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I think there are alternate ways of looking at it. 25 years ago, 3D Systems was the little guy. It invented 3D printing. Were it not for its invention and its expired patents, you would not have a 3D printer in your home. It's worth noting the protection of intellectual property is rooted in our Constitution at Article I, Section 8:

"The Congress shall have Power To... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

Patents are only good for 20 years and you'll pay over ten grand in renewal fees to keep a patent active for that long. 3D Systems went from being a little guy to being a big guy through hard work and innovation. Anyone possessed of the imagination, skill and knowledge to invent a marketable product may do the same.

Formlabs sought to steal intellectual property belonging to someone else. That doesn't make them "little guys", it makes them thieves. Seriously, what incentive would anyone have to invent wonderful new things if any drunk working out of their mother's basement could steal their inventions and make off with all the profits from their hard work, investements and genius?

The point here was to ask if anyone here has seen the movie and there  thoughts on it.
As far as Intellectual property verses open source  I see advantages and disadvantages for both.
The idea of copying another's Idea ether legally or illegally has been around since the dawn of time i expect.
when people pretty much made all there own necessities of life and worked as a community I do not think any one cared if someone made another  fork  spoon or knife like the one they just made. As time when on and trades were formed the guilds would keep trade secrets to themselves.   
Once the industrial was in full swing the power to manufacture was mostly transferred to a handful of people .
the PC revolution put the power of computing and the power of economical printing into the hands of the   middle class.
3 D printing is beginning to put the power of manufacturing onto a table top  in peoples homes. Automated manufacturing in the home.  Making one of kind production once again cost/time effective. I hope to see this continue . And  Ii hope to see the day when a 3-d printer capable of printing metal  of various types sits on my desk or in my shop. . Or maybe by then there will be a plastic that outperforms the metals we have today.
I guess it was disappointing that the movie focused more on the dark history than the bright future of 3D printing.
In there defense there job was to document the history. And history is written every day as the future unfolds.

So thoughts comments about the movie?
Tin

Cough.. Elon Musk...

This is a crowd funding thing that I'm running: http://www.gofundme.com/bvi140 It's for pretty selfish reasons

Nikola Tesla invented AC electrical systems, motors, and wireless communication. He died a poor man.

The truly bright don't need financial motivation.

Exactly.

Plus, there's a middle ground between a patent and open source:

Trade secret.

Any "drunks in their mothers basements" (that is getting really repetitive by the way, for someone that trumpets about the importance of originality) still have to do all of the same work. Keeping the recipe a secret forces everyone to do the same work, but at least allows them to try.

I don't give two flying fraks about money.
That's why..

Society, to me, is an endeavour based on the idea that we can and must make the future a better place to live than the past.
If money was the be all and end all of that process then why the hell aren't we living in a utopian future where everyone has access to everything they need or might want?
NC is an excellent way of promoting innovation whilst retaining rights, as evidenced by Tesla Motors recent release of technology that might well prevent further slide into climate change.

I could provide links to about 100 papers I've used in my uni research on the very subject of open source technologies.
But they're not free unless you're with an institution.

We live at the very precipice of a revolution(ok, maybe a bit overblown) that might just change the world.
The internet has given access to information like never before in Human history with no regard to peoples property, open technologies are a natural extension of that movement.
I believe that knowledge and thus technology should belong to all Humanity.
As the needs of the many.... Outweigh the needs of the few.

This is a crowd funding thing that I'm running: http://www.gofundme.com/bvi140 It's for pretty selfish reasons

Plastic Extrusion has been around for over a hundred years. Extrusion principle itself for much longer than that.

Environmentally controlled chamber technology has been around for thousands of years (or else there would not be bread).

CNC movement, applied to hundreds of manufacturing processes around the world for 50 years.

