The future of three-dimensional printing: Intellectual property or intellectual confinement?

Abstract

For the first 25 years, three-dimensional printing was the domain of industrial manufacturing and engineering. Through the open-source movement and peer production, this disruptive technology has become more widely available. This article considers how the future development and use of three-dimensional printing may be facilitated or inhibited through intellectual property law and practice. Using a combination of technical, legal, and policy analysis, we conclude that the potential for patent infringement is a primary issue in the continued development of three-dimensional printing technology. When it comes to the printed objects themselves, copyright issues will be the main focus of this debate. As these issues become more pervasive, some copyright holders will find technology-based solutions to enforce copyright laws and restrict printing activities. A common recourse is digital rights management as a means for protecting intellectual property, but its use has the potential for imposing unnecessarily stringent limitations on the use of three-dimensional printing.

Prosumption perspectives on additive manufacturing: reconfiguration of consumer products with 3D printing

“…In this case, intellectual property and intellectual confinement will be more sensitive than when sharing user-provided printable models in current social networking sites. However, Peacock (2014) and Santoso and Wicker (2014) concluded that the use of 3D-printable models requires a wide range of assessments within the present intellectual property framework to ensure the fair use of end-user production. This study also expects that the use of 3D-printable models as digital content in the Web 2.0 platform will facilitate fair use of end-user production, as historical use cases exist, such as the fair use of Xerox machines and Sony’s video cassette recorder (VCR) (Santoso and Wicker, 2014), that are protected legally as fair or non-infringing use.…”

“…Users who obtain existing object designs are also likely to modify and share those designs (Santoso and Wicker, 2014). Alternatively, users can sell objects printed from these designs via marketplaces such as Shapeways (Cava, 2014, Feiyue, 2012.…”

“…The coming together of the proliferation of entry-level 3D printers that allow “makers” to produce an increasing array of products at home (Anderson, 2012) with social networking communities that actively create, trade, modify and print computer-aided design (CAD) files on open-access networks such as Thingiverse (Greenberg, 2012) has been a catalyst for the new form of prosumption –social manufacturing (Feiyue, 2012), as shown in Figure 2(b). According to Santoso and Wicker (2014), 43 per cent of 3D printer users upload their designs to a printer-neutral platform. Users not only distribute their own digital creations using online repositories but also obtain designs from those repositories.…”

“…Users not only distribute their own digital creations using online repositories but also obtain designs from those repositories. Users who obtain existing object designs are also likely to modify and share those designs (Santoso and Wicker, 2014). Alternatively, users can sell objects printed from these designs via marketplaces such as Shapeways (Cava, 2014, Feiyue, 2012).…”

Comparison of Rep Rap and Davinci OSD Repositories: Is any Influence from Academic Origin?

“…Then we decide to investigate and compare two communities with similar subject and objectives but with different origins, academic and non-academic. We examined RepRap community (CC-BY-SA licence) and Da Vinci Printers Owners, both available in Thingiverse (Santoso and Wicker, 2014). The main objective of this article is to investigate and compare the BOs used to contribute to the OSD communities, analysing if the origin of the community can generate a pattern in the use of BO that differs from the other OSD.…”