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3D Printing May Face Legal Challenges

Posted by samzenpus on from the printing-a-lawsuit dept.

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."

34 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. Worried? by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Funny

    Right, because a lumpy plastic copy of an item is just as good as the real thing....

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:Worried? by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

      Right, because a lumpy plastic copy of an item is just as good as the real thing....

      Well, your wife told me that she actually thinks its better.

    2. Re:Worried? by _0rm_ · · Score: 5, Funny

      Flawless victory.

      --
      Boredom is bliss.
    3. Re:Worried? by Ephemeriis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Right, because a lumpy plastic copy of an item is just as good as the real thing....

      Nobody is going to printing up an HD TV anytime soon, that's true. But that does not suggest that there is no room for existing 3D printers to step on toes.

      You could probably print up something fairly similar to a LEGO brick right now. Or, if not LEGO, then a DUPLO certainly. And there's definitely money to be had there. I don't know that you could really make money printing your own bricks and selling them... But you could probably save some money by printing your own bricks instead of buying them. Especially if you just need a couple more to finish out a project and you don't really want to buy a whole kit or pay for shipping & handling on just a couple pieces.

      You could also probably use a 3D printer to generate a mold out of plastic or wax or something, and then cast something inside it. Imagine being able to turn out your own lead/plastic/pewter/whatever miniatures. Games Workshop would pitch a fit.

      And then there's all the licensed merchandise... Probably wouldn't be too hard to turn out some cheap beads or pendants or rings with various licensed characters on them, only without actually paying anybody for the likeness.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    4. Re:Worried? by Teancum · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The concern wasn't that "we" were able to make unlimited perfect copies for essentially nothing. The real threat was that there was no need for an expensive recording studio to make fairly decent audio recordings and that many performers wouldn't have to go through the studio system in order to get their music "published".

      Let's get the situation nailed down here. It was people going to concerts with tape recorders and other recording devices, as well as cameras in movie theaters that were the first areas that the **AA got serious about copyright enforcement against ordinary consumers and more casual kinds of copying that in earlier years was considered "fair-use".

      Yes, there has been problems with peer-to-peer filesharing and people setting up web pages of all of their favorite MP3 files saying "here is some music I ripped off my favorite CD... have at it". They make a whole bunch of bluster about that fact, but it really isn't impacting their bottom line all that much and in fact such distribution amounts to mainly marketing rather than actual lost sales.

      In terms of damage done, it is the recordable CD that has scared the RIAA much more than network distribution of music. They are being cut out of the loop and simply are no longer involved with the production and distribution of a fairly substantial amount of music, where they are also losing market share and suffering from sales simply because the stuff they are producing is garbage. Another huge problem facing "the music industry" (as represented by the RIAA) is that new talent is being skipped over and ignored. About the only way for them to get fresh blood into the industry any more is some extravagant thing like American Idol, which still skips over a whole bunch of journeymen musicians who are fairly decent but not good enough to go all of the way to the top.

      I think guys like Simon Cowell "gets it" that there are whole groups of talent that aren't getting recorded any more, even if I think his methods for finding talent are mostly showmanship rather than fixing the problem. Some major industry execs also get the problem, but not all of them, and certainly not the RIAA lawyers or for that matter those making the decisions on where to push back within the RIAA, especially as the RIAA isn't going to be making money (getting more dues paid. hence getting larger salaries) if they change tactics to embrace network distribution as a way of life and something good for the industry. Instead, they are simply fading away to irrelevance. Good for them, too, as we really don't need blood sucking lawyers like that anyway.

    5. Re:Worried? by VolciMaster · · Score: 3, 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

      --
      antipaucity
    6. Re:Worried? by andrewbaldwin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I know you meant it rhetorically but...

      I can see some markets being worried -- I'm looking with particular bitterness at the car parts business.

      A few years ago I had a headlamp work loose on my car. On inspection the problem was the failure of a small (possibly deliberately feeble) plastic bracket which looked like it suffered a fatigue fracture. I had both parts which fitted together nicely but there was no hope of a simple repair with adhesive.

