An article looked into the similar issues both industries experience with copyright and patents.
3Dprint.com reported on the US Copyright Office’s study of 3D printing, and tried to explain why the office is studying the growing industry, as well as how the cartridge remanufacturing industry’s struggles with OEMs over copyright align it with 3D printing.
Reflecting on how “not all intellectual property is the same”, the piece states that patents “generally protect functional objects and processes” in the US, while copyright protects “creative, non-functional works”, with the former lasting around 20 years and the latter “more than a century”. In turn, trademarks protect “words and symbols that identify goods” and can “last forever”.
With the Copyright Office focusing on copyright, the site states that this “doesn’t mean technical processes connected to 3D printing […] in most cases”, but that the office is looking into “using consumables not approved by printer manufacturers without violating copyright law”, tying into the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). 3D printer manufacturer Stratasys is looking to use the law to “protect its market in consumables”, much as Lexmark tried to with the printing industry in its case against Static Control.
The case comes down to chips, as with many cases in the cartridge aftermarket, with such “potentially copyright-protected” chips possibly violating the DMCA. 3Dprint.com refers to Stratasys’ move as “little more than a pretext for manufacturers to protect materials and processes that are completely unrelated to copyright law. Stratasys is trying to use the DMCA to protect its market in consumables, a market that – regardless of how much time, money, and effort they invest – simply isn’t eligible for copyright protection”.
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Adding that “concerns like consumer safety and repeatability of prints” are driving Stratasys’ case, the site notes that “these concerns may be important, but they are not the types of concerns that copyright is designed to address”. The manufacturer has also looked into “the consumer benefits of locking users into one source of consumables”, and the article points out that the Lexmark case shows that “in the context of the DMCA and unlocking, 2D and 3D printing are remarkably similar”.
In the Lexmark case, the OEM was fought by courts as “copyright has nothing to do with printer toner – even (especially) printer toner and cartridges that embodied millions of dollars’ worth of R&D and a fair number of patents”. The site points out that “this sort of copyright abuse has very real consequences”, as “locking in consumers to consumables approved by manufacturers limits choice”, which also “slows innovation” as “no single manufacturer can think of everything”.
3Dprint.com contends that “allowing third parties the opportunity to sell consumables brings more eyes on the challenges of developing 3D printing materials. With more people competing to develop more innovative 3D printing consumables, everyone wins […] this is about ownership and control […] users of 3D printers are adults who should be free to make [a choice] themselves. They may void their warranties or their service contracts, but there is no reason they should be threatened with a copyright lawsuit for daring to experiment with unapproved consumables [and] there is no reason that copyright should be used as a pretext to make 3D printers any different”.