USPTO Additive Manufacturing Partnership Meeting

We had a great additive manufacturing partnership meeting today at the US Patent & Trademark Office. It was great fun working with Veronica Ewald and Gladys Corcoran from USPTO and my colleague Peter Harter to program the event.

Here’s the two best quotes of the day from the ever-entertaining Brett Lyons of Boeing:

It’s rapid prototyping not magic prototyping.

We’ve had good luck so far–hahaha I mean no we’ve had no failures yet.

Dave Bourell, one of the fathers of SLS, gave an enlightening anecdote about the power of good documentation. Two parties filed patents covering SLS simultaneously, but the DTM corporation group was able to prove they had prior art due to a dated lab notebook!

James Wolff of Deep Space Industries gave the most forward-looking talk, describing his company’s vision to mine asteroids, process the raw materials in Earth’s orbit, and then 3D print parts for use in Space! How cool is that! If you missed it, you can catch him at Inside 3D Printing Santa Clara later this year.