Elizabeth Ferrill posted a blog post
3D Printing: What Can IP Rights Do For You?
In this first installment of a three-part series on legal issues relating to 3D printing, we talk about the available forms of intellectual property (IP) protection, tips for protecting your ideas on a tight budget, and when IP rights may (or may not) be a good fit for a 3D printing business.How Can I Protect My 3D Printing Technique or Design?Intellectual property rights exist to incentivize innovation. Whether you’re building a new 3D printer, developing a new printing material, or drafting a new design, IP can provide exclusive rights to use your ideas and bring them to market. There are several distinct forms of IP rights that can be used to protect 3D printing-related ideas:Utility patents protect the functional aspects of an invention. You can patent a machine such as a printer or printed device, a new way of making or using a machine, or new 3D printing materials. If your idea is new, useful, and wouldn’t be obvious to a person knowledgeable about the field of your invention, your idea may be protectable with a utility patent.Design patents protect how your manufactured object looks. Generally speaking, eligible designs must meet the same requirements as a utility patent.Trademarks protect your brand. If you use a name, logo, symbol, or some other means of identifying the source of your product to consumers, you may be eligible for protection. You can receive trademark rights automatically by selling products under your brand, but federal registration provides additional rights. You should also check to make sure no one is using the same or a similar trademark before you start using it.Copyright protects your original expression of an idea, but not the underlying idea itself. Copyright protection is broad, and may cover your 3D blueprints, marketing materials, artwork, and computer software. Like trademarks, copyrights are created automatically when you express an idea in a tangible form, but registration with the federal government provides additional rights.Trade secrets are information kept sufficiently confidential so as to provide some form of economic value. Trade secrets are not registered and depend on maintaining secrecy.How Can I Protect My Ideas on a Limited Budget?Utility patents have received a great deal of recent media attention, but they provide a relatively expensive means of protection that may not be suitable for everyone. Even with the reduced government filing fees for smaller inventors, patents often cost tens of thousands of dollars and it may take years before they issue. Designers and manufacturers with limited resources may effectively protect ideas by properly securing other rights requiring smaller up-front financial investments, such as copyrights, trademarks, design patents, and trade secrets, either alone or in combination.For instance, if you properly register a copyright before infringement starts, you may be eligible for fixed damages rather than having to prove that you suffered economic injury, which can be a difficult and expensive process. Federal copyrights can be registered online for $35. Likewise, a registered trademark can become “incontestable” after 5 years, which somewhat insulates the trademark from attacks in court, saving money.When is Intellectual Property Protection Right for You?Not everyone involved in 3D printing should pursue all forms of IP protection. While some companies will benefit tremendously from a broad IP portfolio, others will find obtaining and enforcing IP rights to be a poor use of limited resources. For instance, where a patented design is relatively simple and leaves plenty of room for others to alter the original design while maintaining the same functionality, it may be easy for competitors to “design around” a protected product, circumventing the patent.But where a product can be easily printed in mass quantities, and is usually sold without customization, preventing unauthorized 3D printing will be just as important as controlling illegal copies made through traditional manufacturing methods. And where a product has multiple components that are each subject to IP protection, savvy IP rights holders can hamstring a competitor’s ability to design around a protected product, which may give the rights holder a competitive edge.As demonstrated by the music industry, policing and enforcing IP rights in the digital age can be challenging. Finding infringers may be difficult, and companies seeking to enforce rights are sometimes forced to sue their own customers, damaging the goodwill and reputation of their brands. But for products that cannot be easily 3D printed without detection by IP rights holders, such as aircraft parts, pharmaceuticals, or integrated circuits, IP enforcement may not be harder for 3D printed products than for products made by traditional methods.Unless owners of 3D printing-related IP rights proactively develop strategies to protect their business models, their ability to enforce IP rights may struggle to keep pace with the rate at which this disruptive technology is developing and being adopted. But, for now, you should carefully consider the existing choices of IP rights and select the types of protection appropriate for your budget, your product, and your market.John Hornick, Elizabeth Ferrill, and Daniel Klodowski of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner co-authored this post.See More