A patent infringement lawsuit is now underway between Italian SLA 3D printing company DWS S.r.l. and Formlabs Inc. This comes as no surprise as the two 3D printing companies have been mired in legal disputes since 2017.
The counterclaim is a response to the lawsuit started by Formlabs, which sought a declaratory judgement of non-infringement of the DWS patent for its FORM 2 3D printing system. The patent involved, No. 8,945,456, covers the heating system of DWS’ stereolithography 3D printers.
In August 2018, the German Court of Mannheim issued a judgement declaring that Formlabs’ best-selling product, the FORM 2 3D printer, infringes on the German portion of the DWS European patent for the SLA 3D printer’s heating system. Following Formlabs’ lawsuit to seek a declaratory judgement of non-infringement from DWS for its U.S. patent, DWS filed a counterclaim on November 13, 2018 that alleges infringement and damages. The manufacture, use and sale of the FORM 2 3D printer are listed as the counterclaim’s damages.
In addition, the counterclaim alleges that Formlabs’ infringement on the heating patent was and is intentional. As a result, DWS is seeking damages and an injunction as remedies for the infringement by the FORM 2 printer launched by Formlabs Inc. in September 2015. DWS is known to invest extensive efforts in research and protection of its 3D printing technical solutions, and it comes as no surprise that it intends to vigorously react against any potential patent infringements.
