Stratasys Wins $27.6M From Bambu Lab: No Sales Ban, No Triple Damages

What the judgment adds to the verdict

The trade press reported the jury's answer on September 18. The document that turns a verdict into an enforceable outcome is the judgment, entered the same day as Docket 463, and it carries detail the verdict coverage did not have.

The award is split per patent. 3D Printing Industry noted that Stratasys did not disclose how the money broke down. The judgment does:

Willful, but no enhancement. This is the most consequential line in the document, and it did not appear in the verdict coverage. A finding of willfulness opens the door to enhanced damagesUnder 35 U.S.C. section 284 a court may increase a patent damages award up to three times the amount found. It is discretionary, not automatic, and courts reserve it for conduct they consider egregious. of up to three times the award. Gilstrap declined:

"The Court, having heard the testimony and seen the exhibits over the course of the entire trial, finds that no enhancement of damages related to Bambu's willfulness is warranted. Accordingly, Stratasys's request for enhancement pursuant to 35 U.S.C. 284 is denied."

In other words, the ceiling on this case was $82.8 million and the judge who sat through the whole trial saw no reason to go there.

No injunction. Stratasys asked for a permanent injunction when it filed in 2024. The judgment closes with one sentence that disposes of it:

"All other requests for relief now pending by and between Stratasys and Bambu, which are not specifically addressed herein, are DENIED."

That is the difference between "Bambu owes money" and "Bambu cannot sell printers". Only the first is true.

Five defendants, not four. The reports list Shenzhen Tuozhu, Shanghai Lunkuo, BambuLab Ltd and Tuozhu Technology. The judgment names those four plus BambuLab USA, Inc. There is some history there: Bambu tried to have the case dismissed in 2024 partly on the grounds that the US entity was not a party, and Stratasys added it by amended complaint in September 2025.

The award is framed as a running royalty on past sales, and it carries prejudgment interest at the five-year US Treasury bill rate compounded monthly from the date infringement began, plus post-judgment interest and costs. Note the limit: this covers the past. A license rate for future sales is not granted in the judgment, and no public docket entry through October 19 shows a motion asking for one. The four sealed motions filed in October are not described, so we cannot rule one out either.

Where these quotes come from

Every quotation in this section is from the signed judgment in Stratasys, Inc. v. Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology Co. Ltd. et al., Case No. 2:24-cv-00644-JRG, Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, Docket 463, filed September 18, 2026. We pulled it from the public docket and keep a copy, because court PDFs move. The same applies to the amended complaint (Docket 81) and the pretrial rulings (Docket 401) cited further down.

The four patents, in plain terms

Three techniques, four patents. None of them is exotic; all three are things your printer does on an ordinary Tuesday.

US 9,421,713, the purge tower. When a printer switches filament, the melt zone still holds the previous color. The patent covers extruding that leftover material layer by layer into a separate tower beside the part, instead of simply discarding it. If you have printed anything multi-color on an AMS, you have watched this happen and you have thrown the tower away afterwards. This is the single largest award at $14.2 million.

US 7,555,357, the remnant toolpath. A slicer patent, not a hardware one. Once a layer's outline is drawn, the area inside has to be filled. Where that area narrows to less than a full extrusion width, naive filling leaves either a gap or a bulge. The patent covers measuring the leftover region, laying intermediate paths and computing an adjusted final path from them. Because it lives in the slicer rather than in the machine, it reaches models with no multi-material hardware at all.

US 9,168,698 and US 10,556,381, force detection. A sensor in the toolhead that registers when the nozzle touches the build plate or the part. That is the basis of sensorless auto bed levelling and Z offset calibration on the A1 series. Both patents share a 2012 priority date and, per the public patent record, both were originally filed by MakerBot Industries, which Stratasys acquired in 2013. Stratasys is suing with MakerBot's patents.

Which machines were accused of what comes from the amended complaint, and it is worth reading carefully, because the list is older than you might expect:

Every entry is prefaced in the complaint with "include, for example", so the list is explicitly not exhaustive. What it does not do is name the current H series, the P2S, the X2D or the A2L as accused products.

