Presentation offered to ITechlaw at Amsterdam meeting on 4 October

1. 3D printing and Intellectual
Property
© Joren De Wachter

2. € 68
€ 5,800
€ 500-900

3. € 68

4. ????
http://www.odd.org.nz/guitars.html

5. QuickTime™ and a
h264 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

6. Gartner tech hype curve July 2013

7. The Past

8. Reverse Engineer !
The Present:
“Some” Customization
Found a file
Merge the 2 together
Very unique geome

9. Cost of copying goes to zero

10. Cost of personalization goes to zero

11. Value of personalization

12. Value of Personalization
Cost of PersonalizationCost of Copy
Value of Copy

13. What does this mean?
1.Every product becomes unique
2.Every product embeds some innovation
3.Innovation differs in each product

14. Intellectual Property is:
• Based on classical industrial production
methods: large upfront investment, return
through production of large amounts of
copies.
• Fundamentally based on the concept of “copy”
• Creates artificial scarcity through legal
reproduction and distribution monopoly

15. Which one is a copy?1
2
3 & 4
5

17. Impact of 3D printing on IP
• Patents
• Copyright
• Trademarks
• Design rights

18. Patents
• Facts:
– core technology is old; core patents expired
– number of printable materials grows fast
– technology is branching out
– Open Source hardware
– Open Source software
technology cycles are shortening

19. Patents
• Impact
– how to enforce patents against a crowd?
– materials: no bottleneck like 2D printing
– “public” or “prior art” is growing much more
rapidly than patents - genie is out of the bottle
• Conclusion: not good

20. Copyright
• Facts: where is it?
– in objects: mostly not
– in design: a bit - but which bit?
– in digital files: ?
• automatically generated code?
• is the code a copy of the design?
• function vs expression
• derivative vs transformative
• secondary liability - induce infringement
• role of creative commons

21. Copyright
• Impact:
– what is a copy?
– where is the value?
• In the ability to personalize
• Copyright does not capture
that value well at all
• Conclusion: lots of
litigation ahead - or is
there?

22. Who is winning?

23. Who is winning?

24. Trademarks
• Value of a brand?
• Control of a brand?

26. Trademarks
• Spare parts: block or enable?
• Second-hand market: block or
enable?
• Community aspects: control vs
influence?

27. Trademarks
• Conclusion:
– 3D printing strengthens the trend
where value shifts from product to
relationship
– clever use of personalisation of
manufacturing can increase brand
value
– “traditional” IP approach may cause
more damage

28. Design Rights
• Registered designs / unregistered designs /
design patents
– breach?
– value?
– enforceability?

29. Texts from the 20th century
• Art 19 EU regulation n° 6/2002
Rights conferred by the Community design
1. A registered Community design shall confer on its holder the exclusive right to use
it and to prevent any third party not having his consent from using it. The
aforementioned use shall cover, in particular, the making, offering, putting on the
market, importing, exporting or using of a product in which the design is
incorporated or to which it is applied, or stocking such a product for those
purposes.
2. An unregistered Community design shall, however, confer on its holder the right to
prevent the acts referred to in paragraph 1 only if the contested use results from
copying the protected design. The contested use shall not be deemed to result from
copying the protected design if it results from an independent work of creation by a
designer who may be reasonably thought not to be familiar with the design made
available to the public by the holder.

30. Design Rights
• Design as a service
• When design becomes a value contributor in
one version only of a new product - what is the
value of blocking additional copies?

31. Thank you
www.reverbnation.com/kcreators
www.facebook.com/thekcreators
The Wealth of Ideas
http://amzn.com/1492340669