3D printed Hermes belt buckle

3D printed Hermes belt buckle for sale on Shapeways. Definitely not a good idea. Designer can expect a cease and desist or a lawsuit if this comes to the company's attention. Hermes is very agressive when it comes to protecting their brand and products.

Guns, drugs and lawyers – a long list of issues are emerging from new printing technologies

In the past three years, a feverish buzz has developed around 3D printing. The excitement has been accompanied by concern that proliferation of this technology will create legal challenges, in particular for intellectual property rights holders.

This article by The Lawyers Weekly provides a summary of the evolution of 3D printing and also a cursory review of some of the implications for intellectual property rights-holders and regulators.

WIPO and 3D printing experts, debate 3D Printing

The hallway of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) new building hosted a uncommon display of surprising objects on 25 April, a foldable seat made of plastic that once folded vaguely resembles an umbrella, a pair of improbable antique lace high heels plastic shoes, and a collection of equally strange items, all of which were made with 3D printing technology. A “3D printer” was also busy manufacturing a set of plastic objects. IP Watch reports.

WIPO Director General Francis Gurry, chairing the panel discussion organised by WIPO, said 3D printing has potentially enormous implications for manufacturing capacities throughout the world. One of the reasons for the patent system is that technologies are disclosed, Gurry said. In the case of 3D printing, the first patent filing was in 1971and the first patent was granted in 1977, so the technology is now in the public domain, he said.

Read full article.

Why copyright law won’t be able to keep up with the crazy world of 3D printing

If you’re trying to understand how existing intellectual property law applies to 3D printing, let me save you some time: It’s a complete mess, writes Ricardo Bilton of VentureBeat, in a must-read article on the subject.

From top to bottom, 3D printing raises more legal questions than it answers. There are lots of companies making 3D printing hardware, even more companies offering online repositories of 3D designs, plenty of services that will print things for you, and almost zero precedent for disputes among them. From a legal standpoint, 3D printing is the Wild West.

While that may sound liberating for such a young industry, it’s also potentially dangerous. There’s a very real chance that the lack of any regulation could be replaced with bad regulation. And that could have some dire effects on the whole industry.

Read full article.

Are We Really on the Verge of a Napster-fication of Physical Objects?

According to ReadWrite’s John Paul Titlow via MIT Technology Review:

... Before long, many of us will be able to print physical objects as easily as we once burned DVDs. And just as the Internet made trading MP3 music files and ripped movies a breeze, downloading 3-D images to print on your shiny new MakerBot printer will be as easy as torrenting The Hurt Locker.”

Well, maybe some objects. As we’ve pointed out here before, most consumer 3-D printers can only work with a limited range of materials, and are far from able to perform the sophisticated manufacturing processes that lead to many of our favorite products.

While enthusiasts can print and share designs for things like Tintin’s cartoon moon rocket and Game of Thrones inspired iPhone docks (which by the way was blocked by HBO), the catalog of 3-D-printable objects is small, especially when compared to the trove of music that became available for free thanks to MP3s and file sharing.

Read full article.

HBO Blocks 3-D Printed Game of Thrones iPhone Dock

Wired reports that a tiny, detailed, 3-D printed Iron Throne iPhone dock is no more, thanks to a cease-and-desist letter from HBO, which owns the rights to the Game of Thrones series.

Fernando Sosa, who modeled a tiny detailed 3-D printed Iron throne iPhone dock and listed it for sale on his nuPROTO website, received a takedown notice from HBO, claiming a copyright on the throne.

“While we appreciate the enthusiasm for the Series that appears to have inspired your creation of this device, we are also concerned that your iron throne dock will infringe on HBO’s copyright in the Iron Throne,” says the letter.

In Michael Weinberg's opinion over at Public Knowledge this appears to be a textbook application of the DMCA takedown process in action., but it also highlights something of a missed opportunity for HBO.

Industries (music and movies come to mind) initially spent time and money stopping people from making things available online, but spent very little time and money giving people a way to pay for things online.

They have given a number of people who want to pay for an Iron Throne phone dock no way to do so. Long term, that is not a sustainable way for anyone to react to 3D printed disruption.

