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Volume: 32 | Article ID: art00035_1
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The Impact of 3D Printing on U.S. Copyright and Trademarks
  DOI :  10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2017.32.134  Published OnlineSeptember 2016
Abstract

The ubiquitous use of additive manufacturing (and subtractive manufacturing), better known as “3D Printing” has forced intellectual property (IP) owners to re-evaluate the various types of well-known IP protections available to them, namely, patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. In one aspect, by shifting the act of “manufacturing” or “making” of a product from a conventional industrial manufacturer to a consumer, the IP holder must determine which, if any, of the traditional IP protections are worth the investment. Acts which have been the signature of infringement, both patent and copyright, have been the making, using and selling of an IP protected product. But if the entity that is doing any of those acts by printing an IP-protected product is a consumer, the IP owner may not be able to recover any significant damages from that single consumer or consumers who actually print (i.e., “make”) the product. IP owners must look to see if there are any remedy(ies) in suing the vendors who sell the software files provided to the consumer that are loaded into their 3D printers. From a trademark aspect, where a trademark identifies the source of goods or services in commerce, IP owners need to be concerned about those they license to 3D-print their products; for example, will the end product have the same quality as when the IP owner actually produced the product, since the IP owner's trademark will appear on that printed product? With regard to copyrights, IP owners need to consider that although photographs have copyright the moment they are created, does software of optically scanned 3D objects have the same benefit?This paper will survey the impact of 3D Printing on copyright and trademark issues and how such IP protections can be, or not be, enforceable to provide value to an IP owner.

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  Cite this article 

Scott M Slomowitz, Gary A Greene, Nicholas M Tinari, "The Impact of 3D Printing on U.S. Copyright and Trademarksin Proc. IS&T Printing for Fabrication: Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP32),  2016,  https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2017.32.134

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