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from the now-it's-Defense...Disturbed? dept.
Trump deal to share 3D-printed gun blueprints online ruled 'unlawful'
A federal judge has struck down a decision by the Trump administration to allow blueprints for 3D-printed guns to be shared online.
In a ruling published Tuesday, Judge Robert Lasnik said the deal made in July last year was "arbitrary and capricious" and thus a violation of the federal Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution.
The original deal was part of a settlement between the Justice Department and Texas-based nonprofit Defense Distributed, which garnered worldwide attention in 2013 with its claims to have created the world's first "100 percent 3D-printed gun." The dissemination of plans for the gun was blocked by the Obama administration, but last year Defense Distributed successfully sued the government and had the ban reversed, arguing that it was a free speech violation.
[...] Bloomberg notes that the decision may still have limitations, given that Defense Distributed worked around a previous, temporary ban on downloading plans by simply mailing blueprints directly to customers. Said [spokesperson Chad] Flores: "The speech these states want so badly to censor is already on the internet and always will be."
Also at Bloomberg, NYT, and CBS.
Previously: Landmark Legal Shift for 3D-Printed Guns
[Updated] Defense Distributed Releasing Gun Plans, President Trump "Looking Into" It
Federal Judge Imposes Preliminary Injunction Against Defense Distributed's DEFCAD
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:10PM (1 child)
Most, yes. The Defense Distributed plans probably aren't. There's a remote chance of them being licensed creative commons something-or-other, but since Cody didn't plan to prevent others from building or selling them there would be no point in filing for a patent.
Also, if you look at the design files for the 3d-printed plastic gun Cody designed it's obvious that it's not a modification of a metal gun design. Working around the barrel/chamber size required to hold and fire the round forced lots of changes to the design of the rest of the gun. Patentable, yeah maybe; patented, probably not.
tl;dr: the way to hide an invention from the uspto is to never file an application.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:53PM
The license for the DD files noted on defcad is GPL v3.0: https://github.com/DefiantCad/defcad-repo [github.com] That includes the original Liberator. I'm not easily finding what license Cody Wilson initially used, but given his anarchic views and his multiple public statements about "releasing them to the public domain(*)" -- the license is sure to be permissive in nature, although whether the files were donated to the copyright-public-domain space or not isn't clear to me.
(*) It's hard to tell if by "public domain" Wilson meant the copyright type, or the definition of public domain from ITAR: https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/cody-wilson-itar-state-department-liberator-supreme-court-gun-control/ [dailydot.com]