Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
your agreement, you can sue them for patent infringement. Untangling ideas in
court is a notoriously tricky business. For example, a single technology—say
a mobile phone—can include thousands of technologies covered by patents
owned by hundreds of different inventors.
The challenge is that the act of copying and 3D-printing objects does not
fall neatly into any of the above categories. If the product's technology is not
covered by an active patent, there's no patent violation. If there is no registered
trademark embedded in the 3D objects, there's no trademark violation. And
inally, if the physical object has some utility, it is not covered by copyright
either.
Digital rights management
Intellectual property law is dificult to enforce. Particularly when billions of
people all over the world are happily making copies of things and sharing them
with their friends. Courtroom battles don't scale. Media companies that try to
enforce their intellectual property rights in court ight a losing battle. As MIT
professor Neal Gershenfeld said, “You can't sue the human race.”
Since lawsuits are too expensive, slow and ineffective—particularly against
consumers—a common tactic big companies use to defend their market turf
are technological safeguards or digital rights management (DRM). For example,
Apple applies DRM to its iTunes iles to prevent people from making more
than a ixed number of copies. When people “jailbreak” their iPhones, the
reason they are able to download anything they want without paying royal-
ties is because they've removed the DRM. DRM is why an eBook topic can't
be copied onto another reader.
Commercially sold design software and 3D printers don't have a formal
system of digital rights management . . . yet. In 2012, an arm of patent bro-
kerage company Intellectual Ventures was issued Patent #8,286,236. The pat-
ented invention is for digital rights management for manufacturing machines,
including 3D printers. In a nutshell, design iles would contain digital rights
management technology. A 3D printer reading a DRM design ile would refuse
to print it, similar to the way a software application refuses to work after its
product key has expired.
DRM technologies may be a futile attempt to stem the tide. DRM technolo-
gies create an ongoing arms race between consumers and companies. As far
as 3D printing goes, there's a second complication: patented or copyright
objects that are scanned and then 3D printed aren't captured by digital
