Patents on DLP ?

[StefanIv]

Last I knew, the bare minimum to apply for a patent was about $1000. But that was if you did all the work yourself. Lawyers and patent draftsmen (Patent drawings are a of certain style) run the price up. There may be different fees for certain technologies to help limit patent trolls. But I may wrong on this.

Yeah, $1000 is the cost for "relatively simple" type of invention. It goes high as $3000 for software related or complex patents. But a more important question is: How will institutions regulate 3d printing in general? Because there are some serious intellectual property issues. I found an interesting article that covers these things, but what do you think? From a legal point of view, DIY 3d printing seems too good to be true. You can't just take some design or copyrighted material and print it yourself - even for your own use, can you?

[awerby]

The costs of the patenting process go on and on - there's not only the cost of the lawyers, and the filing fees, but fees have to be paid to keep the thing in effect. Multiply them by every country you want to protect your invention in.

I found that "interesting article" annoyingly superficial and ill-informed. It's not really possible to "easily" create a CAD file that will print a faithful copy of anything with ones smart phone, as the author seems to think. At best, you'd get a rough representation of it. It could also use some proof-reading - it's hard to worry very much about "a serious treat" for manufacturers.

More seriously, it treats the issue of replicated hard goods the same as that of replicated digital files, although there's a lot more work involved in duplicating and distributing a physical part than in copying and sharing a MP3 file. It dismisses the idea that the responsibility for toys, for example, is something to be concerned with (even though there are very strict laws about that) while it worries unduly about the responsibility for illegally printed body parts, which are still in the realm of science fiction. In defining intellectual property rights, it mistakenly gives the impression that copyrights must be registered to be in effect - this isn't true. In fact, works of expression are automatically copyrighted at the moment they are created, according the the current law. But if the person who created the work of expression shares it online with the understanding it will be copied by anyone with a printer, then they can't prevail in an action against someone who does that.

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com