Digital BW, The Print

Walker Blackwell <forums@...> wrote:

> ...
 
> In regards to an entrepreneur snapping up the ideas and 
> patenting  them, that is where open-source licenses come in. 
> It means, anybody who uses the tech must publish their 
> modifications and also can't create patents over the tech 
> as published...

I'm not sure this relates, but I was warned by someone who purports to be a serious observer that the net effect of my and similar comments on this forum was to cause the large companies to quickly file patents on the ideas and use those patents to stop competition.  I don't know enough about patents to know if this is true.  It seems like just the opposite of what most of us are interested in -- an open discussion of ideas.  I suspect the person making the claims to me was doing so as part of a pitch to get me to join his firm and stop publishing ideas.  No thanks.

...
> In regards to manufacturing, I think creating printers out 
> of existing parts from multiple manufacturers is the way to go.

A firm tried to get me involved in such a plan, and I concluded the costs could not be held down to the point where the size of the market would support the venture.  Even with wide format printers, there are economies of scale that a small niche player will have trouble competing with.  Among other things, the costs of the parts would be much more than the internal costs to the OEM.  But, my conclusions were not based on a whole lot of research, so I would not put too much weight on them.  And, of course, if Epson succeeds in stopping us from using their printers with third party inks, such a venture might then look like a more viable option.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com