patent situation

From: Martin Geiger (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft)
To: RP-ML
Date: Monday, May 9, 1994
Subject: patent situation
Hi folks,
     here some more information to the patent situation in RP. A student has just finished his work according to this task at the IPA. The regions of most interest were the EC and the United States. So, here are some global data.
     In the States the period of time from application to the patent is generally 2,5 years. The papers are 
published at the time of becoming a patent.
     In Europe the duration is about 4,5 years, but the paper of application will be published after 18 months.
     Therefore, the patent situation in Europe is more difficult, because there are a lot of well known 
applications, but it is difficult to estimate which application will become a patent. I know of about 90 US 
applications which are patents and of about 80 European (EP) applications from which less than 10 are 
patents. 
     We found applications to Stereolithography of 15 companies but most (80%) are from 3D-Systems. The content of the applications can be distributed in: CAD/CAM coupling, laser-measurement-system, color, finishing, resin, laser, possilbilities to approve the surface quality, support, inert gas, improvements in production time and quality and controlling of the layer thickness.
     To Selective Laser Sintering, there are some EP applications but until now no patent.
     In total we found about 280 applications to Rapid Prototyping (notice that papers with the same content are applied in different regions as EU, WO and countries). With regard that in patent research all information is older than 18 months and with look to the increasing number of new RP systems we estimate the current number of applications of about 400.
Greetings Martin