Bambu Lab Wins Four Patent Office Rulings Weeks After Losing $27.6 Million Verdict
Two weeks after a Texas jury found Bambu Lab infringed four Stratasys patents, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has dealt Stratasys a setback, finding claims in four of its patents unpatentable. The fight is far from over, but Bambu Lab is steadily chipping away at Stratasys’s case.
In decisions issued Sept. 29, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) found claims from two of Stratasys’ patents unpatentable, based its decision on earlier patent filings and prior art found in a thread on the RepRap community forum. Both patents concern force detection, with Stratasys’ complaint citing the A1 and A1 Mini as examples of the allegedly infringing nozzle-based force detection.
What the Rulings Mean for Bambu Lab
Grounding what this all means – patents are not judged as a whole. They typically comprise several numbered claims that each constitute a particular way or description of the invention. Each stands or falls on its own when tried, and in this case, Bambu Lab chose specific claims of the patents Stratasys alleges Bambu Lab infringed to dispute with PTAB. A claim getting ruled unpatentable doesn’t mean the entire patent is out, only that specific part. This is where things have moved some since Stratasys’ jury-granted win in court late last month.
It’s a potentially significant ruling, as some of the claims ruled unpatentable are ones the jury found Bambu Lab guilty of infringing, specifically, three claims that resulted in $2.8 million of the $27.6 million in damages awarded to Stratasys.
The PTAB decisions do not automatically cancel out the $2.8 million, though.
Stratasys can appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The decisions don’t touch the patents behind the rest of the award: the purge-tower patent (’713, $14.2 million), whose challenged claims the board upheld in June, and the toolpath patent (’357, $10.6 million), which the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) agreed in August to reexamine at Bambu’s request.
Bambu Lab Chips Away at Stratasys’ Patent Claims
The board also sided with Bambu Lab on claims from two patents from the second, as-yet-untried case. On Sept. 28, it found all challenged claims of patent ’774, which covers a printer querying for its configuration to prepare a print, unpatentable. Likewise, on Oct. 5, it ruled several claims from patent ’466, which covers reading data from something like an RFID tag on a supply of build material, unpatentable, too.
Stratasys’ complaint in that case accuses Bambu’s Automatic Material System (AMS), which reads RFID tags on filament spools, and the Bambu Studio and Handy apps under ’466, and Bambu Studio’s “Synchronize filament list from AMS” function under ’774.
What This Means for Bambu Lab Owners
There’s a lot of legalese to sift through to try to understand all of this, but the shortest and most significant thing to extract for owners of Bambu Lab’s hardware and keen followers of 3D printing legal tit-for-tat is that, for now, nothing has changed. These things take a long time to resolve, and while Stratasys was awarded big headlines with its $27.6 million win, even that’s not final yet.
How the cases play out, who prevails and to what extent is difficult to predict and can only be speculated on at this time. The jury verdict so far suggest Stratasys may extract a payday for itself. Many of the features at issue, from priming and purge towers to RFID-tagged spools to nozzle force sensing, are common in other desktop manufacturers’ printers. Whether those designs feasibly fall within Stratasys’s claims is a separate question, but those companies may find themselves quietly rooting for Bambu Lab, their biggest competitor, to get as many of those claims thrown out as possible.
On the flip side, Stratasys prevailing could create the conditions for it to take a cut from the fast-growing desktop 3D printing market which, it could be argued, it has almost entirely missed out on. The price it pays for doing so may be losing the very claims it brought to the fight. On the sidelines, desktop manufacturers will look harder at ensuring their systems steer well clear of the claims that survive the case.
What the Jury Decided
On Sept. 17, a jury in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found that Bambu Lab willfully infringed six claims across four Stratasys patents, and that none of those claims was invalid.
The jury awarded Stratasys $27.6 million:
- $14.2 million for US Patent 9,421,713, which covers printing purge towers when switching between print heads or material feeds
- $10.6 million for US Patent 7,555,357, which covers how toolpaths are generated for each layer
- $2.8 million combined for the two force-detection patents, ’698 and ’381
The judge added interest but declined Stratasys’ request to increase the damages for willful infringement. The judgment doesn’t address the permanent injunction Stratasys asked for in its complaint and denies all other remaining requests. Bambu Lab has said it will challenge the verdict after trial and on appeal.
Where All 10 Patents Stand Today
Stratasys filed two lawsuits against Bambu Lab on August 8, 2024, covering claims from 10 patents in total. The first went to trial in September, 2026. Bambu challenged all of the patents at the patent office with six of them losing some or all of their challenged claims, one upheld (Bambu is appealing) and three currently under reexamination.
“X1, P1 and A1 series” means the X1C, X1E, P1S, P1P, A1 and A1 Mini 3D printers, given as examples in Stratasys’s two complaints. The table above details which of Stratasys’s patents it accused Bambu Lab of infringing, example machines it considers infringing (though not limited to only these), where a jury has already ruled on the claims, Patent Office rulings, and the state of things as of October 6, 2026.
What Happens Next
Despite the impressive sounding damages figure awarded by the jury in the first case, there’s an awful lot of procedure and appeals still in progress and yet to begin. The court case and its damages can be appealed, and while Bambu Lab has succeeded in getting many of the patents’ claims ruled unpatentable, there’s time still for Stratasys to appeal those decisions. There are a number of events and dates coming up that will determine where things go next.
- The deadline for post-trial motions in the first case, such as a request to overturn the verdict or order a new trial is Oct. 16, 2026.
- Stratasys has until late November and early December to appeal the four fresh patent office decisions to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or it can first ask the office’s director to review them.
- Both sides can appeal the Texas judgment to the Federal Circuit after the post-trial motions. Bambu Lab has said it will.
- Bambu’s appeal of the patent office decision upholding ’713, the purge-tower patent behind the largest share of the damages, has yet to play out.
- The second case gets a trial date. Of its five patents, three have lost all their challenged claims at the patent office (’324, ’466, ’774); the office declined to hold an inter partes review on the other two (’464, ’097) but has since ordered reexaminations of both. Until the full timeline for appeals runs its course, the second case continues assuming the patents and claims in question remain valid.
What the Companies Say
Both Stratasys and Bambu Lab declined to answer All3DP’s detailed questions about the first case, which was to be expected of an ongoing lawsuit. When contacted, Stratasys declined to answer our questions about licensing, an injunction, or potential routes of further action against Bambu Lab, such as through the U.S. International Trade Commission. In a statement shared following the jury’s verdict in September the company said it is “grateful for the court’s and jury’s time and effort to this point and will continue to work through the post trial and appellate issues.”
Likewise, in a statement given to All3DP after the verdict, Bambu Lab said: “We appreciate the time and effort of the jury in considering this matter. While we respect the judicial process, we disagree with the verdict reached in this case. The law provides Bambu with the right to seek post-trial review and to appeal, and Bambu intends to avail itself of these legal processes.”
You May Also Like:
License: The text of "Bambu Lab Wins Four Patent Office Rulings Weeks After Losing $27.6 Million Verdict" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.