commercial use defense”

...

> Most of the Member States, however, provide a broad definition of the scope of the patent rights which encompasses all kinds of activities, and explicitly stipulate that private use for non-commercial purposes or private and non-commercial use is an exception to the exclusive patent rights. In formulating the exception, provisions of many national laws stipulate that the it applies to acts carried out in the private sphere and for non-commercial purposes or to use of a patented invention for personal needs with no purpose to make profits. The response from the United Kingdom stated that the exclusion is provided for acts done “privately and for the purposes which are not commercial”.

[1] http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/patent_policy/en/scp_20/scp_...

Admittedly my answer was U.S.-centric, but to be clear: The United States provides no such exception, while about 60 countries do seem to.

The U.S. has no explicit exception, but 49 of the states operate under Anglo-American common law (Louisiana being the exception).

By what I know of it, producing a patented invention for your own purposes, outside the stream of commerce, is neither crime nor tort at common law, as no one has been provably harmed by it. As a potential juror, I do not find the "lost sale" theory of harm to be credible from any vendor operating a monopoly, state-protected or otherwise.

One presumes that, according to microeconomic theory, the monopolist restricts its supply to increase sale prices, and that it is able to sell as much as it is willing to produce at that price. If it wished to sell one more, it would have produced one more, and also lowered the sale price by a marginal amount. Since it did not, it is clear that the monopolist was not harmed by being unable to sell to the infringer, because the monopolist never intended to sell that many goods in the first place.

Nevertheless, many judges in the U.S. are far more willing to nail you to the wall with statutory law on dubious grounds before allowing you to argue anything from common law.

I don't think it would hold up in court.

It has been held up in court, repeatedly, even against Duke University who argued in favor of an academic research exemption.

This is correct. From 35 USC 271:

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title [35 USCS Sects. 1 et seq.], whoever without authority makes, uses or sells any patented invention, within the United States during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.

But, as a practical matter, companies don't go after hobbyists printing up something in their basement of course. Both because it's prohibitively expensive versus the expected monetary recovery and it's hard to find someone doing this if they're just doing it in their basement for fun.

Correct, there is no non-commercial exception.

relevant HN comment on the same issue from almost 8 years ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=162467

How would that relate to research exemptions [1]? Couldn't someone who was interested in printing a single example of a patented item claim they were researching it?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_exemption#Common_law_...

There isn't really a research exemption in the US. From your cited article, citing Madey v. Duke University (2002):

    The court did not reject the defense, but left only a "very
    narrow and strictly limited experimental use defense" for
    "amusement, to satisfy idle curiosity, or for strictly
    philosophical inquiry." The court also precludes the
    defense where, regardless of profit motive, the research 
    was done "in furtherance of the alleged infringer’s 
    legitimate business." In the case of a research university
    like Duke University, the court held that the alleged use
    was in furtherance of its legitimate business, and thus
    the defense was inapplicable.

Practically speaking, it's difficult to sue a university or an individual for patent infringement when they are conducting research without looking like a monster. Considering the costs of litigation, time wasted, hit to PR, nebulous damages to recover, etc., it doesn't sound very worthwhile. Legally speaking, one would appear to have case law on their side.

That makes sense, but certainly quite a few things I'd like to print at home would be for 'amusement' or to 'satisfy idle curiosity' (that would describe quite a lot of my adult life, not to mention my childhood). Not to belittle 'strictly philosophical inquiry' either, (though how much inquiry you could wring out of a Lego minifig, RPi case, etc. remains to be seen).

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