There has been a lot of talk recently about the proliferation of
3-D printing and the impact it will have on intellectual property
rights holders, particularly in the consumer products space. The
time has come when consumer products and other goods can easily be
reproduced on an inexpensive household 3-D printer. Many have
equated this phenomenon to the digital revolution in the music
industry, where record companies eventually transformed from
selling physical products such as compact discs and DVDs, to
selling electronic data files online.
Before switching to the online model, record companies attempted to
enforce their intellectual property rights against file-sharing
websites such as Napster and Grokster. However, after years of
litigation, the record companies joined in on the digital
revolution and licensed their rights, resulting in legitimate music
download services such as iTunes.
Some predict that companies that manufacture and sell products will
skip over the IP enforcement phase attempted by the record
companies, and instead proceed directly to a licensing model.
Indeed, Hasbro recently licensed some of its intellectual property
rights to Shapeways, the world's largest online 3-D printing
service. Under the agreement, fans of Hasbro brands such as My
Little Pony can design, 3-D print, and sell their own My Little
Pony creations online. In addition, rumor has it that one of the
major players in the aerospace industry recently granted its
customers access to the 3-D files for various spare parts,
providing customers near on-demand access to those spare parts, and
reducing aircraft down time. This trend will increase as 3-D
printers become ubiquitous.
Licensing patent rights in the foregoing "digital"
scenarios can prove challenging under conventional patent claiming
practices. Companies looking to generate revenue by licensing their
patent rights to 3-D file distributors, 3-D printers, and other
similar entities, should consider alternative patent claiming
strategies in addition to the conventional strategies already in
place. For instance, with traditional patent claims, the act of 3-D
printing the patented article by an end consumer would constitute
direct infringement, but the act of storing or transmitting the
underlying 3-D file would likely constitute contributory
infringement, which is harder and more complicated to prove than
direct infringement. Since the file distributors are easier to
track and are thus better potential licensees or infringement
defendants than the end consumers, patent owners should consider
patent claim strategies that would capture the acts of file
distributors as direct patent infringement. Innovators might
consider patent claims directed to digital files containing
instructions to 3-D print their inventions, as well as patent
claims directed to electronic transmission of instructions to 3-D
print their inventions. These strategies will put patent owners in
a better position to license, and if necessary, enforce their
patent rights once 3-D printing becomes ubiquitous.
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