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Bambu Lab in Court: A $27.6M Verdict, a European Win and a Labubu Settlement

Mike
Updated
A Bambu Lab A1 3D printer

Pictured: the Bambu Lab A1. Image: Bambu Lab

In this article
  1. TL;DR
  2. My take
  3. The $27.6 million verdict in Texas
  4. Bambu Lab’s response
  5. The patent office twist
  6. A win in Europe
  7. Pop Mart, Labubu and MakerWorld
  8. What this means if you own a Bambu printer
  9. What’s next
  10. Sources

Bambu Lab has spent 2026 in courtrooms on three fronts: a $27.6 million patent loss to Stratasys in Texas, a win over the same company in Europe, and a copyright fight with Labubu maker Pop Mart that ended in a public apology. Here’s what happened in each, and what it means if you own a Bambu printer.

TL;DR

  • In September, a Texas jury found Bambu Lab willfully infringed four Stratasys patents and awarded Stratasys $27.6 million. The judge declined to increase that amount.
  • Weeks later, US patent office decisions went against several Stratasys patents, including one from that trial, which could matter on appeal.
  • In April, a European patent court refused Stratasys’s request for an emergency order against Bambu Lab and made Stratasys pay €112,000 in costs.
  • Pop Mart sued Bambu Lab in China over Labubu files on MakerWorld; the two settled before the hearing.

My take

I think Bambu Lab will win these cases in the end. It will be long and drawn out, and the lawyers will be the only ones who really come out ahead.

But seeing purge towers as one of the main patents at issue is concerning for the whole hobby. I’m not sure there’s a company that doesn’t use a purge tower now or hasn’t used one in the past. Just because a company isn’t using them in its current products doesn’t mean it couldn’t face a lawsuit too. Bambu Lab is simply the biggest player in the game, which is why it’s the first company to be targeted.

If you’re one of the people happy about this, I have to ask: why? Most of the comments I’ve seen say that such-and-such company doesn’t use one. But just because a company’s current product doesn’t use one doesn’t mean it can’t be pursued for the products that did.

So, in summary: I think Bambu Lab will end up prevailing, and the only people who will win are the lawyers on each side. As mad as you might be at Stratasys over this, it does hold the patent, and it has to protect it.

The $27.6 million verdict in Texas

Stratasys, the industrial 3D printer maker, sued Bambu Lab in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in August 2024 (case 2:24-cv-00644). The trial started on September 11, 2026, and on September 17 the jury returned its verdict: Bambu Lab had infringed claims of four US patents, the infringement was willful, and none of the claims had been shown to be invalid. Judge Rodney Gilstrap entered the judgment the next day.

Here’s how the $27.6 million breaks down, according to the judgment:

  • $14.2 million for US 9,421,713, a patent on printing with purge towers (Bambu calls them prime towers). Stratasys’s complaint named the X1C, X1E, P1S and P1P under this patent.
  • $10.6 million for US 7,555,357, which covers building layers along a tool path that leaves an empty region. The complaint named the X1C, X1E, P1S, P1P, A1 and A1 mini.
  • $2.8 million combined for US 9,168,698 and 10,556,381, which cover detecting contact force on the print head, the kind of sensing used for bed leveling. The complaint named the A1 and A1 mini.

The court awarded the money as a running royalty for past sales, counted from May 31, 2022 for the first two patents and from September 20, 2023 for the force-detection pair, plus interest. The complaint lists those printers as examples; the verdict form itself doesn’t name specific models.

Under US patent law, a judge can increase damages for willful infringement, up to three times the jury’s amount. Stratasys asked for that, and Judge Gilstrap said no: having heard the whole trial, he found no increase was warranted. The judgment also denied every other pending request it didn’t specifically address.

This was the first of two lawsuits Stratasys filed against Bambu Lab on the same day in 2024. The second (case 2:24-cv-00645) has been handled alongside the first before trial but hasn’t been tried yet.

Bambu Lab’s response

In a statement to Tom’s Hardware, Bambu Lab said it disagrees with the verdict and intends to seek post-trial review and appeal. “While we respect the judicial process, we disagree with the verdict reached in this case,” the company said.

As of October 21, Stratasys had not posted a press release about the verdict on its investor news page.

The patent office twist

Separately from the trial, Bambu Lab’s parent company, Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology, has been challenging Stratasys’s patents at the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board, part of the patent office. In the weeks after the verdict, the board issued final decisions finding every challenged claim unpatentable in three of them:

3D Printing Industry reports that the board also found 14 of 15 challenged claims of the other force-detection patent, US 9,168,698, unpatentable, including claim 10, the one from trial. It also reports that the board upheld the purge tower patent in June 2026 and that Bambu Lab has appealed that decision. We haven’t been able to see either decision ourselves yet.

That doesn’t erase the verdict on its own. But the ‘381 patent is one of the two force-detection patents behind the $2.8 million part of the award, and if claims a jury relied on are cancelled, that can change what happens to the damages on appeal. Stratasys can appeal the board’s decisions too, so expect this to take a while.

A win in Europe

Stratasys also went after Bambu Lab in Europe’s Unified Patent Court. It asked the court’s Hague division for provisional measures, an emergency order before a full trial, against Bambu Lab’s German company over the H2C and a European patent on printing with purge towers (EP 2 964 450). On April 24, 2026, the court dismissed the request (case UPC_CFI_305/2026).

The court decided the patent was likely not infringed. It read the patent as requiring each layer of the purge tower to be made of a single material, while the H2C’s tower can print a layer with two materials side by side. Because of that, it didn’t need to rule on whether the patent is valid. Stratasys was ordered to pay Bambu Lab €112,000 in costs.

One detail matters for the rest of the hobby: the court wasn’t persuaded by Bambu’s argument that a prime tower is something different from a purge tower. It treated priming as part of purging. Bambu won on how its tower is built, not on what it’s called.

Pop Mart, Labubu and MakerWorld

The third case had nothing to do with patents. Pop Mart, the company behind Labubu, sued Bambu Lab’s parent company in February over unauthorized Labubu model files on MakerWorld, Bambu’s model-sharing site, with a hearing set for April 2 at the Shanghai Pudong New Area People’s Court, Jiemian News reported. On March 16, Bambu Lab apologized to Pop Mart on its official Weibo account, said the two companies had settled, and took the files down, according to a report carried by Tencent News.

It’s a reminder that model-sharing sites can be held responsible for what users upload, and that brands are watching 3D printing more closely as it goes mainstream.

What this means if you own a Bambu printer

Nothing changes overnight. The judgment is about money for past sales; it doesn’t order a sales ban, and it doesn’t switch off printers people already own. The bigger questions are whether the award survives post-trial motions, the appeal and the patent office decisions, and how the second Texas case goes.

What’s next

  • The judge rules on post-trial motions. Several sealed motions were filed in mid-October, and what they ask for isn’t public yet.
  • Bambu Lab’s appeal, which goes to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
  • Any appeals of the patent office decisions.
  • The second Stratasys case in Texas.

Sources

Header image: Bambu Lab logo from Bambu Lab’s US store.

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