Intellectual property
3D printing has existed for decades within certain manufacturing
industries where many legal regimes, including patents, industrial
design rights, copyright, and trademark may apply. However, there is not
much jurisprudence to say how these laws will apply if 3D printers
become mainstream and individuals or hobbyist communities begin
manufacturing items for personal use, for non-profit distribution, or
for sale.
Any of the mentioned legal regimes may prohibit the distribution of the
designs used in 3D printing, or the distribution or sale of the printed
item. To be allowed to do these things, where an active intellectual
property was involved, a person would have to contact the owner and ask
for a license, which may come with conditions and a price. However, many
patent, design and copyright laws contain a standard limitation or
exception for ‘private’, ‘non-commercial’ use of inventions, designs or
works of art protected under intellectual property (IP). That standard
limitation or exception may leave such private, non-commercial uses
outside the scope of IP rights.
Patents cover inventions including processes, machines, manufactures,
and compositions of matter and have a finite duration which varies
between countries, but generally 20 years from the date of application.
Therefore, if a type of wheel is patented, printing, using, or selling
such a wheel could be an infringement of the patent.
Copyright covers an expression in a tangible, fixed medium and often
lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years thereafter. If someone
makes a statue, they may have copyright on the look of that statue, so
if someone sees that statue, they cannot then distribute designs to
print an identical or similar statue.
When a feature has both artistic (copyrightable) and functional
(patentable) merits, when the question has appeared in US court, the
courts have often held the feature is not copyrightable unless it can be
separated from the functional aspects of the item. In other countries
the law and the courts may apply a different approach allowing, for
example, the design of a useful device to be registered (as a whole) as
an industrial design on the understanding that, in case of unauthorized
copying, only the non-functional features may be claimed under design
law whereas any technical features could only be claimed if covered by a
valid patent.