Tim Hoffman Gave a Trigger Design Away for Free. He's Being Sued for It.

In July 2023, a Tennessee designer named Tim Hoffman uploaded a design for a mechanical trigger component and made the files free to download. It was not his first free release, and it would not have been his last. By December 2025 he was a defendant in federal court. By April 2026 the case had left Tennessee.

This is the short version of how that happened. Every surprising step in it is documented.

The designer and the design

Hoffman runs Hoffman Tactical, a one-man company that designs parts for AR-15 pattern firearms. His working method is the community standard: design openly, release the files publicly, sell the parts and kits to fund the next release. The Super Safety, introduced on 21 July 2023, is described in the parties’ filings as a mechanism that replaces the standard safety selector and offers a forced-reset trigger mode alongside safe and standard semi-automatic modes. He released the design as free 3D-print, STEP and CAD files, and sold physical units — about 70 before the injunction, at a planned $90 retail, per his testimony.

Nothing in the lawsuit changes the public record of that release: the design was open, the files were free, and the video announcing it went up in plain view of the entire industry — including the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit

On 23 December 2025, ABC IP, LLC and Rare Breed Triggers, Inc. filed in the Eastern District of Tennessee (Case 1:25-cv-00389-CLC-CHS) alleging that the Super Safety infringes patents including:

• US 7,398,723 — a forced-reset trigger patent with a 2003 priority date. It expired in September 2024, and the plaintiffs bought it from its inventor in April 2022. Infringement of a lapsed patent is limited to past damages.
• US 12,031,784 — issued July 2024. The suit asserts claim 1.
• US 12,038,247 — issued July 2024. The suit asserts claim 15.

The same two companies settled a 2022 dispute with Hoffman over a related patent, and the later complaint treats that settlement as notice of a broader portfolio.

The government’s intervention

On 26 January 2026, the Department of Justice filed a Statement of Interest on behalf of the ATF, urging the court to weigh the “public interest” factor of the injunction analysis in the plaintiffs’ favor. The filing states the ATF has a “strong interest in discouraging unregulated manufacture of forced reset triggers,” cites the agency’s May 2025 settlement with Rare Breed, and explicitly takes no position on whether the design actually infringes.

A federal agency’s lawyer standing beside a private plaintiff in a civil case to argue the plaintiff’s injunction serves the agency’s enforcement goals is the state lending its weight to a non-state actor’s intellectual property claim — against an individual whose alleged “infringement” includes giving files away.

The injunction, and the transfer

After a 13 January TRO (secured against a $20,000 bond) and a preliminary injunction hearing at the end of January, the Tennessee court entered a preliminary injunction on 11 February 2026. It orders Hoffman to stop making, using, selling, offering or importing the Super Safety and its derivatives; to remove the free download files from Odysee and every other platform; to stop posting the 3D print, STEP or development files; to stop sending the files to third parties; and to stop licensing anyone to sell or promote the design. The court found the plaintiffs likely to succeed on claim 1 of the ‘784 patent and claim 15 of the ‘247 patent.

Hoffman has publicly stated he complied from the first day.

The case did not stay in Chattanooga. On 14 April 2026 the Tennessee action was transferred to the Eastern District of Texas, No. 4:26-cv-00378. A February snapshot that still describes a pending JPML motion in Tennessee is out of date. The case continues. It has not been decided.

The questions the case raises

Can you patent a design that has been openly published since 2023? Whether an infringement theory that reaches an openly published community standard holds up is a real question about patent law, not a conspiracy.

Should the government pick sides in a patent dispute over downloadable files? The ATF’s stated interest is regulatory. Using a private lawsuit as the enforcement vehicle, with a “public interest” brief that refuses to address the merits, is a question for anyone who cares what rights a design file has in federal court.

We are not neutral here: this is a site that takes the side of the individual who released the design into the open. The reporting discipline is the same either way — everything above is from the docket, the filings, and the defendant’s public statements. The case is not decided, and “not decided” is its own fact.

One boundary, stated because this site always states it: the Super Safety is a design in a category — forced-reset — that sits on the most commonly prosecuted line in federal firearms law (18 U.S.C. § 922(o)). This article reports the person, the case and the law. It hosts no files, links no files, and describes no build instructions.