      The cost for the replacement part (which had all of about 5p worth of plastic) was something like £15 [IIRC]. The car manufacturer, dealer and third party parts suppliers knew that their customers had to buy replacements, knew that the plastic part was sufficiently weirdly shaped to avoid work-arounds and knew that repair shops didn't care how much it cost as they could just pass it onto the customer. They were delighted that they could get away with charging such extortionate amounts.

      Now fast forward to a case where the parts could be glued together (the strength doesn't matter) and then scanned / reprinted. Although it wouldn't be economical to get the printer for one single repair, a corner-shop facility charging, say £2.50 -- even as much as £5.00 -- would make themselves a nice return (and reach break-even quickly) and people like me would be happy with a significant saving.

      This is the scenario which the vested interests would like to kill off.

    7. Re:Worried? by necro81 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    8. Re:Worried? by Carnivore · · Score: 5, Informative

      There are actually 3D printers that can do metal, with a sintering process.

      http://www.shapeways.com/about/metal-3d-printing

    9. Re:Worried? by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I built one of the MakerBot plastic 3D printers (from the kit). I can print LEGO blocks without a problem (not that I would though, I've got far more important things to build like plastic prototypes before I send the SketchUp file off to be milled from a piece of steel/aluminum).

    10. Re:Worried? by Teancum · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Most of the machine shops near where I live right now have 3D printers to make the rough blanks for whatever it is that they are working with. They will print the part and then take it to a lathe or some other machine to do some final milling, but they are already using the process to speed up the fabrication process for more obscure parts. The high precision tolerances aren't necessary in every dimension for every part, and a 3D printer sometimes will provide more consistency for some aspects that traditional machining methods don't always perform.

      I can find analogs to this with early CD-R recorders and the expensive blanks like you were talking about here. When blank CD-Rs cost about $5 each (about the upper limit I ever saw, and that was usually just the retail price in a computer store... even then wholesale costs were cheaper) it was still at a price point that a small garage band could burn a copy of their music and hand them out to fans, friends, and perhaps make a little bit of money on the side. It took somebody who was skilled with the equipment to make the CD recordings, but it did happen. That is pretty much where 3D printing is right now.

      The problem is that the 3D printers used by these machine shops typically cost in the tens of thousands of dollars range, not just a couple thousand. It also takes more technical skills to use the stuff produced by these printers including access to some more specialized tools as the part coming straight off the printer isn't being used all of the time. Perhaps this will eventually get fixed and the resolution for the "voxels" (3D equivalent of a pixel) will improve over time. I've seen that with 2D scanning technology and printing, so I see that as a definite possibility.

    11. Re:Worried? by delinear · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've said this before, only partly in jest, that if we ever get to the point where it's possible to create a Star Trek type replicator, far from triggering a Utopia, the project would get nuked from orbit by IP lawyers.

  2. Pretty pathetic by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Pretty pathetic. Why not sue the makers of lathes and hand tools - people might make patented things with them too.

    1. Re:Pretty pathetic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's just another power grab. The point of the patent system (before it was subverted!) was to get ideas out in to the wild. Rather than keep secret how to make something, the idea was to give the inventor protected status for making AND selling the object; the right of the private citizen to make the thing and NOT sell it is also included. That's the quid pro quo : the public learns of innovations faster, the private seller gets protection. But like many things in the legal realm, people only pick the parts they like. The obvious question in an open source world is whether the private citizen can give away rather than sell a patented "something" thereby under-cutting the whole market. Bahhh doesn't matter, software should be under copyright not patent anyway.

    2. Re:Pretty pathetic by gandhi_2 · · Score: 4, Funny

      The only legitimate use of the chisel is to infringe on intellectual property!

      That is why, even today, Canada levies a 10 cent "piracy tax" on stone plates.

      --
      THL phish sticks
  3. It won't end there by Drakkenmensch · · Score: 3, Funny

    Expect cardboard, glue and scissors to become "illegal patent infringement tools" soon, as well as pen and paper to be outlawed as "instruments of the law-breaking paragraph men."

    1. Re:It won't end there by captainpanic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Manufacturers of stoves, ovens and all other kitchen equipment were sued by McDonalds for enabling people to make a hamburger at home.

