Patent trend analysis of 3D printing

Last February in 2013, World Economic Forum mentioned 3D printer as one of the top 10 world promising future technologies. US president Barack Obama mentioned that 3D printer will be the next revolution in manufacturing industry.

3D printing technology is developed already in 1980s, however, original patent owned by US ‘3D systems’ will be expired by next year, and related material cost(machine, material, and etc) is expected to drop continuously, all industries’ eyes has been turned to 3D printing in recent 1 year. 4,050 News on 3D printer were searched, and higher than 90%, 3,667 news were published in last 1 year.

WIPS conducted brief patent analysis on 3D printing technology to have a general view of 3D printing technology trend. First, we extracted core keywords of 3D printing, Second, with our WIPS Global Worldwide patent search and analysis engine, searched related patents.

Between the period 1984 and 2013, 899 patents on 3D printing technology are searched in Korea, United States, Japan and Europe. With these patents, we conducted analysis on 4 fields; patent trend by year, patent trend by country, patent trend by detail technology field, patent trend by assignee.

As a result, United States owns dominant position based on outstanding technology in current market, and Korea has started technology development recently. Among 899 patents in 4 regions, US patent ratio almost reached 59%. Korea patent ratio is merely 11%, however, it shows constant growing tendency.

SAL(StereoLithography Apparatus) based technology appears to take 76% of all technologies, and R&D on SAL technology was pretty active at early stage, and SLS(Selective Laser Sintering) technology and FDM(Fused Deposition Modelling) technology are getting more attention since 2000.

US and Israel are leading players in 3D printing technology R&D field, and most of top ranked assignees are from US, and ‘3D systems’ and ‘Stratasys’ are Leading market assignees among them.

3D printing technology is expected to bring a revolution especially in Bio and medical fields, which needs small quantity batch production way for producing of artificial bones, organs, and other human organisms. However, many problems hinder its rosy future’s arrival yet. Long molding time, surface resolution, solidity of sculpture, limit of processing material, computer capacity, all are problems waiting to be solved on the path to the rosy revolution.

Careful approach and prudent strategy planning are required, in order to create and sustain healthy 3D industry, it has to be coexistent with other existing industries. 3D CAD S/W devices, Material and printer service, maintenance service, and all other related industries construct a whole new value chain, and this new value chain needs to be developed in a harmony, as a part of whole industry ecosystem.

Through patent and market analysis, ‘Stratasys’ and ‘3D Systmes’ turn out to be two main players, as technology keeps developing and more patents will be published, competition to secure important patents and occupy dominant position in the market between these two giants seems inevitable. In case of Korea, even though number of 3D printing technology related patents are growing, still too small compared to that of other developed countries, Korea seems to have long way to go to catch up. Depend on the support including strategic investment from the government, the long road maybe become easier to go.