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Notes -
You could maybe describe the gcode in structured natural language, such that a 'translator' could convert it back?
ie: "we claim an arrangements of parts as follows: 'bolt': a rectangular prism 8cm*2cm*2cm with 3mm longitudinal grooves at the midpoint" etc etc etc
pretty boring patent app, but I think such a description would contravene various ghost gun regulations, and seems to fall much more obviously under free speech than a gcode file?
GCODE specifically describes the (sequential commands controlling) motions of the machine, and a natural language description of even a trivial print would be huge, but from a technical perspective it would work. STLs (or SLDPRTs/IPTs/whatever) would be more practical.
I'd... be very skeptical that a patent like that would be accepted, but not a patent expert, so who knows.
That said, it still runs into the EAR problem. The translation convertor should give a level of protection from being 'readily' convertible, but it's not like STLs themselves were genuinely ready-to-print functional code, and BIS thought they were close enough for government work. And if BIS didn't think the natural language description counted, you could just publish it directly.
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