  4. Okay... by Kokuyo · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is surprising how?

    Of course manufacturers and IP-holders will not be amused when you can suddenly make your own product or part that you'd otherwise have to buy for lots of cash.

    They'll win that battle just as easily and decisively as the content industry has won its battle against filesharing and copying... Oh, wait.

    1. Re:Okay... by migla · · 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

      --
      Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
    2. Re:Okay... by brohmes · · Score: 3, Interesting

      He also wrote the 2009 novel Makers which is pretty much exactly how this story looks to play out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makers_(Cory_Doctorow_novel)

  5. What a thing to worry about by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just as designs are copyrighted now, the designs to create product knock offs with your replicator will also be subject to those same rules. Owning a replicator and building stuff for yourself won't be a problem, but if you upload a design that is essentially a copy of a product, you will get in trouble. Likewise, if you start replicating such goods and distributing them, you will be in trouble.

    There really isn't anything new here. The best analogy isn't books or music, but rather stained glass lamps. Artists who design such lampshades guard the IP very aggressively. They prosecute frequently when someone is creating knockoffs. They hand number each sold design to reduce copying. And they add customer-specific details that make it easy to track down leaked designs.

    Same thing can be expected with these replicators.

    1. Re:What a thing to worry about by tverbeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's just like the printing press or the tape recorder or the photocopier or the CD burner. Another replication device, another panic about how it will be used.

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    2. Re:What a thing to worry about by smellsofbikes · · Score: 4, 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. 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.

      --
      Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
  6. Mafiaa all over again! by lkcl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    has anyone noticed that:

    * the Mafiaa is after file indexing sites, because the index allows people to "break the law"

    * now 3D printers are being classified as "law-breaking" tools.

    * nobody goes after weapons manufacturers and suppliers to prevent and prohibit weapons manufacturers and suppliers from putting the means to kill people into the hands of "irresponsible" people.

    so... let me get this straight: it's okay to kill people but it's not okay to be creative and innovative?

  7. Re:One industry 3D printers are going to destroy.. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As someone who has seen the price of Warhammer figures, I have no sympathy for their losses.

  8. Well duh by Arancaytar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wherever innovation threatens to become ubiquitous and improve civilization and everyday life, you can bet the patent system will be ready to strangle it. That's what it's for.

  9. It's rather strange that 3D printing is the issue by Constantin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The ability to mill 3-dimensional objects has been around for a while. The advent of cheap table-top scanner systems is the real issue - once it becomes easy to make accurate 3-dimensional reproductions in CAD quickly, then the gates are opened to make all sorts of stuff at the same (or even higher) quality than OEM. The US Navy has been investing in this technology for years since they discovered that they didn't have the blueprints for all sorts of stuff anymore that was supposed to be scrapped by now.

    To me, the issue is that the ability to accurately model 3-dimensional objects has come to the average desktop. No longer do forgers have to deal with making investment-cast reproductions, where each successive generation of castings degenerates due to loss of detail (like cassette tapes, I suppose). No, this is the digital generation where these sorts of models can be shared as easily via the internet as digital music is being shared today, and it scares copyright- and trademark-holders to bits since they will more and more easily lose control of their brands. But I don't think that 3D printing is at fault here - other enabling technologies are what make them so potent a tool.

    And that's the rub, 3D printing has enormous potential to unleash a torrent of creativity as more and more folk are allowed to let their imagination run its course - delivering prototypes quickly, cheaply, and to a greater and greater proportion of the populace. Eventually, why shouldn't your local hobby shop or CVS not also deliver 3D prints in addition to the 2D stuff they deliver today? I hope that our trademark/copyright/etc. overlords are not allowed to squash this exciting technology in its infancy, especially considering that enforcing this sort of copyright control is not an issue in the developed world.