How a single-nozzle X1C infringes a patent about multiple print heads

This was Bambu's strongest non-infringement argument and it is worth understanding, because it explains why an ordinary X1C is in the case at all. Claim 1 of the purge tower patent speaks of multiple print heads or deposition lines. An X1C has one nozzle.

Bambu argued that a "deposition line" must be something that heats and deposits material, which would exclude the individual filament paths of an AMS feeding a single hotend. The court rejected that in its claim construction order of February 18, 2026:

"Defendants' argument that '[w]hat distinguishes a "deposition line" from a "guide tube" is the heating process' (Dkt. No. 105 at 13) is therefore also unavailing."

With the heating requirement gone, the court construed "deposition line" as "a line that deposits material". It drew one limit: a guide tube that merely delivers material to a print head is not enough on its own, although a guide tube can be part of a deposition line. The order does not decide whether an AMS filament path, together with the hotend it feeds, is a deposition line; that was left to the infringement stage. Bambu then moved for summary judgment of non-infringement for single-nozzle printers and lost that too, in July 2026, with the court noting that most of the argument had already been resolved at claim construction. By the time the jury sat down, the question was no longer whether one nozzle could infringe.

What this means if you own a Bambu printer

Concretely: nothing. We looked for every mechanism by which a verdict like this could reach a customer, and none of them is present.

There is no sales ban, because the court denied it. There is no recall, no firmware change and no feature removal traceable to the case, and no Bambu statement suggesting any: as of September 19 there is no post about the verdict on Bambu's blog at all, and the statement Bambu gave to the press mentions products nowhere. The damages relate to units sold from May 2022 and September 2023 onward. Nothing in the judgment reaches into a printer already on a desk.

If you own an A1 or A1 mini, the patent office news concerns a feature of your printer: the complaint in this case gives the A1 and A1 mini as its examples under the two force detection patents, and the three claims the jury found infringed are among those the board has now held unpatentable. The A1 series is also named under the remnant toolpath patent, which these decisions do not touch. In practice it changes nothing for you in either direction. The judgment ordered money, not changes to the printer, and the board's decisions are about whether Stratasys' claims are patentable, not about how your A1 levels its bed.

Two years to get here

The trial was the visible part of a long, mostly technical fight that ran on three continents at once.

1. Aug 8, 202410 patents, two suits filed Two complaints in the Eastern District of Texas, later consolidated. Bambu's public response invited the industry to compete "through genuine technological innovation".
2. Dec 20244 patent office challenges Bambu fights on two fronts: four inter partes review petitions at the US patent office, plus its own declaratory judgment suit against Stratasys. Five more petitions followed in February 2025.
3. Apr 24, 2026UPC European bid dismissed The Hague: the Unified Patent Court dismissed Stratasys' application for a preliminary injunction against the H2C, finding the machine outside the scope of the European family member.
4. Jun 9, 2026'713 survives review The patent office upheld the purge tower patent. Bambu's prior art included a RepRap community video; the board held that uploading a video to YouTube did not automatically make it prior art. Bambu has appealed.
5. Sep 11 to 175 days of trial Verdict September 17, unanimous, followed by judgment on September 18.
6. Sep 28 to Oct 54 patents, claims ruled unpatentable Patent office decisions on the four February 2025 petitions the board instituted in October 2025 (it refused the fifth): claims of both force detection patents and of two patents that 3Druck and All3DP place in the second case held unpatentable.

The patent office fights matter to the shape of what is left. Bambu filed nine inter partes review petitions against Stratasys patents, four in December 2024 and five in February 2025, according to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's public records. Before the trial, the board held all challenged claims of two of the originally asserted patents unpatentable: the heated build platform patent from this case (US 9,592,660, IPR2025-00257, June 3, 2026) and the networked printing patent from the second case (US 8,562,324, IPR2025-00311, June 9, 2026). A third challenge (IPR2025-00354) was refused institution. Earlier versions of this article reported those two decisions only as Bambu's account; we have since read both in the board's records. The district court separately held claims of the heated build platform patent indefinite, which is why that patent never reached the jury.

