3D Printing May Face Legal Challenges 316
angry tapir writes "A coming revolution in 3D printing, with average consumers able to copy and create new three-dimensional objects at home, may lead to attempts by patent holders to expand their legal protections, a paper from Public Knowledge says. Patent holders may see 3D printers as threats, and they may try to sue makers of the printers or the distributors of CAD (computer-aided design) blueprints, according to digital rights group Public Knowledge."
Re:Okay... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah.
Now, I don't remember if bringing up Cory Doctorow is a good or bad idea, but he's written the short "Printcrime" that would be relevant to this topic:
http://craphound.com/?p=573 [craphound.com]
Re:Mafiaa all over again! (Score:2, Informative)
Yes they do.
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2003-11-21/news/0311210343_1_manufacturers-and-distributors-gun-manufacturers-san-francisco
Re:Tuff. (Score:3, Informative)
You can make a single shot throw away device (and a pretty powerful one) out of plumbing supplies available from B&Q, Praktiker or any other DIY shop in about 10 minutes. Even easier if you live on the continent and have access to stainless steel pipes. Why bother with printing even if the printer could produce a functional one?
Same goes for prohibiting printing on these grounds. What's next? Making plumbing a licensed profession which requires a a security clearance and supplies being available only from a licensed shop?
Re:Tuff. (Score:3, Informative)
* Though you could use these to form wax parts for rough casting in order to cut down on milling time.
Re:This... (Score:3, Informative)
I think it's this you were after:
But then I've seen other variants even attributed to other people, so who knows...
Re:Tuff. (Score:3, Informative)
What's next? Making plumbing a licensed profession which requires a a security clearance and supplies being available only from a licensed shop?
Don't give them any ideas. They just did a bunch of full scale SWAT style raids on barbershops in Florida (I believe the count was 19) where they handcuffed the barbers while they searched the premises for violations of the barber license and for illegal items (drugs, weapons, etc). All without a warrant, since a barbershop is subject to such searches by the Department of Licenses (who just happened to bring along local cops and the DEA). It was a great success, they found three instances of mimor amounts of illegal drugs and arrested several barbers for license violations (unlicensed barber, expired license, and other violations of that sort).
Re:Worried? (Score:3, Informative)
RIAA didn't get really worried until we were able to make unlimited perfect copies for essentially nothing
Really? Because I'm pretty sure the RIAA were behind the whole 'Home taping is killing music' campaign - they seemed plenty worried from where I was sitting.
Re:Worried? (Score:4, Informative)
I want a AR-15 full-auto sear and selector assembly, and it seems like it would be way less risky to make one then to buy one.
If 3D printers printed metal, that may be true. Of course, some of the now-entry-level "home" CNC machines can do this
Re:Worried? (Score:3, Informative)
Replicating citadel miniatures is pretty simple for anyone with the inclination to do so. Even full of the incompetence of youth I managed to knock out a few extra space marines when I was a kid for the cost. Fair use? Maybe not, but I didn't have the cash to go buy them so they weren't lost sales either.
The AC has an interesting point (Score:3, Informative)
The AC I'm replying to does make some interesting observations of the patent system. If you have some mod points, please toss him one, I'd like to see some discussion on his view, but not many people read at 0+.
-Rick
Re:Worried? (Score:5, Informative)
There are actually 3D printers that can do metal, with a sintering process.
http://www.shapeways.com/about/metal-3d-printing [shapeways.com]
Re:Worried? (Score:3, Informative)
Even then, I doubt that we'll see much impact, because the cost of the materials will still be high (think of the cost of paper and ink), and the production time is still very long, compared to how things are mass produced today. The cost to duplicate and transmit a CAD model may be low, but the costs to create that CAD model and manipulate it are relatively high, and it still costs a lot, in time and material, to produce it in the real world.
Very good point. We recently purchased a Stratasys uPrint 3D printer at work and realized that the sample objects it prints (like a crescent-style wrench with working worm gear) cost $12 in materials to make. While I imagine that the model and support material cost will eventually go way down, at this time it is the same price (or cheaper) to buy the real thing. The real benefit to such a device is that you can create objects that don't currently exist.
