Imagine having the FBI Warning Screen emblazoned on every surface of whatever you printed out.

What custom manufacturing, in whatever form, is really useful for is to adapt to the fact that people come in different sizes and shapes.

Looking at what I actually did in the last couple of weeks, I note that I had occasion to take a pair of great heavy boots in to the cobbler, for new soles and heels. Inclusive of taxicab fare, this came to something in excess of a hundred dollars. I had originally bought the boots for a hundred and sixty dollars, at the local Red Wing store, and these are of course boots of the plainest possible description, with no decorative tooling or anything like that. At the time of purchase, the cobbler had done about a hundred dollars worth of custom-tailoring, if one can apply that word to boot leather, that is, lengthening the shaft to knee height, inserting additional rubber in the insole to bring it up to the level of a running shoe, and inserting a corrective wedge in the heel, as my ankles have a tendency to bow outwards when walking on hillsides. These are things which the manufacturer could have done without any great difficulty, if it had been geared to talking with the customer, rather than selling a standard style and size on a “take-it-or-leave-it” basis, through a multi-tier dealer-distributor network. I suppose that plastic prototypes could have been used to facilitate fitting and custom manufacture. However, for the present, plastic is not a satisfactory substitute for leather.

Before buying two pairs of boots, I went in and had a talk with the cobbler, saying, “since you are going to be repairing the things, how do you feel about Red Wing’s current product? Have they been doing anything you don’t approve of?” We both knew that a maker of premium boots is under temptation to “monetize” its reputation by covertly substituting plastic for leather, the way Frye’s did, back around 1980. He assured me that Red Wing’s reputation was still good, that they hadn’t changed anything, and that the local Red Wing dealer (which is also the local military surplus store) was okay, and I went off to place an order for boots. I’ve been wearing the same general type of boots for the last forty years, and the same brand for the last twenty. Boots of a broadly similar type can be found in illustrations dating back to at least the 1630’s, more than three hundred and fifty years ago. In this context, intellectual property simply doesn’t mean much of anything. What matters is fit and workmanship.

To Anonymous Coward, #17.

The quality of the raw material matters. The term “shoddy” has an interesting history. It originally referred to a kind of recycled cotton waste. During the American Civil War (1861-65), contractors, intent on making a quick buck, spun and wove the shoddy up into cloth, dyed it Army Blue, and made it into uniforms. When worn by troops in the field, in the rain and the mud, the fabric tended to disintegrate. The Army remembers, of course, and is famously sticky about what it buys. Army surplus clothing is famous for being hard-wearing.

There are of course horror stories, like the one in the Technology Review comments about the man whose $12,000 paper-cutting machine was crippled for want of a plastic knob, and the manufacturers of the machine merely saw that as an opportunity to exploit him financially, at the expense of their own long-term reputation.

There is, now, a way to get prior art in the hands of patent examiners, via the web,… So let’s get to it folks,… find a bunch of prior art…

Read up;
http://meta.patents.stackexchange.com/questions/105/i-want-to-make-a-difference-how-can-i-submit-prior-art-to-the-patent-office?cb=1

The patent claims invention of a concept that has been obliterated by defacto practice for decades.
The ITEM being manufactured has a “key” identifier or data object within the digital file that corresponds/is verified by the manufacturing “machine” before production. Can you say code signing?

GOOD FUCKING LUCK enforcing that one.

Intellectual Ventures is a parasitic organization. They make money off of threats and lawsuit settlements.