Nothing HE did was a f***ing marvel of science. HE took common practice and applied it to additive manufacturing. Just because he did it first means the rest of the world cannot touch it for 20 years? Lets apply that idiocy another way:

Some shmuck moved phone technology from wired to wireless. Are you saying you would rather have it that not a single manufacturer other the first one would allow cell phone market to even begin until 2001? Is that 'fair'? Half the #$%^^ you take for granted would still not have been marketed yet under your theory.

the fact is, these patent laws are no more than ways for the over-priced conglomerates to create monopolies. If it were not, then anyone with an idea should be able to patent it first and keep it, without paying a ****ing dime. But no, the rules are you pay exorbitant amounts to publish your idea, and you MUST market it in a year or two to keep it. Does that really protect the inventor? BS! It favors the money. The rules are clearly in favor of big corporations, and requires tens of thousands for the upstart just to hold an ethereal 'right' over what they created. And quite frankly, if you ever read these rules, it takes very little effort for a conglomerate to 'steal' IP away from a small company simply by stating a lie that they had done it first and drown the little guy in millions in legal fees.

So get off your high horse, your not convincing anyone here that HE has the right to stagnate a market to create an over-priced monopoly, especially for 'inventing' squirting a liquid in a predictable manner. Not a single part of FDM technology is an original thought.

Here's my quote about a similar situation where a company is currently applying for a patent on turbo button theory on a game controller: "Its a shame that commerce has reached the point where money can buy legality, rather than evidence and ethics. But there you have it."

Now excuse me while I go patent the internet and sue everyone for billions for using my idea without my permission.

I'm on the other side of this intellectual property / patent debate.  As an aspiring inventor with several products fully prototyped and waiting for God knows what until I get off my arse and do something with them.  My biggest fear is that I will put out my product and some established massive company will just start making them and selling them.  If I'm supposed to just give away my thoughts, why would I take the time to invent or innovate?  What would drive progress if not financial gain?  Elon Musk is a personal hero of mine and at a certain point once you're richer than you can ever dream sure you can give away your IP to the masses for the greater good, but remember he didn't do that with any other ventures that made him a billionaire.  The only thing stopping me is the cost to protect my IP, and the knowledge of how to get it into the hands of someone that is willing to do the manufacturing and distribution.  If you told me today that nothing I come up with will ever make me a dime, and I can't benefit in any way from my ideas.  I will shut down my mind and just work my 9-5 and get my paycheck marching towards retirement. 

Remember not every idea will change the world and solve the problems of the earth.  Sometimes it's just a golf tee with a naked woman carved into it that makes someone a bunch of money. 

As far as trade secrets, that only applies in a very narrow selection of innovation.  An experienced person in any field can duplicate just about any process or product in that field.

This frankly surprises me.  Someone could come along and copy part for part the filastruder and sell it for cheaper than you and you wouldn't have any problem with that?  I'm not talking about now, but say one of the beta testers worked for a manufacturing company that had sourcing and capabilities to come out with the filastruder before your kickstarter went live and sold them for 75% of your price because they used offshore assembly?  I don't believe you patented yours because it was a natural progression of existing technology it probably wouldn't have been granted anyway, but wouldn't that have bothered you to lose out on the money that was made and experience from the kickstarter and beyond?   I have some prototypes that are potentially lucrative, but upon seeing them existing companys could be producing them within weeks much faster than I could get a supply chain and tooling and distribution in place.  Without patent protection.  I might as well just hand it over to them.

I would have welcomed it. Most of my competition has actually purchased a Filastruder, presumably with the intent of reverse engineering it. I have seen several aspects of my design show up in the designs of my competition. That is fine by me. To be honest most of the value in Filastruder is the name (which didn't hold much value in the beta stage) and the list of my suppliers (which is a trade secret, not patentable). I mean, some of my competition has stolen pictures (of Filastruder accessories) off my website - thievery is not limited to design aspects.

For me, making more than I need to keep a roof over my head is just icing on the cake. I'd rather see innovation and new ideas from other people than I would more dollars in my bank account.

I say this as someone that does work under NDA, having a lot to do with patents and very cutting edge technology - work that has nothing to do with 3D printing. Of course my personal views are not always reflected by those I work with in industry, and I respect the desires of those who I consult for - but I'm well versed on this from all angles.

It's often said that ideas aren't worth very much.  All the value and the vast majority of the work comes from turning the idea into a finished, manufacturable product, marketing it and selling it.  Without doing that, you won't likely have the capital required to enforce your patents.

Probably the only real way to make money from ideas and patents without manufacturing them yourself is to sell the rights to a patent troll who will give you a cut of the settlements when they go after other people who had the same idea and tried to make something from it.

You guys paint a really bleak picture for my future.