All of this makes CCIA's Matt Schruers’ question: “where can a geek buy a phone throne?” all the more relevant. If the answer is “nowhere,” then you are doing it wrong.

3D printing brings a new dimension to faking it

Thanks to 3D printers, budding counterfeiters could soon create parts or goods themselves. The problem for authorities is that copying physical objects is not always illegal. The BBC reports.

While songs, movies and literary works are automatically protected by copyright, functional objects like tables or chairs don't have any automatic protection.

Patents can be used to protect useful pieces of engineering or sciencey things, but you have to apply for a patent, and it only lasts for twenty years,” Michael Weinberg, a staff attorney at Public Knowledge, says. “But the world is full of things that are not protected in any way, so anyone can make a direct copy."

It's likely that laws relating to intellectual property will have to be updated or clarified in the future, to take in to account the capabilities of 3D printing technology.

Read full article.

Hot New Marketplace for 3-D Printable Objects Hit with Copyright Issue over Jewelery Designs

3DLT based in Cincinnati, 3DLT offers a marketplace for 3-D authors to exhibit and sell their designs. But they recently ran into some copyright issues, according to Wired.

Jessica Rosenkrantz, co-founder of Nervous System, learned that some of her jewelery designs were for sale at 3DLT.

The designs at issue are five of 3DLT’s fashion offerings (until recently, the entire fashion category). “They changed the names and descriptions but are using our images,” says Rosenkrantz..

According to 3DLT which has published an open apology on their website, "some of the products and images on the site were being used as placeholders and were not approved for use." The files have since been removed.

Read full article.

White Paper: What's the Deal with Copyright and 3D Printing?

White Paper: What's the Deal with Copyright and 3D Printing? by Michael Weinberg, January 2013.

... 3D printers do not take away intellectual property rights any more than computers grant them. But they do provide an opportunity for people to reexamine old assumptions about how the system works.

However, the copyright habit is a hard one to break. For many people exposed to 3D printing for the first time, the question that follows "is it real?," "how does it work?," and "how can I get one?" is "what about piracy?" And by piracy, they usually mean copyright infringement.

This whitepaper does not directly answer the piracy question. 3D printing is a tool and, like any tool, can be used for productive and not-so-productive purposes. Making unauthorized copies of physical objects protected by copyright is copyright infringement, whether those copies are made with a 3D printer or a whittling knife. It will happen.

Instead, this paper is an attempt to answer the unvoiced question that comes before concerns about piracy: is this obaject protected by copyright in the first place? After all, if there is no underlying copyright there can be no infringement of that right.

[via boingboing]

The Intellectual Property Implications of Low-Cost 3D Printing

The Intellectual Property Implications of Low-Cost 3D Printing pubished in SCRIPTed - A Journal of Law, Technology & Society via Scoop.i!.

Excerpts:

Recent developments in producing affordable and hobbyist-friendly printers that can reproduce three-dimensional rather than just flat objects may mean that printing a toast-rack or a comb becomes as easy as printing a birthday card.

Any lawyer familiar with copyright and trade mark law can see, however, that printing one’s own birthday cards could, depending on the source and nature of the images used, infringe a number of intellectual property (IP) rights. Tempting as it may be to copy and use a picture of a well-known cartoon character, the resulting cards would very likely be an infringement of the copyright and perhaps trade marks owned by the relevant rights holder. But what if someone uses a printer capable of producing a mobile phone cover bearing such an image? Or reproducing a distinctively-styled piece of kitchenware? What about printing out a spare wing-mirror mount for your car? Do these uses infringe IP rights?

In the first part of this paper, we review the history of 3D printing and describe recent developments, including a project initiated by one of the authors to bring such printers into the home. We then examine the IP implications of personal 3D printing with particular reference to the bundle of rights that would typically be associated with a product that might be copied.

Read full document by S Bradshaw, A Bowyer and P Haufe, "The Intellectual Property Implications of Low-Cost 3D Printing", (2010) 7:1 SCRIPTed 5.

The PC all over again?

Just as computers make it easy to copy music, 3D printers will soon allow easy copying of certain kinds of objects. The Economist warns of infringement issues — such as websites hosting 3D design being sued down the road as "havens of piracy".

