The 3-D printing space has certainly garnered its fair share of media attention over the past year due to a multitude of factors, but one surely has been the rising use of personal 3-D printers by hobbyists. This increasing use can largely be attributed to the expiration of patents on the technology used in those printers, which is leading to a rapid onslaught of entrepreneurs creating their own hobbyist 3-D printers for resale. As history shows, patent expiration can frequently lead to periods of rapid innovation. In this video, Motley Fool analyst Blake Bos covers some very important patents expiring in 2014. Watch the video below, and also check out this very innovative new 3-D printing technology featured at Rapid Ready Technology.