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How 3-D Printing Threatens Our Patent System

posted by cmn32480 on Friday January 08 2016, @07:13AM   
from the printster-will-be-the-new-napster dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Remember Napster or Grokster? Both services allowed users to share computer files – usually digital music – that infringed the copyrights for those songs.

Now imagine that, instead of music, you could download a physical object. Sounds like something from a sci-fi movie – push a button and there's the item! But that scenario is already becoming a reality. With a 3D printer, someone can download a computer file, called a computer-aided design (CAD) file, that instructs the printer to make a physical, three-dimensional object.

Because CAD files are digital, they can be shared across the internet on file-sharing services, just like movies and music. Just as digital media challenged the copyright system with rampant copyright infringement, the patent system likely will encounter widespread infringement of patented inventions through 3D printing. The problem is, however, that the patent system is even more ill-equipped to deal with this situation than copyright law was, posing a challenge to a key component of our innovation system.

If 3-D printing at home happened fast enough it would cut China off at the knees.

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Original Submission

• Literacy, Internal Combustion Engine... Literacy, Internal Combustion Engine... (Score: 4, Interesting) by Covalent on Friday January 08 2016, @02:37PM

  by Covalent (43) on Friday January 08 2016, @02:37PM (#286607) Journal

  ...3D Printer. All destroyed an existing way of life. Before literacy, only the noble few possessed knowledge. Imagine banning literacy because it would destroy the elite knowledge system. Before the engine, only the noble few possessed the ability to move any great distance on the Earth. Imagine banning the engine because it would destroy the elite transport system.

  3D printing will soon be able to manufacture more that just goods. We'll be 3D printing food from food waste, organs from stem cells, and new cell phones from old cell phones. Imagine banning 3D printing because it would destroy the patent system.

  It's equally foolish. This is the new paradigm: Knowledge is free, goods are free, services are free, and capitalism is doomed. The sooner we start to deal with that, the better off we'll be.

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  You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.

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• Re:Literacy, Internal Combustion Engine... (Score: 2) by melikamp on Friday January 08 2016, @06:16PM

  by melikamp (1886) on Friday January 08 2016, @06:16PM (#286749) Journal

  Yup. I think it's well worth stressing that, completely in line with your analogies, the patent system only benefits very few elites—not the lawyers, by the way, who are just doing their job, but the super-rich—the upper management and the owners of giant corporations with massive patent portfolios. No credible economics study has ever shown patents to benefit the public, and taken at their face values these are monopolies, so if they work at all, they should distort the markets, reduce the competition, drive up the prices, and stifle innovation.

  Parent