Absolutely this. In fact, when Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from the Birmingham Jail, he said:

"I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."

(Source: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html)

People seem to be commenting without having actually read the '520 patent. The claim is not to make support struts thinner, though that is a natural following benefit of the claimed technique.

What is actually claimed is a method of getting higher resolution layers out of a stereolithographic material than would normally be attained using the materials native cure depth. The method by which the higher resolution cross-sectioning could be achieved is what this patent claims.

You may not have read the patent carefully enough (or gotten past the 80-ish pages of drawings). What the patent is actual claiming is a way of getting higher resolution out of stereolithographic materials by blending cross-sectional layers that have a resolution greater than that of the material. By using the claimed method of blending those layers and varying the cure exposure times in just the right way, you can get thinner (higher-resolution) cross-sectional layers than the material, if cured using normal layer-by-layer techniques, would get alone.

It was a novel and non-obvious advance in stereolithographic techniques.

This is exactly why SLAPP laws exist:

"The typical SLAPP plaintiff does not normally expect to win the lawsuit. The plaintiff's goals are accomplished if the defendant succumbs to fear, intimidation, mounting legal costs or simple exhaustion and abandons the criticism. A SLAPP may also intimidate others from participating in the debate. A SLAPP is often preceded by a legal threat. The difficulty, of course, is that plaintiffs do not present themselves to the Court admitting that their intent is to censor, intimidate or silence their critics."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP

"The won was devalued by 100 percent, which meant 1,000 won suddenly had the purchasing power of 10 won."

This was the first thing in the article that I saw or read.

All these arguments are great, except that they mean nothing if the mark gets published in the Official Gazette and no one files a notice of opposition within 30 days. Then the mark will be presumed valid and harder to overturn. After a certain point, the mark can no longer be challenged, so it's best to get in opposition as early as possible.

If it gets past the first examiner, it will be published in the Official Gazette in the coming weeks (it's a weekly publication). That's when the notice of opposition should be filed. It costs $300, and requires proof of service to the applicant.

Because only Google could figure out that SSNs are sequential, follow a known formula, and can generally be figured out with the last 4 digits and the location and date of birth. Sooo Scary! To think that SSNs are in any way a secure identifier is to be naive.

I had this exact thing happen to a photograph I had posted on Flickr. A magazine from the UK took my image without license, and published it in print, online, and in a DVD. Their distribution included many stores here in the US. Before posting the image, I had taken the time to register my copyright with the USCO, so that unlocks statutory damages, which are very important in copyright infringement cases. Without registering *before the infringement*, you don't get attorneys fees or court costs, and you only get actual damages. That makes pursuing an infringement case a loser if you don't have the copyright registered.

Having distributed physical copies into the US, I could have pretty easily used the US as the venue for a lawsuit, or even done so through a solicitor in the UK. However, lawyers are messy, and enforcing judgments across international borders is costly. The first thing I did was prepare an invoice stating the usage of the image, that there was no implicit license, that the images are copyrighted (which they are, whether you registered them or not), and how much I expected in licensing fees for the usage. I also added a multiplier for needing to issue the license retroactively and having discovered the infringement myself. After a bit of negotiation as to the licensing fee, the publication was very apologetic and wired me the agreed upon rate. Now they have a license, I got paid for the commercial use, and we parted amicably.

For more information, I highly recommend the ASMP website on copyright: http://asmp.org/tutorials/enforcing-your-rights.html

Bingo. It worked for me when I had to deal with the same issue for a magazine in the UK which printed a photo of mine without permission.

Waiting for the first photograph of an exoplanet from an underwater observatory. And you though atmospheric refraction was a pain on land!