Media News - Monday, January 30, 2012

Legal battles loom as home 3D printing grows

The controversial website The Pirate Bay announced this week that it would begin hosting digital files for visitors to download and print out on their 3D printers. The site has coined a new word - "Physibles" - for data objects capable and feasible of becoming physical. The site has faced extensive legal battles in its home country of Sweden over potential intellectual property infringement of digital content. The concern for many intellectual property owners is that just as there is piracy in the digital world, so too will there be in the physical world. The process is an "additive" manufacturing technique that essentially takes digital data and, with the help of a robotic arm, forms a physical object by "printing" or releasing a hardening substance like plastic in thin layers without a mold. As utopian as data-to-object manufacturing may sound, it's a development rapidly gaining momentum and one that poses unprecedented implications for intellectual property law, encompassing patents, copyrights and trademarks. In the months and years ahead, scores of patent lawyers and open source advocates will explore to what extent existing IP legislation impacts 3D printing and other new technologies that digital data into objects. (Deutsche Welle)

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