- Energy-efficient power delivery for servers and data centres
- Batteries—quick coatings
- World’s biggest solar and battery project to be built in South Australia
- Report shows 3 million people affected by outages in 2016
SmarTech Publishing has published a report on the growing market opportunities available in 3D printing with polymers.
Thus far, the year with the greatest number of patent application filings is 2014, with 165 patent references, which represents a 14.5% share of patent references relevant to the Subject Field. Analysis shows a gradual increase in the number of patent application filings from the year 1999 to the year 2014, followed by a slight decline in the year 2015.
Ink-jet printing is the most heavily cited method of fabrication, with 187 patent references. Inkjet printing is followed by Stereolithography (SLA) and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) with 176 and 166 citations, respectively.
Acrylate polymer is the most heavily cited polymer material in 3D patents, with 208 patent references. Acrylate polymer is followed by Polyamide and Polyethylene, with 199 and 192 citations, respectively.
Granular analysis reveals that IPC classification A61F, related to medical equipment, has a high level of patent protection by the identified Key Assignees. In the aerospace sector where additive manufacturing is of growing importance, Boeing owns 11 patents in the Subject Field.
3D printing, another revolutionary and disruptive technology, makes it cheap and easy to produce physical objects. And just as home copying has changed the copyright industries beyond recognition, 3D printing is poised to do the same to patent-based industries.
That means practically any business that makes physical objects will potentially face a Napster scenario. It may not happen to everyone, but as printer technologies improve and more materials — such as proteins, specialized polymers, metals and other chemicals — become available for printing, it will happen to many.
Take the pharmaceutical industry. Just like a musical recording, where most of the costs are incurred while producing the initial release (hiring the musicians, booking the studio, editing and the like), the bulk of the cost of developing a new pill goes into the front end: research and development, clinical trials and getting through the FDA approval. In fact, the raw ingredients may cost only a few pennies. And 3D printing — or digital manufacturing and distribution, as it’s also known — will make reproducing and delivering these pills, lawfully or unlawfully, much easier.