... Michael Weinberg of Public Knowledge, an advocacy group in Washington, DC, fears that the fledgling technology could have its wings clipped by traditional manufacturers who see it as a threat to their livelihoods.

Because a 3D printer can make perfect replicas of many kinds of object, manufacturers may seek to brand it a “piracy machine” and demand additional measures to protect their traditional way of doing business. Mr Weinberg worries that they may behave rather like the record industry did when its own business model—based on selling pricey CD albums that few music fans wanted, instead of cheap single tracks they craved—came under attack from Napster and other file-swapping networks.

The danger is that America’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) will be used to stifle free expression, jeopardise fair use and impede competition—by, for example, blocking the distribution of blueprints for aftermarket replacement parts such as brake pads or toner cartridges. Draconian enforcement would reduce consumer choice and hamper the huge potential of 3D printing to spur innovation.

Read full article.

[via @ttranpham]

EFF Fights To Protect 3D Printers From Illegitimate Patents

3D printing and access to said printers have grown exponentially in the last year as the technology becomes more affordable for all. That being said, there are those who would rather restrict the technology for their own profit instead of making it open source. Now the EFF has joined the fight to keep 3D printing open and innovative. Webpro News reports.

As the EFF points out, many of the core patents regarding 3D printers have expired or will soon expire. This opens up the potential for a whole new wave of innovation in the 3D printing scene from independent engineers and others. The only problem is that there are those who would file or extend patents in 3D printing to keep this technology out of the hands of the open hardware community, and the EFF says that’s no good.

So what are they going to do about it? They’re asking for the community’s help in identifying new patents that threaten the open nature of 3D printing.

Read more.

3D Printing Faces Legal Blocks Years Before Mass Consumer Use

The world of personal 3D printing was just around the corner, until last week, when a patent application was accepted by the USPTO that essentially blocks the use of 3D printing for reproduction of almost anything. article3 reports.

3D printers can build almost anything, from bikes and bike parts to food and weapons. The endless possibilities are what the patent holders want to prevent.

The patent, filed in 2008 and granted on October 9, 2012 to Nathan Myhrvold's company Intellectual Ventures, — preemptively halts owners of 3D printers from producing copyrighted products.

According to Digital Manufacturing report:

This patent lends a 3D printer the ability to assess whether a computer design file it's reading has an authorization code included that will allow access for printing. If it does not, the machine simply will not print, regardless of the object. So who is Intellectual Ventures? A 3D printer manufacturer? Well, no. Depending on your perspective, Intellectual Ventures is either the biggest, most aggressive patent “troll” that ever existed or an innovative company that helps inventors protect their intellectual property and get return on their investment.

Read more.

UK Study On 3D Printing — A Call for an Official Policy Framework

Researchers at Big Innovation Centre Andrew Sissons and Spencer Thompson published in October a report titled Three Dimensional Policy: Why Britain needs a policy framework for 3D, a thought provoking study on 3D printing’s potential to provide a competitive edge within manufacturing and stimulate economic growth – especially in and for the UK. 3DPrinting Industry reports.

The report is designed to stimulate debate at the higher echelons of industry and government and puts forward the critical issues:

-- Intellectual property

-- Regulation

-- Legal responsibility

-- Standards

-- Materials

-- Infrastructure

It goes on to present some first steps the government can take towards achieving the coherent 3D printing policy framework.

Read full article.

How A Geek Dad And His 3D Printer Aim To Liberate Legos

Last March, hacker and professor at Carnegie Mellon Golan Levin and his former ­student Shawn Sims released a set of digital blueprints that a 3-D printer can use to create more than 45 plastic objects, each of which provides the missing interface between pieces from toy construction sets. Forbes reports.

They call it the MakerBot’s $1,100 Thing-O-Matic can download those files and immediately print a plastic piece that connects their Lego bricks to their Fischertechnik girders, their Krinkles to their Duplos, or half a dozen other formerly incompatible sets of modular plastic blocks, sticks and gears.

... Levin and Sims have been careful. The patents on all the toys ­integrated in their kit expired years ago. But a copyright lasts many decades longer than a patent, and that’s the cudgel lawyers are using against downloadable objects.

Read full article.