Four more decisions after the verdict. Between September 28 and October 5, 2026 the board decided the four reviews it had instituted in October 2025 on petitions Bambu filed in February 2025. In each one it held challenged claims unpatentable:

The first two rows are the force detection patents from this trial, and the three claims the jury found infringed are all among those the board has now held unpatentable. The board addressed the overlap itself: pointing in particular to the different combination of prior art Bambu put before it, it said it does not consider its ruling on those claims inconsistent with the jury's. The two forums also apply different standards: the board decides on a preponderance of the evidence, while in court a challenger has to prove invalidity by clear and convincing evidence, as 3Druck explains. According to 3Druck and All3DP, the other two patents belong to the second complaint, which has not gone to trial. The '774 covers software querying a printer for its configuration and building a print profile from the answer, the '466 a spool or cartridge carrying a data tag that the printer reads to decide how to process the material; All3DP reports that Stratasys asserts them against the AMS reading RFID tags on spools and against Bambu Studio's filament sync. A fifth petition from February 2025, against US 11,167,464, was refused institution in October 2025.

What the decisions do not do is change the judgment on their own. 3Druck notes that the $2.8 million does not fall away automatically. Under the patent statute, the patent office formally cancels claims only once the time for appeal has run out or any appeal has ended (35 U.S.C. 318(b)). Within 30 days Stratasys can ask the board to rehear a decision or, instead, ask the patent office's Director to review it (37 CFR 42.71(d), 42.75(c)). It can also appeal to the Federal Circuit within 63 days, a window that starts again once a timely request for either review has been decided (35 U.S.C. 141(c), 37 CFR 90.3, 42.75(e)(3)). After the June decision on the networked printing patent, Stratasys took the Director Review route, and the request was denied on August 25, 2026. As of October 21 the board's records show none of these steps in the four new reviews; the 30-day window for a rehearing or Director Review request runs out between late October and early November.

Bambu also tried to freeze the district case pending those reviews. The court refused. Its pretrial rulings then barred the specific prior art references Bambu had already put forward at the patent office, among them the KISSlicer Quick Start Guide, the Dual Extruder, the PLA and RepRap article and the RepRap video, while still allowing system art such as KISSlicer Pro and the Dual Extruder Printing Project. Bambu went into trial with that system art, but without the individual references it had used at the patent office.

What happens next

Four things are live.

Post-trial motions. Bambu has said it intends to seek post-trial review and appeal. A motion for judgment as a matter of law or for a new trial is due no later than 28 days after the entry of judgment (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 50(b) and 59(b)); with the judgment entered on September 18, that deadline fell on October 16. On October 16 three motions were filed under seal (Docket 480 to 482), and a fourth followed on October 19 (Docket 483). The public docket copy we read on October 21 (CourtListener, last updated October 19) lists each of them only as "Sealed Motion", without the filing party or the kind of motion, so we cannot say who filed them or what they ask for. That they are the post-trial motions is our reading of the timing, not something the docket states. Earlier entries are a bill of costs (October 2), transcripts (October 6), two filings on October 8 listed only as "Miscellaneous Relief" and "Expedite", and on October 14 an order on a motion to expedite and a response to a motion; their content is available only through PACER, and we have not seen it.

Appeal. No notice of appeal appears on the docket through October 19. If any of the October motions is a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law, a motion for a new trial or a motion to alter the judgment, the time to appeal runs only from the order deciding the last of them (Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(4)(A)). Patent appeals go to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and Bambu already has a separate appeal pending there against the decision upholding the purge tower patent. Appeals at that court commonly run one to two years after briefing, which is our general expectation rather than anything either party has stated.

