Kdog, with all due respect, I hate what is happening with MakerBot, but if you were running a company and were offered $400 million for your company, wouldn't you sell? I know I would. It's the opportunity to live however you want for the rest of your life, plus have almost unlimited funding for as much R&D as you want. Any person in their right mind would have done the same thing.

Unfortunately when big corporations get involved there is no way around keeping things open source. Stratasys must compete with 3D Systems, and they certainly won't do that if they allow their competition to take all their products and duplicate it. Like Pettis said, the patents are more to protect MakerBot. What if another company were to patent the tech and then try and sue Makerbot? I don't think MakerBot plans on using the patents to sue anyone that that uses the technology, only to protect themselves.