Re:What a thing to worry about (Score:5, Informative)
Yes those panics were silly, but a Star Trek style replicator would create a gigantic social upheaval, physical tokens of value such as gold and cash would be essentially worthless. The only things left to trade would be time and talent. Now that I think about it, the "gigantic social upheaval" might be a GoodThing(TM)...
If you feel like reading some cool old science fiction, the George O. Smith collection "Venus Equilateral" has a series of stories about exactly this: the hero manages to make (by mistake, as it happens, because they're busy trying to solve a related problem) a matter duplicator that can flawlessly reproduce masterpieces of art, food, whatever, and society pretty much collapses as everyone has to figure out how to become service industry personnel just so they have something to do. There's a resolution of sorts when the engineers who built the machine come up with a way to make things somewhat like batteries, that are in an energetically non-equilibrium state that the matter duplicator, being purely matter-centric, can't duplicate, and using that as money to get a trade system going again, but there's still a huge change in how society is run.
Neal Stephenson also dealt with this somewhat in "Diamond Age" but swept a lot of it under the carpet by essentially saying that you got charged money for building stuff with your matter compiler and somehow there was a verifiable difference between original items and duplicated ones, so maybe he was positing matter compilers that print flawed, detectable copies much like current laser printers add yellow dots to their printouts making them traceable [seeingyellow.com]. Since it seems to be working pretty well for laser printers, it's likely something similar would happen with fabricators if/when we get to the point they can print usable mechanical stuff.
Re:Sue everybody solution (Score:3, Informative)
Copyright and Patent law are so separate that they are even regulated by two completely different branches of government. For some reason, Congress decided that copyright law wasn't even going to go through the executive branch, but instead is regulated completely and totally within the legislative branch through the Library of Congress. Yes, the Department of Justice does get involved from time to time, but mostly it stays within the legislative branch, including for copyright registration. The Librarian of Congress reports directly to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate.
Patent law is regulated through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, who performs the patent reviews and archives materials related to patents. The head of the USPTO reports to the President of the USA.
Yeah, you really shouldn't mix up the two kinds of laws, and I can't think of anything more distinctive than that.
LEGO Bricks (Score:3, Informative)
Don't order them from the LEGO website, use the BrickLink site to buy them used and far cheaper that using a reprap to make them.
Re:Worried? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually games workshop encourages the use of self made models in their games... And modified models (They even have a competition for best made and painted models that does not favor their own stock models) so I don't think you will see the big objection from there...
Don't fool yourself. GW has rules that you're only allowed to use their models in tournaments. Even when playing the game with friends, in fact, but they can't really enforce that in any way.
What they encourage people to do, is for people to buy several of their models, cut them up, and turn them into one really awesome and unique model. They call them conversions, because they convert an existing model into something new. But truly home-made stuff is heavily frowned upon. They only approve of stuff that brings your money to their pocket.
Re:Worried? (Score:3, Informative)
Assuming we can increase resolution get rid of the lumps, it's still going to be very difficult to change the material.
Very few materials will form solids from liquids by shining lights on them and most objects are made of multiple materials, eg. you'd never be able to print a working cassette tape, a toy car, a computer mouse.
At best you'll be able to make things like a new case for your remote control after you drop it. Even then it's unlikely to be exactly the same color and feel as the original.
Re:Worried? (Score:1, Informative)
IC fabrication processes have always been not unlike how 3D printing works - although you lay down a layer at a time instead of a bead at a time, and it makes use of subtractive as well as additive processes. It's just that you need machines that can vaporize gold and lay it down in fine layers which are consistent to extreme tolerances, and that can etch almost straight down through thick layers of material, and an array of extremely toxic chemicals which react with a specific set of materials while leaving others alone, and so forth. It's not something which is likely to occur at home any time soon. On the other hand, with modern programmable ICs, you can get quite far before needing a custom IC.
Re:Worried? (Score:3, Informative)
They patented how the blocks would interlock and work together. Google link to the patent. http://www.google.com/patents?id=dNtXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&dq=3005282#v=onepage&q&f=false [google.com]