  10. Solution --- only distribute files for PD things by WillAdams · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Like a Colt 1911A1 pistol:

    http://www.sightm1911.com/blueprint/M1911A1_blue.htm

    There's no need for special laws --- existing laws for

      - trade dress
      - patent infringement (esp. of design patents which govern the appearance of a product)
      - trademark
      - copyright

    already cover these things quite adequately. It's tough that the corporations will have to pay lawyers to keep track of plan distribution sites and initiate suits on an infringing item-by-item basis, but they've no more grounds for interfering w/ 3D printing technology than they have to try to prevent people from purchasing a metal lathe, block steel, strips of spring steel and a set of good quality files (which one could use to make the afore-mentioned Colt 1911A1).

    William

    --
    Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
  11. Re:Sue everybody solution by AdmiralXyz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the objection is this: let's say you're an inventor, and you've invented this incredible spoon. For whatever reason, the shape and ergonomic design of this spoon revolutionize the eating process, making it orders of magnitude faster, safer, and more efficient. (I have no idea how a spoon would accomplish this, but then, I'm not an inventive genius).

    By taking out a patent on your new spoon design you've ensured that unscrupulous manufacturers can't just make a mold of it and start stamping out their own Mega-Spoons without fairly compensating you. That's how patent law is supposed to work.

    But what about a world where everyone has 3D printers? If someone uploads the schematics for your spoon to The Pirate Bay and lets anyone print one out, instead of buying it from you, are they breaking patent law? Is it still a breach of the law if you're only doing it for your own use instead of selling it? Is it theft? (you're being deprived of revenue, after all)

    I'm not asking rhetorically: I honestly don't know, and I bet a lot of other people don't know either. It'd be cool if all of this could be straightened out before these printers become household technology, but that's probably wishful thinking and we'll see the same reactive nonsense that we see for movies/music now.

    --
    Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
  12. Not quite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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".

  13. Re:One industry 3D printers are going to destroy.. by RingDev · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's going to be quite a while before 3-d printers become ubiquitous. Heck, even if the price plummets (last I looked a decent quality "small" printer was still in the $10k range) you still have to have a space for the rather large device. Not to mention the technical know-how on it's use and the generation of CAD files.

    And besides, what's to stop the garage kit business from buying one? These are the people that stand to gain the most. They likely have the room (by replacing their resin molding area), they have the drive and incentive to learn how to use the device, they have the creative spirit to generate their models (after learning a tool like Blender), and once they do so, their labor intensive work become simple, and perfectly replicable. No more mold release and dental cement. No more flawed and damaged models to replace. They can churn out perfect model after perfect model.

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
  14. Re:Sue everybody solution by Shark · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Philosophically, I think money should be made for performing work, including intellectual work. If you didn't find a company who would pay you to invent the mega-spoon, you did that work for free. You aren't entitled to anything but recognition that you came up with it first.

    The work and cost of *making* a mega-spoon is something you can be paid for if anyone wants one and can't be bothered to perform that work themselves. If you can come up with a way to make it better or more cheaply than someone else, that's where you ought to make your money.

    But wait, you say, there is no way to make billions in that hypothetical world of yours. Giganormous ultra-centralized production (do I hear monopoly?) is almost impossible for simple products with large markets. How can you buy lobbyists and governments? If there's a market, production will tend to be local... It will create more jobs overall, these jobs will have a healthy competing market for labour: mega-spoon makers in Michigan don't pay you enough? Move to another maker somewhere else...

    Anyway, I'm sure there's a rational argument for an IP centralized world too but as we tend toward one in our current reality, I'm not convinced by it. I'd accept a compromise like putting a pretty short expiration date on all IP. A song/movie is usually only a big hit for a few months, why should copyrights last decades? Bands/artists should be paid to *perform*: either write new stuff, go on tour or go back to being poor. If you can't offset the cost of your patented idea within the first couple years, you aren't innovating right.

    --
    Mind the frickin' laser...
  15. Re:Solution --- only distribute files for PD thing by BarefootClown · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

    --

    "Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
    --Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca

  16. What about keys? by PrimaryConsult · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm surprised no one seems to have mentioned this yet. A lot of keys who's primary copy protection is specialized blanks would suddenly become as easy to copy as a standard house key. Sure integrating an electronic component would deter that, but that's many billions of locks that would need to be upgraded. I wouldn't be surprised if this is killed on some shaky legal grounds as it is an opportunity for an easy-out from this problem.