This chapter will present an overview of the book and its contents, along with where it fits into the current scholarship. The methodology used in the book will be described here, that is, a âlaw in societyâ approach, which has been chosen over a âblack letter lawâ approach, given the challenges that 3D printing as a decentralised cross-jurisdictional technology and its relationship with the Internet and personal computing pose for the effective enforcement of legal rules.
The choice of 3D printing as an object of study will be explained: 3D printingâs entry into the mainstream and emergence as a possible consumer product as well as its proliferating applications in various areas of life along with the beginnings of academic narratives around the technology from disciplines beyond engineering and manufacturing make it a timely object of study. However, hitherto there are no book-length accounts from a legal perspective on the topic despite the challenges 3D printing presents to certain areas of law and its effective enforcementâa gap this book aims to fill.
A short description will be given of 3D printing itself, and the different yet related technologies comprised in this umbrella term. Initial 3D printing developments in the 1980s will be discussed in brief, along with the significance of patents on restricting the mass availability of 3D printing, the creation of the RepRap movement out of a British university in accordance with free and open-source principles, and, finally, the commodification of 3D printing and its push to consumers.
An outline of the following chapters of the book will then be set out, which explore the legal implications of 3D printing in more depth, examining in particular the issues 3D printing poses for IP law (including its relationship with competition), arms control, product liability, privacy and data protection, as well as the enforceability of all of these regimes.
This Bookâs Approach
This book looks at 3D printing and its interaction with various areas of law, from a socio-legal perspective. This âlaw in contextâ approach1 is preferred over a the traditional âblack letterâ method due to the dimension that a consideration of how 3D printing is being used in reality adds to the research, whereas a black letter approach would limit consideration merely just to how âlaw in the booksâ applies to the emerging technology. Thus, a political economy approach to the law is taken by this book,2 in order to uncover how institutions are encountering 3D printing, the extent to which it is âfreeingâ for individuals, and whether (and which) laws can and do govern it.
A transnational approach is taken to the question of jurisdiction: US law is evidently prominent in this bookâs analysis given it is the locus of much 3D printing activity, where 3D printing companies are headquartered, and whose laws govern the Terms and Conditions of Use of many online 3D printing services such as Thingiverse, the prominent 3D design file-sharing platform.
However, American laws are not the only ones examined here, despite their pre-eminence. As with the Internet, 3D printing is a transnational phenomenon in part due to its leveraging of the Internetâespecially when it comes to 3D printing design file distribution and access, which causes problems (albeit not completely insurmountable) for the effective enforcement of one jurisdictionâs laws.3 Accordingly, the European Union (EU) law and its manifestation in one jurisdiction, the UK, are also considered as a site of comparison and contrast, especially on IP, fundamental rights, and data protection. Australian law, another similar common law system, is brought in at times to provide an additional jurisdictionâs perspective on 3D printing issues for law, especially in the discussion on gun control, as specific legislative reform has been considered there to address the emergence of 3D printed weapons.
This book does not aim to provide a comprehensive comparison of how different jurisdictions will encounter 3D printing in their legal, economic, and social systems. Indeed, it may well be that 3D printing is actually of more value to people in the Global South, in terms of making a meaningful contribution to their standard of living, than to these (over)developed jurisdictions where mass manufacturing of goods in places such as China still represents a cheaper and more viable option than domestic production.4 There may also be differing approaches to the enforcement of law, especially in jurisdictions where law enforcement is inadequately resourced.5 Yet even between the USA and EU, there are important divergences in the law as it applies to 3D printing, which can be seen in particular in Chap. 3âs discussion on gun control.
Another important aspect of this book is that its focus is on the domestic- or consumer-oriented usage of 3D printing rather than its industrial-scale applications. The âliberatoryâ aspect of 3D printing as a social phenomenon is more likely to be realised in this small-scale use, inasmuch as techniques which previously were too complicated to be performed by individuals or small organisations due to a lack of expertise, resources, and so on can be carried out through the use of 3D printers. Indeed, as will be seen in the discussion throughout this book, this decentralised production using 3D printers poses theoretical if not also practical challenges to various areas of law, which are based on production taking place at a centralised and industrialised level, as well as these products reaching consumers along centralised processes of distribution.
Yet, before these themes are explored in more depth, more explanation of 3D printing as a technology and its origins are warranted.
A Brief History of 3D Printing
What is now popularly known as 3D printing is actually a bundle of technological developments that originally were termed ârapid prototypingâ or âadditive manufacturingâ (and these terms are still used, particularly in more technical literature). Essentially, these techniques all permit the relatively cheap and quick creation of a prototype for industrial product development (hence ârapid prototypingâ), and also involve the construction of objects via the building up of material, usually in a layer-upon-layer fashionâhence âadditiveâ manufacturing as compared to the traditional (retroactively named) âsubtractive manufacturingâ by which a piece of raw material is cut into a final shape and size by a process whereby excess and unwanted material is removed.
Conceptual precursors to 3D printers can be found in science fiction, especially the Star Trek Replicator (and such a comparison has been encouraged in the literature around 3D printers).6 However, real-life 3D printing can trace its practical origins to the 1970s. In 1977, an inventor named Wyn Kelly Swainson was granted a patent in the USA for a process whereby a laser is used to solidify liquid plastic to form solid plastic along the path of the beam.7 This process envisaged the solidification of this plastic in layers in order to produce a 3D object, controlled by a computer. This can be seen as âthe beginning of practical additive manufacture of three-dimensional parts under computer controlâ.8 The first patent for stereolithography apparatus (SLA) was issued to Charles (Chuck) Hall in 1983, who went on to co-found 3D Systems which used this technology to introduce the first commercial rapid prototyping system in 1987. In 1987, Carl Deckard from the University of Texas filed a patent in the USA for selective laser sintering (SLS), which was issued in 1989. Finally, Scott Crump, who co-founded Stratasys, filed a patent for fused deposition modelling (FDM), a process currently used by many low-cost consumer-oriented 3D printers.9
Various other 3D printing techniques were developed during the 1990s and early 2000s, but all were aimed at industrial applications. Towards the end of the 2000s, 3D printers began to come down in price, with the notable launch of a machine under US$10,000 from 3D Systems in 2007. However, it was around this time that the open-source/open-hardware self-replicating RepRap was launched and began to gain visibility. From 2009 onwards, consumer-level 3D printers were created and put on the market by a number of manufacturers, and by 2012, 3D printing has broken into the mainstream, at least in developed Western markets.
The RepRap is an important development in the 3D printing story as it can be seen as an initial attempt to âdemocratiseâ the technology. The project was created by Adrian Bowyer, a Senior Lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Bath, and was an initiative to develop a 3D printer that could re-print most of its own components. Around the time of its launch, commercial 3D printers were too expensive for the average consumer in the developed world to afford, with the RepRap providing a much cheaper option, with material costs estimated at âŹ350, such that it was âaccessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed worldâ.10 The project releases all of the designs it produces under the GNU General Public licence, in an attempt to transfer free software/Creative Commons principles to hardwareâand spurring the âOpen Hardwareâ movement. Designers are free to modify RepRap designs so long as they share their creations back with the RepRap community.
However, the RepRap also, perhaps unwittingly, spawned commercial offerings of low-cost consumer-oriented 3D printers, most notably those developed by MakerBot. Makerbotâs founders met at the NYC Resistor Hackerspace, and âthrew out the self-replication requirementâ of RepRap.11 By 2011, MakerBot had sold seve...