3D Printing May Face Legal Challenges

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."

Comments

Re:Worried?

[necro81]

As one who uses this technology on a daily basis, I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment. 3D printing is not a 1:1 substitute for finished parts made by other, more widely practiced methods. The results from FDM, SLS, SLA, EBM, and other methods can be good, but unless the finished part is meant to be manufactured using those methods, the printed versions are generally inferior by many measures to the real thing made by machining, injection molding, casting, stamping, etc.

Also, as with paper printers, the quality you get from a rapid prototyping machine tends to be directly proportional to the cost of the machine and the materials. Most rapid prototyping technologies can't produce the tight tolerances needed for parts to fit together, or fine features like threads and snap features. In the end, what you get is a rough part that will often need some finish operations. I mean no offense to the team behind the MakerBot and other projects, but the output from those devices is more like a casting than a finished part.

The class of parts for which rapid prototyping is a suitable manufacturing method is very small. Look around you at the stuff you interact with every day: very little of it can be made at any reasonable cost or quality using rapid prototyping.

And even if rapid prototyping, as a technology, could produce quality imitations of common parts, it only becomes an issue when the technology becomes ubiquitous. I don't mean when every half-assed machine shop has one; I mean when every household has one just like they have a inkjet or laser printer. 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. When it comes to physical parts, there isn't any comparison to an iPod holding 10,000 CDs' worth of music.

Do people think that music piracy would have taken off if everyone still used CD players, blank CD-Rs cost $5/ea, a music ripping computer cost $2,000, and CD-burners were limited to 0.5x speed? The ubiquity of (paper) printers and the easy availability of soft copies of books hasn't meant that book binders are going out of business. The physical book industry is hurting, true, but not because huge numbers of people are printing off their own pirated copy of the latest best-seller.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the cost of these printers and their materials will drop like a stone, just as it did for desktop printers. I really doubt it, however.

Not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

the patent system will be ready to strangle it. That's what it's for.

Instead of speculating on other people's motives from your own subjective viewpoint, why not simply observe the reality of the situation?

Fact: the patent system increases the net worth of those with the resources to exploit the system. Patent law is a weapon used to eliminate competitors. Those who have the money to exploit this weapon are rewarded with large returns on the investment.

Fact: the patent system increases the net worth of the business of government, both in revenue and power over the people. It costs billions per year to run this system. Each lawsuit rakes more money through the business of government. From the bottom looking up, it's a waste. From the top looking down, it's an opportunity.

Conclusion: the patent system is a tool for the elite -- both in the "private" and "public" sectors -- used to guarantee and increase their profits. The strangling of innovation isn't a goal here, but merely "collateral damage".

Re:Solution --- only distribute files for PD thing

[BarefootClown]

Even more fun than blueprints: http://www.cncguns.com/projects/1911a1frame.html

That's right, complete CNC files. No need to translate the blueprints and drawings into instruction lists. And light-duty CNC mills can be had for under $10k new. Sure, that sounds like a lot of money, but how many people have two or three times that in a bass boat? If machinework is your hobby, you can have your "3D printer" right now, and it'll make real metal objects, not plastic toys.

God, I love living in the future!