CryptoKitties.
explore 3D-printing from a consumer and business perspective and explore its impact for the future.
“When we published our results in 2015, the views from those companies, pretty big companies we spoke to, alongside the consumer trends reflected through the quantitative data, it seemed pretty certain that 3D printing would become common in our life by 2025. But it hasn’t taken off in the way we thought, not in the consumer space any- way. Who knows why? Technology can take a while. I still think it is becoming a bigger thing within industries, but to reach the average consumer it’s not going to happen for a while as the tech- nology still needs developing, similar to the trend we saw in computing.”
Covid highlight
During covid 3D-printing was back in the public eye. Some public libraries in the UK helped print PPE,but the biggest story came from Italy. Dinusha says: “In Lombardy doctors advertised for help to produce valves for breathing machines. Two engineers created a prototype. They had taken the original and scanned it, reverse engineered it and printed it. But they agreed that they wouldn’t share it with the rest of the world.
“I recently led a commissioned project for the European Commission. They
March 2022
wanted clarity on all IP rights relating to 3D-printing. In relation to copyright, we concluded that you can protect the model as an artistic work, but the question we were asked was if the construction graph/ tree which held the instructions to how the model was designed could be protect- ed as a literary work.
“We referred to various copyright cases that protected things like diagrams for knitting instructions and circuit diagrams – there are copyright cases in the UK and beyond where these kinds of things are protected. We wanted to understand if someone who creates a digital design can have similar protection and provide clarity for those working in this space.”
3D in libraries
3D-printing is already widespread in libraries but Dinusha says, if they haven’t got it already, libraries need to have 3D-printing policies in place. “The data of a scanned asset, might not be protected by copyright law but the model is. There’s a case from the 1960s when photocopiers had just emerged and the University of New South Wales was held liable for copyright infringement because it hadn’t properly monitored the copying that was going on. In the same manner, do libraries need to think about printing and scanning policies relating to 3D-printing and scanning? “And it’s not just copyright that librar- ies need to worry about. The American
Library Association’s guidance mentions a legal case that allowed a company to post files for 3D printed plastic guns, but warned that libraries are still bound by another law forbidding the creation or assisting in the creation of guns that are undetectable by x-ray machines.” (
https://bit.ly/3tLyhaf)
Conclusion
Dinusha’s experience in this area has exposed her to an array of different tech- nologies and the different speeds at which they present significant issues to copy- right professionals. So 3D Printing might appear to be a sluggard in comparison to the sudden recent interest in NFTs. How- ever, technologies particularly those that involve hardware take time and that is no different in the case of 3D printing. While Dinusha says it may be impossible to predict what will come first, big chal- lenges are likely to keep coming over the horizon. At the time of writing she’s still pondering over the direction her keynote might take, but it’s not through a lack of burning issues.
Book now
This year’s Copyright Conference takes place online on 18 May, and also features Tanya Aplin, Margaret Haig, Matthew Lambert, Caroline Ball, James Bennett and Dr Adrienne Muir. Book your place at
www.cilip.org.uk/copyrightconf22 IP
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