Copy cat killers: The future dangers for 3D printing
Phil Lelyveld
Entertainment Technology Center
[Philip Lelyveld comment: the article notes that 3D printers cover all three areas of the IP debate: patents, copyright, and trademark.]
[Humans Invent]
… The Chief executive of Makerbot, Bre Pettis, seems to have an almost naïve optimism about the future, perceiving an end to the capitalist market as we know it. He told the BBC, “I don’t think we need a marketplace. It’s a sharing world. We are at the dawn of the age of sharing where even if you try to sell things the world is going to share it anyway.”
We have seen how this world of ‘sharing’ has hit the music industry, with a total shake-up of the business model built around record labels and their exclusive ownership of artists’ work.
Lawyer Peter Hanna succinctly lays out the 3 subcategories of IP and their possible ramifications in a future world of prolific 3D printing on Ars Technica. He notes that theoretically all three subcategories, patent, copyright and trademark laws, could be infringed by theses machines. If you patent a design and somebody fabricates the product with a 3D printer, this would be a direct infringement of the patent. But designers don’t need to patent their products to be protected by law, as Hanna says, “Some people forget that an original creative work is copyrighted the moment it is fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” This means the design files themselves are protected by law regardless of whether an object is ever made from them. The trademark would be infringed if the person fabricating the object using 3D printing included the logo or manufacturers symbol on the original product.
In October Humans Invent featured Sculpteo 3D that can print in silver. While this is an amazing advance in technology, it’s possible all three subcategories of IP would be infringed if it was used to make, say, an exact copy of an expensive piece of trademarked silver jewelry. …
Read the full story here: http://www.humansinvent.com/#!/4539/copy-cat-killers-the-future-dangers-for-3d-printing/
