Origin of the invention
After completing their doctorates, Dr.-Ing. Tristan Hocke and Dipl.-Ing. Lukas Groß came up with the idea of founding HoGroTec GmbH, which over time became Liqtra GmbH.
The corresponding invention was a new type of 3D printing technology for processing plastic granulate, whose “valve nozzle” and “dosing pump” each appeared to represent special features compared to the known 3D printers.
A search for prior art by the Innovation and Patent Center at the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, see Innovation and Patent Center, yielded some results. These included the international patent application WO 03010435 A1, see patent publication at Espacenet, which seemed to come quite close to the second invention of the “dosing pump”.
OfficialExamination procedure
Accordingly, it was decided to only file a patent application for the invention of the “valve nozzle” and to include the special features of the “dosing pump” as sub-claims.
A German patent application was thus filed on April 8, 2020 and published on October 14, 2021 after approx. 18 months as DE 10 2020 109 847 A1, see: Patent publication at Espacenet
The first office action of the DPMA produced further prior art, which was correctly searched, but did not disclose the invention of the “valve nozzle”. Accordingly, the reply consisted of a minor but clarifying amendment to claim 1 of the patent application and an argument for its grantability.
Based on this objectively positive assessment of the prospects of grant, an international subsequent patent application WO 2021/204680 A1 was filed on April 1, 2021 within the 12-month priority period, the international search report of which, WO 2017 206 128 A1, only produced one document from the patent literature, which was only considered relevant by the Office for some claims. The remaining claims 4 to 8 as well as 10 to 14 of the international patent application were considered by the Office to be allowable.
Both the national phase in the USA as US 17/917,014, the examination of which is currently (as of August 2025) still ongoing, and the regional phase before the European Patent Office as 21717376.4 were then initiated from the international patent re-filing WO 2021/204680 A1. The European patent application 21717376.4 also served as a reason to extend the time limit for responding to the second office action of the German examination procedure in 12-month cycles, as the office continues to argue critically against the grantability of the invention of the patent application.
The European examination procedure, on the other hand, will lead to the grant of a European patent EP 4 132 768 B1, which will be validated in the UK and continued as a unitary patent, as early as the end of 2024 by amending the claims there in accordance with the sub-claims envisaged as grantable:
