3D modeling legal issues

Here's an interesting development; Lockheed Martin attempted to crack down on
distribution of 3D models of the B-24 bomber, by claiming such distribution
infringes on Lockheed Martin's trademark on the _name_ "B-24".

Luckily, the EFF is on the case.

More info:
[www.eff.org]

[www.boingboing.net]
[www.boingboing.net]

[www.johnmacneill.com]

Note: Building 1-1 scale bombers is probably against the spirit of the RepRap project.

While the 24 had a good payload, it couldn't handle battle damage all that well.

Wait, wasn't that the plane that would keep flying even though a wing or wheel or engine would be shot off?

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Jay

Nope, that was the B-17. The 24 would fold up like a paper hat when the Luftwaffe got a cannon shell into it. I had an uncle that repaired them in Burma and flew an occasional "Hump" flight into China. They were nasty. Leaked aviation fuel something fierce.

Odd. I thought that "name" was a government applied designator.

Oh ok. Fo Sho Forrest

---

Jay

Speaking of B-17's:
[strive2be.vox.com]
via:
[www.metafilter.com]

I think that the 414th Squadron's "All American" return story is about the most impressive testament to the robustness of the B-17.

[www.daveswarbirds.com]

My late uncle Maj. Gerald Sparks, flew in B-17's out of Foggia in Italy as a navigator didn't have such a high opinion of them. He came by his opinion honestly having had two of them shot out from under him. In the second shootdown he had to bail out of the plane via a small hatch near his navigator's position and impacted rather solidly with the partially feathered prop of one of the shot-out inboard engines.

On the issue of trade marks, patents, and copyrights...I had a conversation with my interim department head awhile ago about patent laws and what was permitted in the way of making things that had already been patented. It namely came down to you can't do it if a thing had already been patented. He didn't know that and I only knew because of this project and the issue having come up before.

My comment is that most people aren't going to know about this type of issue like we know about copyright infringement because of file-sharing. How much trouble is this going to cause due to ignorance on the part of the populace? How do you avoid the wrath of corporations trying to adapt to a new manufacturing paradigm available to the people?

I'm not talking about people stealing things--though they undoubtedly will--I'm talking about how to avoid problems in this project. We can't very well be expected to do patent searches on every item that is posted to our yet-to-exist object library. Yet, failure to do so could cause massive amounts of legal issues. How do we notify the populace of users to come that they can't submit known patented objects? Plus, re-invention of the wheel is going to happen and it isn't reasonable to expect others to do extensive searches when they know for sure that they just invented this cool new widget.

I just see a lot of problems to come. How do we avoid it?

Demented

Well we could try the youtube/google approach. Have a small disclaimer that says "Don't post/host/print files that are protected by copyright, patent and trademark rules." And then for the most don't worry about it unless some one is blatantly adding the the coca cola logo to the object library...or we get a notice form someone that say that that file is cover under their patent. Then we take it down. Granted there probably has to be a bit more lawyer speak throw in to the disclaimer, but you get the idea.

Somehow, I don't think that most people using repraps at the onset are going to be all that interested in pirating copyrighted or patented product description files and printing them. After all, why steal a product description when you can probably design a better one yourself?

As well, if you take the product and 3D scan it and then print from the scan files you aren't violating either copyright or patent laws.

People aren't going to be interested in pirating copyrighted or patented products, yeah right. It's going to happen eventually I guarantee it. Just look at papercraft:
[fficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">images.google.com]

You mean it is legal to scan a product and 3d print it?

Apparently. Pratt & Whitney makes spares for other companies turbines that way. If I understood correctly where you get in trouble is when you use their plans, CAD or CNC files to make copies. If you scan a part and use your scan files to generate CNC files to make replicas you're good to go.

It doesn't make any sense to me, but then a lot of law doesn't make any sense to me.

On the other hand, can't you patent a design?

I seem to recall there were something like three types of patent, and a design was one of them.

I'll ask my step-mom over dinner tonight. She works at the patent office. I think that you can copy any design to your liking if you are only going to be using it yourself, and not selling it. Also, some countries don't recognize the patents of others, so your are free to steal from them all you like. I'll update this in 2 hours though

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Jay

oh, come now, Jay! You say two hours and it's like been 7 or so! Don't get my hopes up. Also, I had a prof of mine look into it. You can't use their design for any use regardless of if you sell or make a profit on it or not.

The 3d scan and print thing bogles my mind though. Their is a huge loop hole to be exploited...pathetic.

Demented

Quote

If you scan a part and use your scan files to generate CNC files to make replicas you're good to go.

You might wanna run that one past someone with a nice legal background.

I know in the copyright world, there is this concept of a derived work. This means (for example) that somewhere like openstreetmap.org cannot make public domain maps by tracing somebody else's copyrighted maps. Derived works can infringe upon the original copyright holder's rights. Scanning someone else's miniature plastic soldier is liable to run afoul of this.

I seem to recall there's a concept of a 'design right' which prevents people duplicating the appearance of somebody else's product. See here... [en.wikipedia.org] though that does refer explicitly to 'non utilitarian objects'. This is much more time limited than copyright, at least.

So, caveat fabricator!

(if someone has a friendly latin scholar they could run that one past too, that would also be handy!)

>>So, caveat fabricator!

>>(if someone has a friendly latin scholar they could run that one past too, that would also be handy!)

It already is latin. ;-)

fabricatus: to construct, to bring together, build, arrange
fabricator: one who constructs

AuntiMame

Um... I think that it would actually be rendered as...

Caveat (subjunctive) faber (nominative)

>>I think that it would actually be rendered as...

>>Caveat (subjunctive) faber (nominative)

schoolroom latin was a verrrrry long time ago... but the moment I saw your correction I gave myself a dope-slap because you are, of course, right. ;-)

thanks
Aunti

This place is quite the education

Ta.

Legal advice might be useful. There are non-profit legal organizations that might be able to help (I happen to work for one of them: the Software Freedom Law Center). My impression from talking to Zach is that he isn't interested in spending a lot of time on legal issues. Like most RepRappers, he's rightly focused on engineering. It might be the case that legal overhead goes unaddressed until the project is a little bigger and people start helping out with administrative (as opposed to engineering) tasks.

When you folks are ready to talk to somebody about legalities, drop us a line at help@softwarefreedom.org. We might be able to help. If not, we might be able to connect you with those that can.

Until then, I'm happy for my involvement in this project to be that of intermittent fab builder.

Best regards,
James

In the short term, the biggest problem might come from companies like Stratasys, whose cash cows will be the first to be threatened by RepRap.

As it is legal for an individual to make a copy of a patented device for educational purposes, there's no way to prevent people from building RepRaps completely. However, it could cast enough doubt over the space to make any sort of commercial effort (including the RRRF) difficult.

More optimistically, one or more of these companies might, like IBM, embrace the opportunity offered by an open architecture.

I think the legal sides of this might differ from country to country.

In Sweden for instance its (AFAIK) legal to copy your own CDs for personal and family use. Several members of the family can listen to the same record at the same time in different places. This is not legal in other European countries however.

Quote

In the short term, the biggest problem might come from companies like Stratasys, whose cash cows will be the first to be threatened by RepRap.

This probably won't be the case. There will continue to be a market for large, fast, reliable, safe, and otherwise flashy rapid prototyping machines. The sort which are supported by a real company, and have various safety guarantees and so on.

The biggest threat will is more likely to be in the form of threats by patent holders. A potentially patent encumbered device isn't ever going to be accepted or supported by business in any serious way; there's too much risk.

Reprap can't be sued, cos it isn't a commercial entity; its an idea and a design that can't realistically be stomped upon. Those who profit (in the financial gains sense) from it by definition have cash, and are therefore suable.

(editted to fix lack of previewing)

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2008 12:34AM by Forrest Higgs.

I speak with the folks at Stratasys from time to time and haven't got the impression that they are contemplating suing Reprap as an organisation or Reprappers as individuals. Mind, I wouldn't necessarily expect them to telegraph their intention if they did have some such idea in mind.

As well, Reprap isn't in competition with firms such as Stratasys nor does it seek to "threaten" their business in any way. Therefore the use of such loaded terms is unfortunate and counterproductive. Indeed, I've suggested directly to them that Stratasys might want to leverage their intimate knowledge of the dynamics of 3D printing plus what we've learned at Reprap since we are completely open source to offer their own line of very inexpensive, mass market, 3D printers and become, more or less, the Hewlett Packard of 3D printing.

Stratasys has requested that we not do one thing, however, and that is to apply the phrase "Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM)" to describe what we do when we print things. Since FDM is a Stratasys trademarked phrase and term, their request is completely understandable and the Reprap project has agreed to stop using the term.

Dr. Bowyer, iirc, has suggested that hereafter we refer to our extrusion process by the more general terms of "fused filament fabrication" or "additive fabrication". Since we do not print in a controlled, elevated temperature environment like Stratasys does, we should not be hijacking their trademarked term for what we do.

Ahh, it might be worth having the 'we don't do FDM' thing sprinkled in strategic bits of the wiki. I know I use that term, as it is a handy sort of label.

It would indeed be very nice if companies would build upon and contribute to the work being done here, much like the development of the linux kernel. I shan't hold my breath however.

Ru Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ahh, it might be worth having the 'we don't do
> FDM' thing sprinkled in strategic bits of the
> wiki. I know I use that term, as it is a handy
> sort of label.

We just sort of quietly removed references to Stratasys FDM from the website as they requested.

> I know I use that term, as it is a handy
> sort of label.

Handy, but not appropriate. It unnecessarily raises hackles at Stratasys.

>It would indeed be very nice if companies would build upon and contribute to the
>work being done here, much like the development of the linux kernel. I shan't
>hold my breath however.

I expect that sort of thing to happen in the fullness of time. These are still early days, however.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2008 01:17PM by Forrest Higgs.

Forrest wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Indeed, I've suggested directly to them that Stratasys
> might want to leverage their intimate knowledge of the
> dynamics of 3D printing plus what we've learned at
> Reprap since we are completely open source to offer their
> own line of very inexpensive, mass market, 3D printers
> and become, more or less, the Hewlett Packard of 3D printing.

I think it's a lot more likely that Hewlett Packard will become the Hewlett Packard of 3D printing than that Stratasys will. One of the hardest things in the world is to move from a high-cost business model to a low-cost one.

Colin K. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think it's a lot more likely that Hewlett
> Packard will become the Hewlett Packard of 3D
> printing than that Stratasys will. One of the
> hardest things in the world is to move from a
> high-cost business model to a low-cost one.

True enough. However, unless HP has one running in some development lab, I doubt seriously if they could get to market as fast as Stratasys could. All Stratasys would have to do is to take a lot of the bells and whistles off of their software app and they'd be pretty much good to go. Smartest thing they could do would be to develop one and then license it to somebody like HP. I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen in the next few years.