Here is an interesting thought from the presentation by Adrian Bowyer of the RepRap project at the recent Go Open 2008 that I attended in Norway.

“People can make patented things for themselves”

Patentregulation prevents commercial agents without a license to sell people products covered by patents. In the future people will have in their homes cheap 3D printers and Matter Compilers (devices that build the desired article (such as a dress) atom by atom according to a specified design) or Molecular assemblers.

Today, when we copy music and other content with the help of our personal computers we need licenses from the owners of the content. That is because the content is protected by copyright, not by patents, and copyright prohibits the private or personal (the differences between these two definitions have legal implications, though) use, that is in particular copying, of copyrighted material.

Patents, however, does not prohibit noncommercial use of technology covered by the patent. So we do not need permission from the patent holders to manufacture products and objects covered by patents in a our home with the help of our personal 3D printers.

How will patent regulaton respond to ths challenge?

Technorati Tags:
reprap.org, adrianbowyer, gopen2008, patents, 3dprinters