The second case. This trial covered one of the two 2024 complaints. The other one is still out there, covering a different set of patents: RFID data tags on filament spools, networked 3D printing, a networked printer with a 3D scanner, and detection and use of printer configuration information, which reads on Bambu Studio itself. Stratasys confirmed to the trade press that it has no trial date. Claims of three of its patents have since been held unpatentable at the patent office: the networked printing patent ('324) in June, and the '466 and, according to 3Druck and All3DP, the '774 in the latest round.

A reexamination request against the remnant toolpath patent. A request for ex parte reexamination of the '357 patent, the basis of $10.6 million of the award, was filed at the patent office on June 17, 2026 (control number 90/016,400), according to the office's Official Gazette of September 15. The notice names as requester an attorney at Fish & Richardson, the firm that represents Bambu in the Texas case; it does not say on whose behalf the request was filed. We have not seen the reexamination file, so we cannot say whether the office has ordered a reexamination. 3D Printing Industry reports that the patent is under ex parte reexamination. Either way the patent expires on March 3, 2027.

What the two sides say

Update, September 22, 2026. Both companies have now commented. Bambu Lab, in a statement to 3DPrint.com:

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. Bambu Lab, statement to 3DPrint.com, September 21, 2026

That is the corporate form of what the docket already showed: the fight is not over, and the next moves are post-trial motions and then the Federal Circuit. Stratasys was briefer, and said nothing about the money: "Stratasys remains focused on delivering cutting-edge technologies to customers and protecting the intellectual property that underpins our innovation."

Neither statement changes a number in this article. They are worth reading for what they do not say. Bambu does not claim the patents are invalid here, which it argued at trial and lost; it points at process. Stratasys does not mention an injunction or future licensing, which is the part that would actually affect what you can buy.

Three things being reported wrong

This story has picked up errors as it traveled, and two of them are in places you would normally trust.

There is no ITC case. Several summaries and at least one search-optimized explainer promise "ITC details". A Beijing law firm that published the claim has since corrected its own article, stating that it checked the US International Trade Commission's site and the federal docket system and found no parallel Section 337 investigation. Our own check of the Commission's Section 337 listings found nothing either. This case lives in one district court and one patent office.

The patent list. At least one legal trade outlet describes the four trial patents as covering, among other things, a "heated build platform". That is the patent that never made it to trial. 3D Printing Industry made the same mistake and published a correction naming the correct four. The judgment confirms the corrected list.

The defendant count. Four named across the coverage, five in the judgment. The missing one is the US entity.

How big is $27.6 million?

For Stratasys it is material. The company's own results filing puts full year 2025 revenue at $551.1 million against a GAAP net loss of $104.3 million. The award is roughly 5 percent of a year's revenue and about a quarter of that year's loss.

For Bambu it is smaller, though here the numbers are softer. Bambu Lab is privately held and publishes no audited figures. Chinese business media reported that the company passed 10 billion yuan in 2025 revenue, roughly $1.4 to $1.5 billion. Taking that at face value, and it is a secondary report rather than a company statement, $27.6 million is around 2 percent of one year, covering more than four years of sales.

Our take: A real loss for Bambu, and a much smaller one than the headline suggests

Strip it back and Stratasys won the argument it needed to win: four patents upheld at trial, infringement found, and found willful. That is not a technicality. But the same judge who heard all of it declined to multiply the damages and denied everything else on the table. Since then the patent office has held unpatentable the force detection claims behind the smallest slice, $2.8 million, although that does not undo the award by itself. The products named in the complaint are the X1C, P1P and A1 generation; the court later let Stratasys add "newly released products" to its infringement contentions (Docket 128), and which models those are, the public docket entries do not say. One of the two big patents expires in March. The interesting question is not the money, it is whether Stratasys comes back for a license on future sales, and what the second case does when it finally gets a date. For owners, this is a story to follow, not to act on.

Buying a Bambu now?

Nothing in the judgment stops sales or changes a printer you buy today: the court denied the sales ban, and no recall, firmware change or feature removal is traceable to the case. Which model fits comes down to budget, materials and whether you want multicolor, and our current picks walk through the lineup.

The other Bambu legal fight, explained What Bambu's own patents show